Loss of Privacy

Bruce Schneier and The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg had some fun passing through airport security recently.  Done in fun, they could have gotten arrested for some of the things they had done, however, they were proving a point.  Security theater is alive and well at your local airport.

As we stood at an airport Starbucks, Schnei­er spread before me a batch of fabricated boarding passes for Northwest Airlines flight 1714, scheduled to depart at 2:20 p.m. and arrive at Reagan National at 5:47 p.m. He had taken the liberty of upgrading us to first class, and had even granted me “Platinum/Elite Plus” status, which was gracious of him. This status would allow us to skip the ranks of hoi-polloi flyers and join the expedited line, which is my preference, because those knotty, teeming security lines are the most dangerous places in airports: terrorists could paralyze U.S. aviation merely by detonating a bomb at any security checkpoint, all of which are, of course, entirely unsecured. (I once asked Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, about this. “We actually ultimately do have a vision of trying to move the security checkpoint away from the gate, deeper into the airport itself, but there’s always going to be some place that people congregate. So if you’re asking me, is there any way to protect against a person taking a bomb into a crowded location and blowing it up, the answer is no.”)

Schnei­er and I walked to the security checkpoint. “Counter­terrorism in the airport is a show designed to make people feel better,” he said. “Only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers.” This assumes, of course, that al-Qaeda will target airplanes for hijacking, or target aviation at all. “We defend against what the terrorists did last week,” Schnei­er said. He believes that the country would be just as safe as it is today if airport security were rolled back to pre-9/11 levels. “Spend the rest of your money on intelligence, investigations, and emergency response.”

Schnei­er and I joined the line with our ersatz boarding passes. “Technically we could get arrested for this,” he said, but we judged the risk to be acceptable. We handed our boarding passes and IDs to the security officer, who inspected our driver’s licenses through a loupe, one of those magnifying-glass devices jewelers use for minute examinations of fine detail. This was the moment of maximum peril, not because the boarding passes were flawed, but because the TSA now trains its officers in the science of behavior detection. The SPOT program—“Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques”—was based in part on the work of a psychologist who believes that involuntary facial-muscle movements, including the most fleeting “micro-expressions,” can betray lying or criminality. The training program for behavior-detection officers is one week long. Our facial muscles did not cooperate with the SPOT program, apparently, because the officer chicken-scratched onto our boarding passes what might have been his signature, or the number 4, or the letter y. We took our shoes off and placed our laptops in bins. Schnei­er took from his bag a 12-ounce container labeled “saline solution.”

“It’s allowed,” he said. Medical supplies, such as saline solution for contact-lens cleaning, don’t fall under the TSA’s three-ounce rule.

“What’s allowed?” I asked. “Saline solution, or bottles labeled saline solution?”

“Bottles labeled saline solution. They won’t check what’s in it, trust me.”

They did not check. As we gathered our belongings, Schnei­er held up the bottle and said to the nearest security officer, “This is okay, right?” “Yep,” the officer said. “Just have to put it in the tray.”

Later, Schnei­er would carry two bottles labeled saline solution—24 ounces in total—through security. An officer asked him why he needed two bottles. “Two eyes,” he said. He was allowed to keep the bottles.

Gotta love the security theater.  Illusions of government workers who appear to be actually working.  Remember, the TSA doesn’t even keep track of security passes that belong to former employees.

EDIT:  Kip Hawley, head of the TSA, responded to Bruce Schneier.  You can read it at Bruce’s blog.

Under the guise of anti-terrorism efforts, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith hints that the government should have access to sites such as reddit, digg, facebook, YouTube, eBay, and any other site that offers free accounts.

The plans to create a large database of emails and phone calls were controversial enough, but the new plan is to make any website offering free accounts fair game for the relevant authorities.

Smith says in a speech that websites that offers a free account “are a potential hotbed for terrorist activity”, as the activity on them is not tracked.

She wants the relevant authorities to be able to track potential terrorists’ actions, although only names and locations would be logged, not the content of the message.

So while there isn’t going to be a huge database where all your digital communications live, you might want to think twice about putting up an image of Osama Bin Laden as your profile picture for comedy effect.

So, these sites are hotbeds for terrorists?  I’m sure the terrorists on facebook make sure to post what they’re doing before going out and blowing up a building.

It’s equally stupid to keep a log of people’s names and locations, but not the content of the message.  That is, unless the government just wants you in a database with no record of what you did so that you cannot mount a defense against the government.

You also might want to put up as many photos of Osama bin Laden as you can, along with photos of the prophet Mohammed.  Flood the databases as much as you can.

If you want to prevent the creation of such a database, you need to lodge your protest now.

Every now and then, I’m reminded of just how historic an election it is this year.  I am not black, nor do I ever pretend to remotely know or understand what they have been through.  This story, however, brought a tear to my eye.  I voted for Obama yesterday, yet I didn’t have any kind of experience like this, and I probably never will.

I squeaked in just before the 7pm deadline to find two very frustrated poll workers and a line of a couple dozen people, due to problems with the computerized voting system not accepting people’s driver’s licenses. It was taking about 7-10 minutes per person just to get the computer to accept them as valid and to print out their ballot, causing very long delays.

For me the most moving moment came when the family in front of me, comprising probably 4 generations of voters (including an 18 year old girl voting for her first time and a 90-something hunched-over grandmother), got their turn to vote. When the old woman left the voting booth she made it about halfway to the door before collapsing in a nearby chair, where she began weeping uncontrollably. When we rushed over to help we realized that she wasn’t in trouble at all but she had not truly believed, until she left the booth, that she would ever live long enough to cast a vote for an African-American for president. Anyone who doesn’t think that African-American turnout will absolutely SHATTER every existing record is in for a very rude surprise.

There were about 20 people in front of me but remarkably not a single person left the room without voting over the 2 hours it took to get through the line.

There are still people in this country who want to steal this election.  There’s still a lot of racist bastards and ignorant people out there too, but this folks, this is what makes you proud to be an American.

The Daily Show wants to know. Watch the video to see if you’re a real American or not!

When Australians first heard of the new filters in 2007, they thought it would only be to protect the children.  Then, they found out that they would be subjected to the net filters, and there’s no opt out.  Despite public outcry, testing began in Tasmania and, soon, all ISPs will be forced to use the official government blacklist.

Australians may not be able to opt out of the government’s Internet filtering initiative like they were originally led to believe. Details have begun to come out about Australia’s Cyber-Safety Plan, which aims to block “illegal” content from being accessed within the country, as well as pornographic material inappropriate for children. Right now, the system is in the testing stages, but network engineers are now saying that there’s no way to opt out entirely from content filtering.

Internode network engineer Mark Newton told Computerworld that users are able to opt out of the “additional material” blacklist—which targets content inappropriate for children—but not the main blacklist that filters what the Australian government determines is illegal content.

This appears to be very similar to the great firewall of China.  If things like this keep happening, the Internet will, effectively, be much like it was in the past.  The Internet will become a series of computers connected to a few “legal” sites only within your own country.

Ben Hoskings has a brilliant open letter to Senator the Hon Stephen Conroy, Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy.  You should read it, use it, and send Mr. Conroy a letter yourself.