Here’s a report from a day spent in Washington, D.C. earlier this week.
Washington can be one of the best places in the U.S. to enjoy the positive results of human cooperation. There is no better example than the crochet coral reef exhibit currently at the National Museum of Natural History. Each reef is made by dozens of volunteers. See it before April 24, 2011.
If you can’t afford a trip to France, Austria, and Sweden (or indeed, at current exchange rates, a Diet Coke in any of those countries), see the paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo at the National Gallery of Art through January 9, 2011 (photo1; photo2). The downloadable brochure has all of the paintings (some high res versions on Wikipedia), which include a very modern-looking “Librarian” and late works such as Vertumnus (brochure cover; completed when the artist was 64 or 65 years old). The online video is also worth watching.
The mood in the imperial city is ebullient. Never have the bureaucrats had so much money to spend and never have they been able to control so many aspects of American life. The opportunities for reforming the chaotic and incompetent achievements of hayseeds in the taxpaying states are literally giddying. I pointed out that running $1.4 trillion deficits (White House forecast) might not be sustainable. The response from Obama-supporters (and nearly everyone I met in D.C. supports the ruler) was that “Bush also had deficits”. I’m not quite sure why this is a reassuring response. The Congressional Budget Office’s chart shows that the 2009 and 2010 deficits take us into uncharted territory (the 2005 deficit, for example, was about $320 billion). Even if we decide that $1.4 trillion is approximately equal to $320 billion, I’m still not sure why that should make us sanguine about deficit spending. The Bush deficits did not result in sustained economic prosperity. Also, the Bush debts were incurred at a time when the average estimate of America’s future prosperity was higher. A college student borrowing money in expectation of having a higher salary at age 35 is smart; a 55-year-old borrowing money in expectation of paying it back during his retirement is crazy.
Activity at Logan and Reagan National airports was a bit more brisk than I remember, so perhaps the economy is picking up. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that our system can handle an increased number of passengers. I flew mid-day on Monday and mid-day on Wednesday, which is traditionally one of the slowest days of the week and at the slowest time. Despite dozens of TSA’s 56,000 finest on duty at each checkpoint, the security lines required 15 or 20 minutes to clear and extended beyond the ropes (see Droid 2 phone photo below).
I’m wondering if the TSA’s new technology is slowing things down. I observed three TSA officers using a fancy backscatter X-ray machine to expose a terrorist disguised as an 80-year-old native-born grandmother whose replacement hip had set off the metal detector. They were also assiduously going through the luggage of terrorists disguised as middle-aged business travelers with 20 years of frequent flyer mileage history. After swabbing a packed suit in a roll-on case with a piece of fabric, they would wait for an explosives residue test to run. Advice: show up three hours early if you’re flying around Thanksgiving or Christmas.
My ground transportation experience in D.C. was in a rented 2011 Toyota Sienna minivan. The $30,000 machine was brand new with 368 miles on the odometer. How smart is a $30,000 brand-new U.S.-made automobile with a massive battery and at least a dozen microprocessors? The car did not know where it was (no GPS chip, though it had an LCD screen for the backup camera). The car did not know where the traffic jams were and hence could not offer routing advice to save time and fuel. The car did not know where it was relative to nearby cars and hence could not warn of an impending accident. The car did not know if it had been stolen and had no way to communicate with its owner if separated by more than the range of the keychain. The car did not know where nearby hotels and restaurants were (you’d think car makers would have put in a hotel and restaurant booking system if only to collect commissions). The car did not know if it was dark or light outside or if it was past sunset. The car did not know the speed limit of the road on which one was driving. The car did not have a way of identifying itself to a municipality or private business for automated toll or parking fee collection (instead the city of Washington, D.C. had recently gone on a spending spree to install inconvenient “pay to park” terminals all over the place; one parks, walks to the machine, inserts a credit card, waits, takes a printed piece of paper (i.e., some government worker or contractor is paid to replace the paper roll periodically), walks back to the car, reopens the car, places the paper on the dashboard, locks the car, and walks away (and then has to remember to go back to the car at an appointed time).
Perhaps the young people of Washington, D.C. will grow up and work to remove some of these inefficiencies from our economy? The D.C. public schools are statistically the nation’s worst and Michelle Rhee, the chancellor who had started to make a few changes, just got the axe.
I just got back from southeast Asia and was happy to find that I didn’t have to take off my shoes once in a security line. This was across eight flights and three countries, both international and domestic flights. One airport allowed (gasp!) a bottle of water to cross the security threshhold.
On the other hand, every hotel I stayed at in Indonesia had guards posted with mirrors on sticks (large versions of dental mirrors) to check the underside of every visiting car before allowing it to approach the hotel.
More on my Asia trip at http://goodexperience.com/2010/10/lessons-from-a-trip-t.php
Thanks, Mark, for your report. I had a similar experience visiting Hong Kong in 2001. I expected it to be somewhat shabbier than Boston and was shocked to see that they had far better infrastructure than any U.S. city.
