popular logistics

Harvard School of Public Health research concludes that airport security isn’t helping. Reuters, or Yahoo News.

The researchers could not find any studies showing whether the time-consuming process of X-raying carry-on luggage prevents hijackings or attacks.

They found no evidence to suggest that making passengers take off their shoes and confiscating small items prevented any incidents.

The researchers conclude that it would be “interesting” to apply medical standards to airport security. Screening programs for illnesses like cancer are usually not broadly instituted unless they have been shown to work.

The TSA response:

The Transportation Security Administration defended its measures by reporting that more than 13 million prohibited items were intercepted in one year. … Most of these illegal items were lighters.”

The TSA needs to think things through and implement security protocols that work to stop terrorists, rather than those that work to inconvenience passengers, confiscate lighters, water, homemade pies, and toothpaste.

Bruce Schneier, in his blog on Security and Security Technology, sums it up well:

The goal isn’t to confiscate prohibited items. The goal is to prevent terrorism on airplanes. When the TSA confiscates millions of lighters from innocent people, that’s a security failure. The TSA is reacting to non-threats. The TSA is reacting to false alarms. Now you can argue that this level of failures is necessary to make people safer, but it’s certainly not evidence that people are safer.

So today, 6 years after Sept. 11, Airport Security, to put it mildly, is a work in progress. Or, as Schneier puts it, “the TSA has it completely backwards.“