Tag: tsa

Two Classes of Travelers

ssegraves

Fascinating write-up about the TSA, PreCheck, and CLEAR by Nilay Patel for The Verge:

This year is the 20th anniversary of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA, and I think it’s safe to say that nobody enjoys waiting in the airport security line. And in the post-9/11 world, things like PreCheck are the great innovation of the department.

At least according to Dan McCoy, who is the TSA’s chief innovation officer, who told me that PreCheck is “a hallmark government innovation program.”

And the thought that I think sits in the back of the mind for most travelers:

But what do programs like PreCheck and the larger surveillance apparatus that theoretically keep us safe mean for the choices we make? What do we give up to get into the shorter security line, and how comfortable should we be about that?

In response to a question about security versus privacy:

This is definitely a hard one to answer from my part. From the innovation perspective, there is intelligence and analysis in the backend that is doing a lot of this work. We have partnerships with the FBI for those background investigations that you are talking about. If you ask an end user to design the best app, they want it to look slick and be frictionless as far as mobility and application development. That is only until you probe them with, “Well, do you want your data to be secure? Do you want to know that you are not being tracked?” I think that is what I equate the TSA process to. Most of my life, TSA has been the way that we go through the airport.

The interview continues on to talk about face recognition and how CLEAR keeps a database of faces but the TSA has taken a different approach, which is Real ID and the verification of a face matching the ID. If you read the full transcript, which is embedded in the above linked article, McCoy mentions that the TSA understands machine recognition of facial data is getting better but it is not at a point where they feel comfortable rolling it out en masse.

Dan McCoy does dance around a few questions, in particular the one around there being only a single attempt to bring a plane down with a shoe bomb but non-PreCheck travelers still have to take their shoes off at security. He gives some pure marketing speak in response to the question and doesn’t give a solid reply as to why the shoe rule is still in place.

My feelings on PreCheck and the rest of the traveling public is that we really should be working to move travel to PreCheck for the majority of passengers and extra security when needed. This is especially true now that travel has picked back up while security remains relatively understaffed. Unfortunately I feel that we’ve crossed an invisible line in the sand and security will never go back to anything like it was pre-9/11. The TSA should really be looking at a future where they can vet passengers quickly and correctly while at the same time insuring that the entire experience isn’t a mess.

New Automated Security Gates at O’Hare

ssegraves

Both United and American Airlines opened automated security lines at Chicago’s O’Hare airport recently and they’re pretty cool.

O'Hare TSA Screening
From United’s press release:

The new lanes enable up to five customers to fill their individual bins simultaneously and move through the screening process quicker, even if TSA agents need to perform additional screening on a customer further up the queue. The lanes also utilize a parallel conveyor system that automatically returns empty bins to the front of the queue.

Both airlines claim that the new automated lanes will speed up the security process while still allowing a thorough search of bags.

The lanes themselves remind me a lot of the security lanes you see in Europe, where bins are provided and then moved through the line automatically, keeping people moving and filling the next available bin. Will be interesting to see how this goes at O’Hare and maybe we’ll see expansion to other airports soon.

Airline Service Returning to Klamath Falls?

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According to U.S. Representative Walden’s website, the House has unanimously approved the Treating Small Airports with Fairness Act. The act name is kind of cheesy but essentially it would bring back TSA screening to small airports that lost service at the beginning of 2013 and has a commitment from an airline for service.

The TSA Fairness Act would require the TSA to restore screening services to any airport that lost service after January 1, 2013 and that has a guarantee from a commercial airline to resume service within one year. There are currently at least six airports nationwide that have commercial airlines seeking to resume flights after undergoing a temporary gap in service, but are being denied TSA security screening and personnel. Instead, the agency directed the airports to allow passengers to fly unscreened to their next destination, and undergo screening there.

Klamath Falls is one of the closest airports to Crater Lake so this change will make it easier for tourists to make it to that lovely attraction, not to mention the rest of southern Oregon. If the act passes in the Senate the airline that has already been tapped to operate the Portland-Klamath Falls service would be PenAir, who has already started a number of routes out of Portland and is partners with Alaska Airlines.

There is no date for when the Senate would vote on the legislation, but I will definitely be on the look out for its passing.

