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“This is a stupid game, and we should stop playing it.”
— privacy and security expert Bruce Schneier criticizing airport security.
Now that a new generation of airport security scanners are at work in airports all over the world (including Winnipeg), are we safer? Or are we a hapless audience in airport security theatre?
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The Macro
Recent travel within Canada and to the United Kingdom gave me multiple opportunities to observe and assess new generation Computed Tomography (CT) scanners now being used at an increasing number of airports including Winnipeg, which debuted the new tech last November.
You will recognize these scanners in two different ways.
First, the distinctive round shape and blue lights that ring its belly. And second, because you no longer need to take your electronics and toiletries out of your carry-on luggage or remove your shoes.
The CT X-ray machine on Line 4 at Winnipeg’s airport was installed last fall. (Supplied)
You still have to take all items out of your pockets and remove hats and sweaters/sweatshirts. According to the wonderful How Stuff Works website, the new CT scanners work like this:
“A CT scanner is a hollow tube that surrounds your bag. The X-ray mechanism revolves slowly around it, bombarding it with X-rays and recording the resulting data. The CT scanner uses all of this data to create a very detailed tomogram (slice) of the bag. The scanner is able to calculate the mass and density of individual objects in your bag based on this tomogram. If an object’s mass/density falls within the range of a dangerous material, the CT scanner warns the operator of a potential hazardous object.”
According to the same article, the scanners can also determine the density of items, a feature proponents claim helps the scanners detect, as one example, the unique molecular features of liquid or solid explosives.
Two big questions arise: does this actually move the line more quickly through security (as airports that have embraced the new tech claim)? And does it make us safer from nefarious terrorist plots?
On the first issue: although it is pleasurable to not have to take apart my carry-on bag, moving through security was still a laborious, tedious experience.
In a couple of instances — Dublin comes to mind — it took longer with the new scanners. From my perspective in line, it seemed like staff were spending much more time reviewing images of individual bags (rolling the images around in all directions) on a monitor, and a much larger number of bags (again, my impression) were diverted for hand checks.
OK, but do the scanners make us safer?
I will make the following observations based on my exposure to the new tech: given that previous security protocol provided little or no true security, it’s hard to see how the new scanners are making air travel any safer.
The world rushed to embrace the need to remove shoes/electronics/belts/toiletries after 9/11 and other incidents where terrorists tried to blow up or divert planes for nefarious purposes.
Some, like the shoes and liquids restrictions, were based on real terrorist plots where plastic explosives were concealed in the heels of a boot, and liquid explosives in soft-drink bottles.
But the fact plastic explosives can, depending on how they are concealed, evade even new age scanners, and explosives can be smuggled onto a plane in less dense forms such as a powder, make it still possible to get a bomb onto a plane.
There is also the human factor. Security officers must still identify “threat” items, and given the number of times my toiletries inadvertently remained inside my carry-on luggage when I went through security — and how it seemed nobody seemed to notice — I have my concerns about the ability of human eyes to detect threats. Even if the images are more accurate.
In many ways, it seems things haven’t really changed all that much. At least, that’s the impression left by Bruce Schneier, the privacy and security expert (and Harvard fellow) who first coined the term “security theatre” back in 2006 when bans and restrictions on liquids in carry-on luggage were first introduced.
Schneier has always said the true advances in security came in the form of things such as re-enforced, locked cockpit doors and more intensive passenger screening. Schneier does acknowledge the new CT scanners are much better at identifying worrisome objects. But his principal concern — that airport security is at best a “best-guess” exercise — remains intact.
“It’s not that the terrorist picks an attack and we pick a defense, and we see who wins,” Schneier said in a 2012 New York Times commentary. “It’s that we pick a defense, and then the terrorists look at our defense and pick an attack designed to get around it. Our security measures only work if we happen to guess the plot correctly. If we get it wrong, we’ve wasted our money. This isn’t security; it’s security theatre.”
Thus, even with the new scanners, it appears the theatre must go on.
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