I've ranted on numerous occasions about ineffiecient, ineffective, and inept airport security. I'll spare y'all the rehashing of the arguments. Suffice it to say that, outside of being demeaning, invasive, insulting, and insenstive, the system is about as effective as Bud Selig.
I always find it refreshing when I find another opinion that mirrors my own on this subject. In this case, Technology Review's Richard A. Muller offers his opinions on how to make our airports terror proof. He has some very sensible observations, and it wouldn't tax the current system to implement them.
When they confiscated your nail file at the airport, did you feel more secure? Perhaps, if it happened in the month following September 11. At least somebody was doing something, you thought, even if you couldn’t figure out how a nail file could be used to a hijack an airplane.
Your instincts were right. The confiscation accomplished nothing. After September 11, no plane could be hijacked with a nail file, a pocket knife, a gun, or even a bomb. A terrorist could kill passengers, or blow up the airplane, but he couldn’t hijack it. The passengers and crew wouldn’t let him, and he knows it. He might as well do his killing at the mall.
So does the bothersome airport security really make any sense? Why protect an airplane more carefully than a public library? Are the delays just an annoyance that accomplishes nothing?
Not all of them; some security measures truly are worthwhile. But my choices for the most important may surprise you. They are:
*Checking passengers’ shoes
*Requiring all checked luggage match passengers on the plane
*“Random” checks of passengers at the gateWhy did I chose these as worthwhile? I begin by asking what kind of attack is al Qaeda still capable of executing that could have the impact of September 11. My answer: a dozen planes destroyed over the United States in one hour, from explosives carried onboard or hidden in checked luggage. The deaths and the horror would rival the World Trade Center disaster....
So why search little old ladies at the gate? There are two reasons. The first is to make sure the front line of defense, the x-ray and metal detectors and sniffers at the entrance, are doing what they are supposed to be doing. The random checks will, in time, serve as checks on the efficiency of the checkers in finding illegal materials. The second reason is to overcome the public mania about ethnic profiling. On every flight I have taken in the last eleven months, whenever there was someone in line who even vaguely matched the prejudicial profile of a potential terrorist (e.g. young, dark, perhaps Arab), that person was diverted for a “random” check. Perhaps searching the little old ladies provides cover that minimizes public outrage over profiling.
Hey, I'm not disputing the need for increased security. All I'm saying is that if we're going to increase security, let's at least make it effective security.
(Thanks to Nothing But The Truth.)
