Puff the magic

by David Holtzman

I just got back from a week-long sailing vacation and noticed a change in airport security. There are these little puffing machines at some of the bigger airports. They work like this--you walk in to airlocklooking thing and you get puffed. Presumably the air dislodges particulate matter that can then be analyzed for the presence of explosives.

Very interesting stuff. I made an excuse and went around again just to see it work. So this got me thinking about the future of public place security. It must be going passive, which probably makes sense other than the obvious security implications.

What might that mean? I have some ideas:

How about mandatory RFID-coded luggage tags to track luggage?
What about giving id tokens on lanyards at check-in and making everyone in the airport wear one at all times. You take the lanyard back at the gate. Then you can track people.
Between puffing of people and luggage and locational technology, we really don't need to worry about peoples' surnames quite so much, anymore.

It's better security to have stateless, passive sensors, than predictive programs like CAPPS II.

In general, hardware is more trustworthy than software in these situations.


Posted on March 21, 2006

3 Comments
Security

Imho, both hardware and software are as untrustworthy as each other and both can be used for nefarious purposes. Both are not mutually exclusive either. An RFID tag does not run without coded instructions nor does CAPPS II execute its instruction set on anything but hardware. How do we know the information being coded onto the RFID tags has not already gone through a CAPPS II type system, thereby blurring the line between passive and predictive? If we have to take the word of some grey suited governmental official, then Ill believe them after they have found the WMDs.

Posted by Paul J. Carroll on March 21, 2006

Fundamentally there's very little difference between software and firmware, but hardware gives me hope, because it's more about empirical, measurable attributes than it is about subjective silliness.

It's the profiling that scares me. It's too many levels removed from an understandable explanation.

Posted by David Holtzman on March 21, 2006

I totally agree, profiling runs the gamut from scary to extremely scary, depending on who is doing the profiling.

Posted by Paul J Carroll on March 21, 2006

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