I Flew on a Plane Without Going Through Security and No One Died

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I Flew on a Plane Without Going Through Security and No One Died (Washington Post)

Imagine if catching an 11 a.m. flight out of D.C. was a matter of hopping on the Metro at Petworth at 10:20, getting off at Reagan/National Airport at 10:43, and boarding the plane at 10:50.

That world is possible. I’ve lived it, and it is amazing. All we have to do is abolish the TSA. Entirely. Just let people walk off the street and onto a plane.

Would this increase hijacking? Probably. But there’s no reason to believe it would increase casualties from terrorist attacks overall. That’s because increasing airport security just leads terrorists to direct their assaults elsewhere.

It is an interesting idea and fun to think about, but it isn’t going to happen. We will see the expansion of PreCheck availability, but as a whole, airport security in its current form is staying where it is. The TSA has firmly embedded itself as part of the traveling way of life.

TSA Moves From Your Underwear to Your Starbucks

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Wired: TSA Moves From Your Underwear to Your Starbucks

 As the unidentified passenger points out in commentary posted with his video to YouTube, the liquid testing is being done “well beyond the security check” and on liquids that passengers have purchased inside the security perimeter after they already passed through security screening and threw out any drinks they might have brought with them to the airport.

 

Unbelievable.

House Subcommittee Questions TSA Administrator

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TSA Chief Grilled by House Subcommittee →

The committee chairman, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Ala., opened the hearing by suggesting the agency’s staffing is bloated and could be reduced by 30% to 40%. Referring to the Fort Myers, he asked what it takes to get fired from TSA.

“I believe you are too bogged down in managing an oversized workforce to mitigate the next potential threat,” Rogers said.

Nail on the head.

TSA Wants to Raise Per Flight Fee

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The TSA is a little closer to raising the security fee on airline tickets →

The Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday moved forward with legislation to increase airline passenger security fees, beating back a GOP attempt to keep them at current levels.

The 2013 Homeland Security appropriations bill would increase one-way fees for passengers from $2.50 to $5 in order to close a budget shortfall at the Transportation Security Administration.

Yet the TSA has security items going unused and sitting in storage. This is the perfect opportunity to reduce the reach of the TSA by forcing them to come up with a smaller budget and operate within that budget.

The TSA Is Terrible at Everything

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Reason.com takes a look at a bunch of TSA stats, including a heavily redacted document regarding security breaches →

The article pulls out some interesting data from a report compiled by the Republican staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform and House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. Here are a few highlights:

  • 85 percent of the approximately 5,700 items of major transportation security equipment currently warehoused had been stored for longer than six months; 35 percent of the equipment had been stored for more than one year. One piece of equipment had been in storage more than six years—60 percent of its useful life.
  • TSA had 472 carry-on baggage screening machines warehoused, more than 99 percent of which have remained in storage for more than nine months; 34 percent of the machines have been stored for longer than one year.
  • TSA possessed 1,462 explosive trace detectors in storage, each purchased at a cost of $30,000. Of those devices, 492 had been in storage for longer than one year.

We should be utterly dumbfounded by these numbers. Not because we want the technology implemented, but because the equipment was bought in the first place. It equates to the TSA being given a blank check to shop in the billionaire’s version of SkyMall, all while not being completely honest about security breaches.

Even more disturbing is that even though these numbers and a series of “groping” incidents have made the news, the TSA continues to expand their reach. There are reports of TSA pat downs and bag searches taking place at McCormick Station in Chicago during the NATO summit.

I am not sure any of this is going to stop until a number of people in office put their foot down. The TSA seems less concerned with traveler safety and more concerned about the newest, fanciest equipment and which order to put people through the nude-o-scope. The goal is to make travel safer. If the TSA has lost sight of that goal, then it’s time for us to move on, shutter the TSA, and figure out a better way of performing the single task at hand.

TSA Leaves Metal Detector Unattended

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A TSA checkpoint was left unattended in Sacramento →

Officials told KCRA 3 that four of the individuals were ticketed passengers and one was an airport employee. According to TSA officials, “a walk-through metal detector was left unattended for less than one minute.”

And if that story was not enough, here’s a great write-up on why the TSA should go away, written by a former FBI agent.