Problems I can solve.
Jan. 3rd, 2011 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pktechgirlbackupHaving thoroughly depressed myself with my inability to fix poverty, I'd like to tackle something I know I can improve: airport security. And thus, I present you the TSA as run by Li:
My first choice is to simply abolish the TSA outright, and replace it with reinforced cockpit doors, aware passengers, and an official policy of just not caring that much if a plane gets hijacked. On a mathematical level, we care way too much about hijackings: Airplane hijackings could increase by an order of magnitude and flying would still be vastly safer than driving. We could save more quality-adjusted-life-years by taking funding from aircraft security and putting it into dental care for poor children. We just need to get people over the belief that dying in a plane is somehow worse.
But that's never going to happen, so here's my next choice: multiple private screeners at every airport. The TSA's role would be limited to testing the screeners to ensure their failure rate was within acceptable levels (right now we're apparently comfortable with 70%). Barrier to entry to starting your own screening company would be low. Passengers could choose among screeners based on things like line time, cost (I'd like to let passengers lock in their cost for screening at the time of purchase), theft rate, and employee attitude. Note that I said multiple screeners: privatization is not the magic bullet, competition is. I'm under no illusion that that this would lead to some sort of panacea of air travel. My best guess is we'd end up with the admiral's club offering screenings by appointment in luxurious rooms with non-invasive techniques executed by polite officers, and cattle cars running the masses through pornoscanners read by surly idiots. Still beats the current system.
But supposing I had to actually run the TSA to as a screening agency. First, we end this business with liquids and shoes. Prescription labels are not that hard to print, if we're not going to test every liquid that comes onto the plane, we might as well let them all on. Second, I'm bringing back the electronic bomb sniffers. I don't know why those never went into wider distribution, so it's possible there's a quality issue. But assuming that either there's not or we could design a better one, they're awesome. I don't care if they're expensive, pornoscanners are expensive and invasive and potentially dangerous and also don't work. We already know sniffers are better on two accounts. And we can leave the metal detectors up because clearly we're not in the hypothetical world where I've convinced everyone the solution to hijackings is more weapons, and metal detectors are a reasonable if obnoxious way to catch many weapons
Likewise, I'm sort of okay with the luggage x-rays. The bigger problem is that TSA agents are much better at spotting my half full water bottle than, say, a loaded large caliber hand gun, and the current screening process is asking to get my stuff stolen. For quality issues, I'd decree more rigorous screening processes and fire people who fell below the quality bar (much easier if screening is done by private companies, but we're not in that fantasy world). The problem with that is it will encourage false positives, leading to a lot of time lost to hand checks. I figure if can't at least make progress finding screeners with reasonable accuracy rates in, I dunno, two years, that means the x-ray machine is not the marvelous piece of technology we think it is and we should just give up. Possibly we could use a metal detector and have people pull out metal items for hand searches. Still won't catch ceramic knives, but you can get those through now as well.
Then there's the strictly logistical issues. The potential for theft is part of it, but the whole thing is just designed to hit people's stress buttons: you're carrying heavy shit, moving just frequently enough that it's a toss up between putting your stuff on the floor and slowly pushing it a long, or picking it up and moving the efficient way. You definitely can't read, and anything with headphones makes the TSA edgey. Children near you are probably crying. When you're finally getting screened, you have to unload all your stuff quickly, according to rules the TSA keeps making up. The agents are probably nice but if one is having a bad day, there are no consequences to taking it out on you. Unpacking your stuff is a pain, other people are yelling at you to hurry up, possibly they are cutting in line because you didn't push up your baskets fast enough, even though you were not lowering the utilization rate of any piece of equipment. The TSA expects your stuff to go through the machine independent of you: it will then be left out in the open, unsupervised, with the valuables helpfully placed in a separate bin. You will need to put your shoes and jacket back on and repack your laptop. If you engaged in aggressive packing practices, which the carry on practices encourage, this can take a while. Everyone is getting mad at you for taking so much time at the luggage depot, but if you just grab your stuff and repack it later, you're risking losing stuff and hurting your already aggravated shoulder.
My best solution to this is to bring the screeners to you. Picture N rooms containing all the equipment needed to do a screening. When you read the head of the line you go into a room, unpack all your stuff, and wait for an agent. The agent will then run your stuff through the machine, in front of you, and watch you go through the metal detector and sniffer. Your stuff stays with you at all times. Assuming you pass, the agent sets the room to let you into the terminal and locks the door to the back (so someone can't pass you something afterwords). You could have larger rooms for families.
Lastly, the no fly list. Our current list is awesome in that it prevents two year olds from getting the seat behind me but is too widely circulated to contain the names of actual terrorists. Also, there's no way to get off it, ever, because if a temporary measure was good for a month then it's good for a generation (that's a lie. it's good for more than a generation). But if we're going to have a list, then we need to close the loophole in which the verification that you are who you say you are is separate from the verification you're allowed to fly. ID, Ticket, and credit card should all be checked at the same time.
