Bruce Schneier wrote recently about airport security after a screener seized a 6-oz jar of past sauce from his luggage: “the official confiscated it, because allowing it on the airplane with me would have been too dangerous. And to demonstrate how dangerous he really thought that jar was, he blithely tossed it in a nearby bin of similar liquid bottles and sent me on my way.” He goes on to discuss “the two classes of contraband at airport security checkpoints: the class that will get you in trouble if you try to bring it on an airplane, and the class that will cheerily be taken away from you if you try to bring it on an airplane.” Airport security need not catch all of the former as long as the risk and consequences of detection are enough to deter one from attempting to bring them aboard. That’s not true of the latter type of contraband: “[b]ecause there are no consequences to trying and failing, the screeners have to be 100 percent effective. Even if they slip up one in a hundred times, the plot can succeed.” He concludes that airport security should choose: “[i]f something is dangerous, treat it as dangerous and treat anyone who tries to bring it on as potentially dangerous. If it’s not dangerous, then stop trying to keep it off airplanes.”
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Here’s a companion piece to the Schneier article from The Atlantic: The Things He Carried