Friday, February 08, 2008

Bricolage

This article in the Post reads like a Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue with copy by some second-rate Orwell. It is full of expensive machines of questionable functionality that broadly share a capacity to break often and expensively. (Personally, I'm sticking to the hydrofoil water scooter, a bargain if I ever fucking saw one at a mere 500 bucks.) Our government is desperate to deploy ever more preposterous devices in order to prevent another 9/11 by detecting dangerous items that have nothing to do with the way 9/11 was carried out. Turns out that only required locks on cockpit doors, which means that we could have avoided the TSA and Homeland Security and the thousand perversions of this late, security-state, global-gulag America for the cost of a Lowe's gift card. Think on that, if you will.

Posted by IOZ at 10:16 AM | email »
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Turns out that only required locks on cockpit doors

Well that and a change in policy from "do what hijackers tell you to do to try to keep your passengers alive" to "whatever you do, don't let these guys behind the controls".

But, yeah. A couple of simple changes already takes care of most of the problems with airline security - and forcing me to dump out my drink at the security check point isn't one of them.

12:00 PM
la Rana said...

The problems are myriad, but a misunderstanding of asymmetrical warfare and an apparent refusal to do statistical modeling jump out. The TSA seems to think that since asymmetrical warfare means "they" will do something different next time, we are best served with more security procedures and strategies, not realizing that the security procedures and strategies, no matter what they are, are the logical starting point if you are trying to bring down a plane. Therefore, since you can't conceptually stop everything, you should examine those things which have a realistic chance of occurring. This the TSA refuses to do.

Of course most of what you see TSA do is mindless, incompetent and unecessary, but most of what they do can be traced back to those fundamental theoretical errors.

I see your larger point, but if we are going to have a TSA, and we are, these are criticisms that must be taken to heart.

12:25 PM
Anonymous said...

Of course most of what you see TSA do is mindless, incompetent and unecessary, but most of what they do can be traced back to those fundamental theoretical errors.

I disagree. Most of what we see TSA doing is specifically designed to make us think they're doing SOMETHING to keep people safe. Mindless things like dumping liquids and making people take their shoes off and put them through the x-ray machine are processes that reassure people that TSA is "covering the bases". That's what the big expensive machines are for too - to have something to point at and say "see, we're actively doing something to keep you safe".

It's part of the rationale for the existence of the organization, but it's also a way to make sure that they continue to get funding approved. Congresspeople like to be able to point to things that they're doing, and having big showy things to point at to say "see what we've done" is a lot more impressive than pointing at a book of new procedures and some new staff and trying to make the case that those are going to do the job.

12:50 PM
Anonymous said...

The truly amazing thing is that any plane could be blown up, trivially, by shipping a bomb in air cargo. (Yes, there is often cargo in the bottom of your passenger plane.)

It still isn't being checked in any meaningful way despite enormous sums of money being spent on security theater on the passenger side of the planes.

I think this, as well as the total lack of meaningful port security improvements is evidence that the goals have no strong correlation to the publicly stated goals.

10:27 PM

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