Monday, August 15, 2005
P2P Airport Security
My friend Mako told me about a joke he'd seen at the hacker conference What The Hack last week: "Do-It-Yourself Security Inspection". This is a joke about what Bruce Schneier calls "security theater": overt acts by institutions to assuage citizens' fears of terrorism that do nothing to actually make anyone safer (see e.g. NYC subway bag searches).
I thought it was pretty funny, and I fired back at Mako with a variation of my own: Peer-to-Peer Airport Security. My comment about it on Schenier's weblog sums up the idea:
I forgot to mention, of course, that it has other advantages shared by P2P systems: it's much faster and more efficient to have passengers search each other in parallel than to have one screener deal with each passenger serially; it's not susceptible to corruption or failure at a single point in the system; it's highly configurable and extensible by individuals (e.g. an individual passenger can choose to search based on his or her specific fears or hunches, thereby insuring against risks that the central screener might have overlooked); and the many-to-many nature of the searches builds redendancy into the system, threby compensating for individual failures.
I think I'm on to something here. Never wait in line at an airport again. Frisk that sexy citizen you've been exchanging glances with in the terminal. I'm going to propose this to the TSA just as soon as I patent it.
I thought it was pretty funny, and I fired back at Mako with a variation of my own: Peer-to-Peer Airport Security. My comment about it on Schenier's weblog sums up the idea:
Hearing about this last week from friends at What The Hack inspired me to come up with a similar approach that's only about 90% tongue-in-cheek: P2P Security, where passengers who feel suspicious about fellow travellers are encouraged to approach them and ask to pat them down, rifle through their luggage, etc. I'm still working out the protocols, but it could be great if we engineer it to avoid the racist lynch-mob behavior it might otherwise engender.
Picture it: little old white ladies from Kansas approaching swarthy young men wearing turbans and asking to search their bags would serve several functions:
1. It would reassure the little old ladies in question, as well as their fellow passengers who feel similarly about anyone with dark skin travelling on a plane.
2. It would create opportunities for cultural education and social intercourse between strangers. ("Why certainly you may frisk me, madam, but I should like to point out that I am a Sikh, and my irrational prejudice against Muslims is at least as strong as your own. We have something in common already!")
3. It would eliminate the government's liability for discriminatory profiling.
4. It would obligate the Chicken Littles and the racists to announce themselves and to take proactive steps to assuage their neuroses, instead of spending government resources pandering to them.
I forgot to mention, of course, that it has other advantages shared by P2P systems: it's much faster and more efficient to have passengers search each other in parallel than to have one screener deal with each passenger serially; it's not susceptible to corruption or failure at a single point in the system; it's highly configurable and extensible by individuals (e.g. an individual passenger can choose to search based on his or her specific fears or hunches, thereby insuring against risks that the central screener might have overlooked); and the many-to-many nature of the searches builds redendancy into the system, threby compensating for individual failures.
I think I'm on to something here. Never wait in line at an airport again. Frisk that sexy citizen you've been exchanging glances with in the terminal. I'm going to propose this to the TSA just as soon as I patent it.