My first choice is to simply abolish the TSA outright, and replace it with reinforced cockpit doors, aware passengers, and an official policy of just not caring that much if a plane gets hijacked. On a mathematical level, we care way too much about hijackings: Airplane hijackings could increase by an order of magnitude and flying would still be vastly safer than driving. We could save more quality-adjusted-life-years by taking funding from aircraft security and putting it into dental care for poor children. We just need to get people over the belief that dying in a plane is somehow worse.
But that's never going to happen, so here's my next choice: multiple private screeners at every airport. The TSA's role would be limited to testing the screeners to ensure their failure rate was within acceptable levels (right now we're apparently comfortable with 70%). Barrier to entry to starting your own screening company would be low. Passengers could choose among screeners based on things like line time, cost (I'd like to let passengers lock in their cost for screening at the time of purchase), theft rate, and employee attitude. Note that I said multiple screeners: privatization is not the magic bullet, competition is. I'm under no illusion that that this would lead to some sort of panacea of air travel. My best guess is we'd end up with the admiral's club offering screenings by appointment in luxurious rooms with non-invasive techniques executed by polite officers, and cattle cars running the masses through pornoscanners read by surly idiots. Still beats the current system.
But supposing I had to actually run the TSA to as a screening agency. First, we end this business with liquids and shoes. Prescription labels are not that hard to print, if we're not going to test every liquid that comes onto the plane, we might as well let them all on. Second, I'm bringing back the electronic bomb sniffers. I don't know why those never went into wider distribution, so it's possible there's a quality issue. But assuming that either there's not or we could design a better one, they're awesome. I don't care if they're expensive, pornoscanners are expensive and invasive and potentially dangerous and also don't work. We already know sniffers are better on two accounts. And we can leave the metal detectors up because clearly we're not in the hypothetical world where I've convinced everyone the solution to hijackings is more weapons, and metal detectors are a reasonable if obnoxious way to catch many weapons
Likewise, I'm sort of okay with the luggage x-rays. The bigger problem is that TSA agents are much better at spotting my half full water bottle than, say, a loaded large caliber hand gun, and the current screening process is asking to get my stuff stolen. For quality issues, I'd decree more rigorous screening processes and fire people who fell below the quality bar (much easier if screening is done by private companies, but we're not in that fantasy world). The problem with that is it will encourage false positives, leading to a lot of time lost to hand checks. I figure if can't at least make progress finding screeners with reasonable accuracy rates in, I dunno, two years, that means the x-ray machine is not the marvelous piece of technology we think it is and we should just give up. Possibly we could use a metal detector and have people pull out metal items for hand searches. Still won't catch ceramic knives, but you can get those through now as well.
Then there's the strictly logistical issues. The potential for theft is part of it, but the whole thing is just designed to hit people's stress buttons: you're carrying heavy shit, moving just frequently enough that it's a toss up between putting your stuff on the floor and slowly pushing it a long, or picking it up and moving the efficient way. You definitely can't read, and anything with headphones makes the TSA edgey. Children near you are probably crying. When you're finally getting screened, you have to unload all your stuff quickly, according to rules the TSA keeps making up. The agents are probably nice but if one is having a bad day, there are no consequences to taking it out on you. Unpacking your stuff is a pain, other people are yelling at you to hurry up, possibly they are cutting in line because you didn't push up your baskets fast enough, even though you were not lowering the utilization rate of any piece of equipment. The TSA expects your stuff to go through the machine independent of you: it will then be left out in the open, unsupervised, with the valuables helpfully placed in a separate bin. You will need to put your shoes and jacket back on and repack your laptop. If you engaged in aggressive packing practices, which the carry on practices encourage, this can take a while. Everyone is getting mad at you for taking so much time at the luggage depot, but if you just grab your stuff and repack it later, you're risking losing stuff and hurting your already aggravated shoulder.
My best solution to this is to bring the screeners to you. Picture N rooms containing all the equipment needed to do a screening. When you read the head of the line you go into a room, unpack all your stuff, and wait for an agent. The agent will then run your stuff through the machine, in front of you, and watch you go through the metal detector and sniffer. Your stuff stays with you at all times. Assuming you pass, the agent sets the room to let you into the terminal and locks the door to the back (so someone can't pass you something afterwords). You could have larger rooms for families.
Lastly, the no fly list. Our current list is awesome in that it prevents two year olds from getting the seat behind me but is too widely circulated to contain the names of actual terrorists. Also, there's no way to get off it, ever, because if a temporary measure was good for a month then it's good for a generation (that's a lie. it's good for more than a generation). But if we're going to have a list, then we need to close the loophole in which the verification that you are who you say you are is separate from the verification you're allowed to fly. ID, Ticket, and credit card should all be checked at the same time.
