How To Fix The TSA

Bruce Schneier may be the TSA's fiercest critic

Bruce Schneier is a “well-known security gadfly” (in the words of Wired) and frequent hard-hitting critic of airport security who coined the term “security theater” to describe unnecessary measures imposed to improve the appearance of safety rather actually making us safer. One example of these theatrical measures is the TSA’s insistence that a “400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe.”

Schneier was supposed to testify on Monday before Congress at a TSA Oversight hearing, “Effective Security or Security Theater?” alongside representatives from the Transportation Security Administration, the Coast Guard, and the Government Accountability Office. He would have been the only non-governmental witness (though not the only critic; the GAO was there to lament the millions of dollars spent on now-useless “puffer machines” that were purchased for detecting explosives but fairly quickly discarded in favor of body scanners). He was booted from the witness list, though, per the request of the TSA, because of his involvement in a lawsuit against the agency to try to get them to suspend the use of body scanners.

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