Security theater

By Michael Fraase

Sunday, 19 October 2008 11:39AM CST

Section: Privacy

Fake boarding passI confess. Research for Information Eclipse got me all wound up about government and corporate surveillance in the United States. It only got worse when George W. Bush was installed in the White House and systematically expanded the unchecked power of the executive branch.

Last night my wife and I watched the first installment of The Last Enemy (no spoilers, please; we’re behind in our Tivo watching). It’s simultaneously fascinating and disturbing in a way that only our limey friends across the pond can do. Watching it didn’t help my internal spring one little bit.

But then I read something like Jeffrey Goldberg’s “The Things He Carried” and I breathe easier. Wait. What? Shouldn’t the fact that Goldberg got through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at various US airports with “al-Qaeda t-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasir Arafat dolls” not to mention “pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste… bottles of Fiji water, and box cutters” (box cutters!) be at least upsetting? Or how about the Beerbelly, designed to sneak of to 80 ounces of liquid into concerts and athletic events?

As security expert par excellence Bruce Schneier tells Goldberg, “The whole system is designed to catch stupid terrorists.” Smart terrorists would never try to sneak a knife through security; they’d make their own in the bathroom using steel epoxy glue. “Counter­terrorism in the airport is a show designed to make people feel better,” Schneier told Goldberg. “Only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.” According to Schneier, the money should be spent on “intelligence, investigations, and emergency response.” I didn’t see surveillance mentioned anywhere in there.

Goldberg reports he and Schneier had this conversation while waiting in the first-class airport security line at the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport waiting to board Northwest flight 1714 to Reagan National with fake boarding passes that Schneier had created with a laptop and laser printer. Schneier also carried a 12-ounce bottle of liquid labeled “saline solution,” which he told Goldberg was allowed as medical supplies and wouldn’t be checked. It wasn’t. Even after Schneier presented it to the nearest security officer.

Actually, the adventures of Goldberg and Schneier with airport security oddly makes me feel, well, better, if certainly no more secure. It reaffirms my belief that the US government isn’t competent enough to be able to pull off a total surveillance state. I do wish it’d get the security act around the ID triangle together though.

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