Bruce Schneier Grills TSA Head Kip Hawley

If you've ever bemoaned having to walk around a filthy airport in your stocking feet, wondered why baby food is considered dangerous contraband, or seethed as your toddler was subjected to a pat-down for firearms, you're gonna love this link. Bruce Schneier, one of the overall most useful people on the web, interviewed Hawley via email over May and June this summer. How he got Hawley to agree with this I'll never know, but I think it has something to do with an attempt to improve TSA's tarnished image. (Whether that was successful due to this interview is up for you to determine.)

The why is irrelevant, I guess. The good news is he really did answer some serious questions about airplane and airport security, which bloggers like Schneier and myself have been raising for years. Schneier has been posting the interview in bits and pieces over the last few weeks. Finally the whole shebang is up. If you travel via plane at all, I highly recommend you read the entire thing. It's truly insightful, and while Schneier didn't convince him that shoes are not the threat the TSA might think they are, it will truly open your eyes as to what the TSA sees as its role in protecting travelers and how TSA's version of security works (deluded or not), plus it offers some insight into how difficult TSA's job actually is. (And Hawley even tells jokes!)

Some of my favorite quotes from Hawley, in context:

On the three-ounce container rule: I often read blog posts about how someone could just take all their three-ounce bottles—or take bottles from others on the plane—and combine them into a larger container to make a bomb. I can't get into the specifics, but our explosives research shows this is not a viable option.

On all those failed tests where people accidentally get knives on planes: Older scores you may have seen may be "feel good" numbers based on old, easy tests. Don't go for the sound-bite; today's TSOs are light-years ahead of even where they were two years ago.

On shoes: I don't like it either, but this is not just something leftover from 2002. It is a real, current concern. We're looking at shoe scanners and ways of using millimeter wave and/or backscatter to get there, but until the technology catches up to the risk, the shoes have to go in the bin.... We screen for shoe bombs and liquids, because it would be stupid not to directly address attack methods that we believe to be active.

On people being manhandled and mistreated at checkpoints (and being afraid to complain about it for fear of reprisal): We need some help on this one. This is the biggest public pain point, dwarfing shoes and baggies.

On catching criminals when they aren't at security screening: Our Behavior Detection teams routinely—and quietly—identify problem people just through observable behavior cues. More than 150 people have been identified by our teams, turned over to law enforcement, and subsequently arrested.

On why airports, not shopping malls, buses, and trains, get all the attention: The reason we have the focus we do on aviation is because of the effect the airline system has on our country, both economically and psychologically.

Fun stuff! Please, please, please read the entire interview by clicking here