Security Theatre

Abstract

This chapter investigates the Kafkaesque procedures involved in data-driven airport security. It considers the experience of a passenger who keeps being selected for a special security check. While waiting in line for the security check, he has a conversation with another passenger who had been suffering the same drama for four years. The passenger recounts how he has been trying to find a way to get off the list, but the Transportation Security Administration officers do not seem to know why a passenger is on it. Moreover, there is no process to get off it. A man told the passenger once that not even the people that programmed the system know why a person is selected; they do not know what the critical data points are because the system self-learns.