Prof. Sheldon Jacobson Discusses Airline Passenger Screening

1/8/2010

Aviation security expert Prof. Sheldon Jacobson speaks about passenger profiling and air travel safety.

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As a result  of the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, the Obama administration announced that citizens of 14 “terrorism-prone” countries, along with those who fly through those countries, would be the targets of increased scrutiny by airport security.

Illinois computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson
Illinois computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson
Illinois computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson

Is racial profiling secure enough to allay civil liberty concerns, or would behavioral profiling be more effective and just? Sheldon H. Jacobson, a U. of I. computer science professor, is an expert on aviation security. He was interviewed by News Bureau news editor Phil Ciciora.

Should profiling be used to screen passengers at airports?
While the terrorists remain the same, their tactics are always changing to adjust to our countermeasures. What we need to ask is, under what circumstances should each type of profiling be used?

All types of profiling have their positives and negatives. Profiling is all about collecting and synthesizing information. By asking questions and collecting data, 60 to 70 percent of all passengers could be deemed to have a negligible security risk. It’s the remaining 30 to 40 percent of passengers who require the greatest scrutiny and attention from airport security who pose the greatest risk.

Can we afford “business as usual” in aviation security?
What we need is a reallocation of security resources, not more of them.

Ironically, more screening can result in less security when it directs attention and resources to the 60 to 70 percent of people who are not a security threat. That, in turn, diverts attention and resources away from the people who are a legitimate threat.

For every non-threatening passenger, there is a minimal disruption to an airport’s security infrastructure. However, when that effect is multiplied over all the passengers who fly on a given day, the cumulative effect over time becomes overwhelming, resulting in the system we have today.

By lavishing billions of dollars on screening the wrong passengers, we’re not spending those dollars on the right passengers. Since it takes only one successful act of terrorism for the system to fail, we cannot afford to allocate our finite amounts of time, money and technology in the service of a failed strategy. By focusing on disrupting the terrorists’ tactics rather than stopping the terrorists themselves, the aviation security system will never achieve a sufficient level of security. We simply can’t afford the status quo.

Read the rest of the interview to hear Jacobson's suggested solutions to the problems of airline safety and passenger profiling.


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This story was published January 8, 2010.