Regarding security specifically… I remember in Hokkaido in 2003 they really didn’t have any security at all for a domestic flight down to Tokyo. I can understand why we need more security than the Japanese (a society with very few members who wish to destroy the rest of their society), but it is a shame that it costs us so much. I keep thinking it would be great to have a book of photos of Americans waiting in line for various forms of security juxtaposed with photos of people in China working.
Why bake all those location-sensitive features in your car when TomTom for the iPhone can do all of ’em? (Presumably there’s something comparable for Android …) The real-time routing around traffic jams thing is unbelievably great. Dunno how I ever managed without it!
Maybe auto manufacturers should instead focus on better integration with platforms like Android and iPhone? Large touchscreen remote display on your dash would be nice (but perhaps dangerous when drivers compose emails at 90MPH)
Hey, at least you get to use a credit card in those pay to park machines. In much of the rest of the world you need to make sure you have enough change in coins to pay for it!
boozedog: Android has Google Maps navigation at no additional charge and turn-by-turn directions. Agreed that computers shouldn’t be “baked into” a car whose mechanical parts could last 15 or 20 years. On the other hand, the car itself has the big battery, the opportunity to put antennae in the right places, the potential for big screens positioned appropriately for driver and anyone assisting the driver. The car has access to its wheel-based speed sensors for dead-reckoning in tunnels and other situations where the GPS constellation is not visible. The car has the microphone and speakers. So you’d almost surely want a big standardized connector between car and computer so that it was easy to plug in a new computer every four or five years.
Phil – sorry for the long comment, but I thought you might enjoy this anecdote.
My family took my 85 year old grandfather to DC over Memorial Day weekend this year, on his birthday, to see the sites and specifically the WWII memorial. He had been to DC a few times but not since the WWII memorial was built, and he wanted to see it “before I die”. We bought him a hat that said WWII Veteran on it and it was very touching to be in DC at that time and see how many strangers came up to him to say thank you and shake his hand. One older woman even stopped and sang Happy Birthday to him. It was very humbling. It was a great to see my teenage daughters pushing him around in the wheelchair and helping him out when he couldn’t see or hear something. He is sharp as a tack mentally but doesn’t get around very well, doesn’t hear very well, and can’t see very well.
The airport experience with him was something to behold. On the way home I was pushing him through security in his wheelchair. They instantly grab him from me and whisk him off to the special area for the full pat down and inspection. Do they wait for me to get through the normal line to go assist? Noooooo. They prop him up, no wheelchair, no red tipped cane or anything, and start barking instructions at him. He can’t see very well so he isn’t even really sure who is near him and what is going on. He has had two knee replacements so he is setting off every piece of equipment they have. He can’t hear very well (as evidenced by his gigantic hearing aids) so he is somewhat confused by their instructions and asks questions, which they interpret as him being uncooperative and somewhat belligerent. They do not respond very well to uncooperative and belligerent and started getting more forceful and stern. He is very wobbly when he is standing (hence the cane and the wheelchair for those that could have been paying attention), especially without his shoes on, and he starts to panic as they almost knock him over trying to remove his fabric belt for scanning. By this time I am finally over there, finally have my luggage (which you can’t just leave remember or it will be confiscated), but don’t even have my shoes on yet, and try to help. I was finally able to go in to the corral to help and they started explaining how difficult he was being and how his behavior was questionable. I didn’t even know what to say at that point, and if I said anything I was thinking I would have surely been locked up for the afternoon or longer.
So let us recap. My 5’1″ tall, maybe 130 pound, 85 year old wheelchair bound hearing challenged legally blind WWII veteran grandfather who was travelling with four generations of family on the same flight was stood up, spun around, patted down, scanned, poked, prodded, made to remove his shoes, hollered at, almost knocked over, and treated as being somewhat belligerent on Memorial Day weekend. Apparently he fit the profile (hate to use that word) of a threat to US security.
If I take a step back and am more objective, I may concede that it is not unreasonable to check everyone. Maybe the population of terrorists follows a uniform probability distribution across the entire population and my grandfather has an equal likelihood of being an evildoer as anyone else. A wheelchair does provide a place to stash some questionable material, and maybe his belt, cane, and Velcro sneakers needed to be scanned for residue. And maybe the WWII veteran hat that he was wearing was a clever decoy. Fine – scan, poke, and prod away in the name of keeping all families safe. But use some damn common sense when you do.
What exactly is wrong with security profiling at airports that people, such as M, feel so squeamish about using the term?
In December 2001, I flew with my then 3 year old son to visit my parents for Christmas. At the boarding gate (this was in the wake of 9/11) his ticket number was randomly selected for a thorough search behind a screen. They were taking my 3-year-old for the full pat down! Worse yet, the security crew (I don’t think it was formally TSA yet) initially refused to let me accompany him behind the screen. I told them that after the search I would be asking my son whether at any time he felt “inappropriately” touched and reporting any positive answers to the police. Security relented and permitted me to accompany him on the condition that I submit to a search as well.
