As wild, unpredictable and insane as terrorism may seem to us, it is not random. Terrorists have a method they wait silently until they see a gap in our security, carefully analyze the gap and then exploit it.
So far, it has proven extremely difficult to disrupt this pattern. Various agencies work constantly to uncover terrorists before their plans can come to fruition and dozens of response measures exist to catch terrorists in the act putting rigorous constraints on terrorism's first and last stages. The middle stages of a terrorist plot, however, remain unaccounted for.
To mitigate this threat, the Transportation Security Administration can either redouble its current security measures or explore alternative techniques. To date, the TSA has focused almost exclusively on the former tightening security by increasing the number of machines, guards and rules regulating airline travel. These actions are based on the assumption that any threats that we see can be found simply by looking harder, with the underlying conjecture being that we will eventually "see" all threats. But here, we're deceiving ourselves; we can never get rid of all the blind spots. What we can do is hide them.
In the past, terrorists have been able to exploit blind spots in our security because they always knew exactly what we were looking for, and therefore what we weren't looking for. If our security systems didn't advertise their capabilities so much, however, terrorists would have a harder time knowing what we can and cannot detect. This would make it more difficult to plot an infiltration.
The above precautions could be implemented by adding a variation to the existing scanning procedures, thus making them even more difficult to predict. Airport security today is a hulking, obvious affair designed, "to make the jobs of terrorists a little more difficult and more importantly, to provide a sense of comfort for the rest of us" ("Paranoia in Check," Jan. 12). Modern security is algorithmic: check your bag, walk in, remove your shoes, screen your carry-on, pass through the metal detector. While the procedure is thorough, it's also fixed and, therefore, vulnerable.
Hiding the system's failures can greatly enhance security and is an important measure to take; however, a determined terrorist will eventually find the blind spots in the system. Supposing sufficient blind spots were discovered, it would then be possible for a terrorist to "choreograph" an attack exploiting some or all of security's various weaknesses. This situation is reminiscent of a thief attempting to pass undetected through a series of patrolled corridors if the thief knows the patrol patterns, he can chart a safe route through the corridors.
In the case of the corridors, a security company will simply shuffle the patrol patterns now and again, preventing the thief from predicting security openings. The same theory is applicable to airport security. By varying the order and methodology of our security, we could make it much more difficult for terrorists to plan their attacks.
For example, suppose a terrorist wishes to bring an incriminating metal object aboard a plane. By studying the airport's metal-detecting measures, he can devise, exploit and fool the system. However, if the airport has several different methods and checkpoints that it can use to detect metal a mobile checkpoint of officers with metal-detecting wands, for instance it will be much more difficult for the terrorist to formulate a plan of attack.
Of course, I do not recommend that we abandon our current security ideas or technology. What we have is very good, and has prevented more than a few terrorist assaults. Rather, I recommend that the current system be enhanced with a layer of obscurity and fluidity. These modifications would, of course, introduce their own problems. For example, variable procedures would decrease an airport's efficiency, and obviously if the schedule of procedures were leaked then the proposed "randomization" would be meaningless. However, current procedures aren't particularly efficient, and if the "randomization" were compromised then security would become no worse than it is now. The cons seem small; the pros could be enormous.
