Beware the Bored Security Screener
by Paul McGoldrick
By now most of us have seen the strangely-white-badged federal security screeners working for yet another government agency, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), loaded with lots of Under-Secretary jobs for those in the know. With field supervisors pulling in up to $56 k (plus locality allowances, like 15%+ for Chicago) one can only wonder what kind of salaries the DC employees are swimming in.
TSA, like other government initials, is something we will no doubt get used to: Like the FAA, FCC, FBI, CIA, KGB (oops, sorry, wrong country) it is also likely to be just as useless in achieving its objectives and just as expensive in its failure to get there. Certainly there will never be a repeat of 9-11 in the U.S., although there will be imitators after their 15 minutes of fame, and we should be looking for much more vulnerable targets than commercial aviation.
We have already been told that the TSA will not meet its legal requirements of screening all checked luggage for explosives by December 31, 2002 (under the Aviation and Transportation Security Act) and even in providing federal screening it is also inevitably going to fail its task: As of October 23, 2002 federal screeners were in place at 195 commercial airports. The target is 429 airports and the legal date for implementation is November 19, 2002 - that's 8.7 airports to be deployed a day, mostly very rural.
In fact the TSA seems to be much more concerned at how diversified its workers are, with 30% more Hispanic than the general population, on par for Native Americans, and 50% more for Asian American/Pacific Islanders. So what? I remember a senior customer service person for United Airlines coming up to me on a Transatlantic flight expressing how proud she was that the Senior Cabin Services Officer was Asian. I pointed out that he was unitelligble on the PA system and I would certainly prefer a voice that I understood if or when we had an emergency…she had no response. I am not anti- any nationality or race - as people who have worked with and for me in many walks of life would tell you - but a worker needs to be appointed for what they can do, not for their individual point of origin.
In the old days I would turn up at my municipal airport and if the station manager was on duty at security, he would just wave me through…and I then had literally totally open access to the country's airports without further security screening. That was, of course, totally wrong. But have things really improved? Certainly the number of security screening bodies is quite unbelievable, and that is certainly reflected on the 10% or so of the extra price of our tickets. But quantity does not necessarily reflect qualtiy. We see a constant movement of special or additional vetting, whatever the general traffic level is through a security point. So screeners are obviously keeping themselves busy - whether scrutiny is necessary or not.
In the last month I have had my laptop and CPAP (continuous positive air pressure) machine through a dozen or so checkpoints. I have no idea how easy or difficult it would be to conceal explosives in something like a PC, but certainly they could be hidden within the machine away from the X-Ray's gaze, and they are all handled the same way, right-side up. Also, the swab testing that is done - but not universally - appears to focus on Nitrogen, and that excludes all sorts of nasty explosive substances. As for my CPAP machine, there was a universal lack of knowledge about what it was - nor any care to learn.
Boredom is the universal friend of the crook, and the terrorist. Once routines are established it is easy to see the routine and ignore the background.
I had to wait, last week, for the check-in desk of my airline to open at a major airport (one that was a source of 9-11 terror flights), as it only had one flight a day from that city and didn't handle passengers until a couple of hours before the flight. The most convenient place for me to sit was right outside the main security screening for the terminal.
While having trouble focusing on my book, I was able to do a lot of people-watching, and I evaluated possibly a half-dozen ways of getting past that security point with contraband if I was in the business of doing so. I'm not going to list those here as an open source on the Internet, of course, but the methods of penetration would be outlandishly easy, all based on routine.
Remember the legendary story of the man who security knew had to be stealing from the factory he worked at? Every day he passed through the check-point pushing a wheelbarrow full of straw and every day for twenty years the guard would poke through the straw and find nothing. On the day that he was retiring the guard says, "Charlie, I know you've been up to something for all these years. Now you're retiring, I promise you no harm; just tell me what?" And, of course, the answer was that he had been stealing wheelbarrows.
So beware the scurity screener that is bored, for he/she will take your
time. And be aware of those around you who might not be what they appear
to be.