Flash forward to August 2010. My now 12 year old son’s ticket number is again randomly selected for a thorough search at the security portal. The TSA personnel are apologetic, but they have no choice but to obey the computer’s random number generator. This time at least the search is in open view so I can witness it. Meanwhile, because the search area is occupied with my son, a dozen or so adults go through security unmolested. As we are collecting our luggage and I am trying, without success, to explain to my son the logic of the situation, we both look back at the search area. They are busy wanding a girl who can’t be more than 10 years old.
This random search thing is a complete and obvious waste of time and resources that does nothing to enhance actual security. Why is TSA spending effort searching children and the elderly? All it does is allow TSA to say that it is not “discriminating” or “profiling.” Well, my question is why the hell is TSA NOT profiling?
I fly frequently on business as a lone adult or with a small clique of co-workers of roughly similar age and varying ethnicities. In those situations I would fully understand and have no objection to being pulled for a thorough search, since in some broad statistical sense I would fit the profile. Curiously, that has never happened to me, perhaps because the TSA folks are just too busy searching kids and grandparents.
M: the problem is that in this case, your common sense is wrong. By establishing profiles that are “safe” you create incentives for terrorists to use people who fit those profiles. A real-world example where terrorists have exploited profiling to successfully carry out attacks would be the so-called “Black Widow Bombers” of Chechnya. Wikipedia has an entire page devoted to Female Suicide Bombers – from that page: “Some militant organizations have used women to carry out suicide bombings because they draw less suspicion than men and go through less rigorous security checks.”
Google “carnival booth algorithm” (the first link should be to the MIT paper) to see in academic detail how profile screening can be exploited. Conversely, there’s no way to game a random search – by definition it’s random. It seems weird, but it’s based in solid security theory.
However, there’s no excuse for unprofessional behavior once someone has been selected. There’s no need to knock anyone over or yell – that’s just a result of TSA hiring relatively weak candidates and then training them poorly. This results in an essentially ineffective security system.
Personally, I believe that if we’re serious about airline security, we should do what El Al does, which is the most traumatic and effective security screen I have ever seen. The problem is that it is horrifically expensive and very time-consuming at the scale the US would need – think hundreds of billions per year in direct costs and way more in lost productivity. As a society, we have decided that the cost of real security isn’t worth it. So, we spend what we’re willing to spend (about $50B per year) and we get what we pay for (security theater that doesn’t really keep us all that safe).
I think we should just make everyone fly nude. That way everyone will have in incentive to stay fit and there will be no issue of carrying contraband aboard.
The nude flying should decrease the crowds at the airports, or replace the current crowds with a different demographic.
Jah-
Your argument makes perfect sense. Create a known loophole and it will be exploited. I don’t disagree. My comment about using common sense was referring to pulling an old man with very obvious handicaps aside, alone, away from the able bodied person (me, his grandson, in this case) that is assisting him. And then proceed to pull his shoes off, take his cane, prop him up out of his wheelchair, make him stand up alone as best he can, disorient him, confuse him with instructions he can’t really hear, make him off balance from all the poking, and then determine that his behavior is questionable and he is being difficult when he acts like a panicked almost deaf almost blind handicapped old man who is being pushed around. It would have made much more sense to just have me join him since I was pushing his wheelchair anyway, give me the full security treatment as well, and let me help communicate with him, assist him, and make the process go smoother. Instead I pushed him over to the special corral area where they took over and gave him the full treatment while I was sent back and stood in the regular line to walk through a simple metal detector while my shoes and suitcase full of dirty socks and underwear were X-rayed. Common sense should dictate that this is maybe not the best approach for handling handicapped old people.
I sometimes wonder if he had fallen what kind of liability there would be for the airport. Not that I am a litigious person by nature, but it seems like they are opening themselves up to a lot of unnecessary liability.
These TSA nazis are costing the US billions in lost foreign tourist revenues; in my particular case I live in Argentina and I avoid travelling to the US because of these TSA nazis ; there are so many other countries to visit without being harassed by some unschooled minimum wage security bureaucrat. So just from me personally this year these TSA nazis cost the US about U$ 4000 in potential business this year alone.
In Australia we too are protected by vast armies of bumbling rent-a-cops that serve no conceivable purpose.
Their primary mission (as far as I can tell) is to prevent terrorists disguised as MacBook Pros or deodorant cans from boarding an aircraft.
Occasionally they take a break from this to do the full explosives test on a Qantas A380 pilot.
As if he might have something in his pocket that could do more damage than than the 500,000kg airliner in his control or the 300,000 litres of fuel it carries.
Watching these security guards invest 100% of their energy in completely pointless goals (at the expense of actually trying to identify and stop actual bad guys) makes me wonder what hope any government agency ever has of achieving anything more than justifying its own existence.