Posted on 08/12/2006 11:02:43 AM PDT by GMMAC
Flying blind:
Airport screeners treat everyone the same. They shouldn't
David Frum
National Post
Saturday, August 12, 2006
So now we're to ban lipsticks and hand sanitizers from airplanes? The success of British security services in stopping a terrorist plot has unleashed all the most perverse and unavailing instincts of transportation safety authorities.
They already banned nail scissors after 9/11. They require passengers to remove shoes in perpetual remembrance of Richard Reid's attempt to smuggle explosives on to a plane in his trainers. Now once again they will impose a massively costly new rule on all passengers in order to protect them from the violence of a few.
And make no mistake: If made permanent and universal, the rule will be massively costly. Four billion people travel by air every year. Four billion people go through passenger screening. If we conservatively assume that the average air passenger's time is worth $50 an hour, then every minute we add to the screening process costs passengers $3.35-billion per year. Ten extra minutes is $33.5-billion. Twenty minutes: $67-billion. The fact that the costs fall directly on the passenger rather than upon the industry or the public treasury does not make them any less real.
Compare, please, how we do airline security to the way in which the British authorities do real security. Did they kick open the door of every house in London to search for terrorists? Obviously not. Did they wiretap every British home, send agents into every church, synagogue, Christian Science reading room, and Quaker meeting house in the land? Again, no. They focused enforcement resources where they were most likely to get results, identified a threat -- and pounced.
It's possible to do something similar to protect airline safety. It's possible, for example, to take four or five basic pieces of information about somebody (such as name, address, phone number, date of birth) and match them against the commercial databases used by mortgage companies and credit card issuers to arrive at a surprisingly sophisticated terrorist risk profile of each passenger.
If, for example, you are a 38-year-old-woman, married and the mother of three, who has lived at the same address for nine years, has travelled to Barbados with her three children at Christmas for the past three years and is about to go again: Well, you present a fairly low risk. Airline security might still ask you to walk through a metal detector just to be on the safe side, but it should not waste too much time on you beyond that.
Another approach: Perhaps if you fly often from New York to London, you might be willing to volunteer a whole mass of information to British Airways in return for a "trusted traveller" card that will allow you to walk on the plane with minimal fuss. Your name might be Omar Abdullah, but if they know that you are 57 years old, director of the Middle East collection at the Metropolitan Museum, own an apartment in Manhattan and a brokerage account at Merrill Lynch, carry a Visa card with a $50,000 limit, fly to London six times a year with tickets paid for by the museum, and so on and so on ... well, they can pretty confidently let you on the plane with minimal formalities.
Please notice that neither program -- neither risk profiling nor trusted traveller -- would make any use of information about ethnicity or religion. They would not in any sense of the term be "racial profiling." Please note as well that both would use only information that the individual himself had voluntarily provided either directly to the airline or to other commercial entities -- no government coercion would be involved.
Yet both these approaches have been effectively banned in the United States; the first by the U.S. Congress, the second by informal pressures placed upon the airlines by the Transportation Safety Agency.
Why? Congress and the TSA have surrendered to pressure from advocacy groups who fear that if we concentrate enforcement resources where they will do the most good, we will end up concentrating them upon unattached young Muslim men. Very few Muslims are Islamic terrorists, but all Islamic terrorists are Muslim. Our prescreening process may be ethnically neutral, but the results will not be.
But isn't that precisely the way security is supposed to work?
The British police are excruciatingly fair-minded: At their press conference this week, they stressed that the suspects are "British Asians," strenuously avoiding mention of the words "Muslim" or "Islamic." Yet even they manage somehow to reconcile themselves to dealing with terrorism by narrowing their attention to the most likely potential terrorists. Why can't aviation security do likewise?
You will have plenty of time to ponder that question as you stand in the long, long, long lines that will stretch all through this travelling summer.
dfrum@aei.org
© National Post 2006
Huuhh????? What experts?
I just said that it is dangerous to assume that a position taken by a feral gubmint bureaucrat is a position that would be taken by an "expert." It is safer to assume that the opinion of a genuine expert was neither asked for, nor was it wanted when the opinion was offered up, was ignored when it was provided. You have no idea how effective incompetent bureaucrats are at suppressing good adivce.
Easy on the hyperbole, there.
Your odds of getting blown up in a plane are smaller than miniscule. Your odds of having to go through the indignity of taking off your shoes before you get on a flight is 100%.
Perhaps you think this too is a minor inconvenience....but it's the principle....goes back to that 'live free or die' sentiment, and in this case your odds of dying aren't large at all.
Every time I have to go through it pisses me off to no end, partly because its absurd to begin with, and partly because it's due to some isolated Islamist whack job with his failed effort resonating into the future and the lives of everyone with the assistance of our own wussified government policies.
That said, it irks me no end to be treated like a criminal at the ballpark, the library, the airport, etc.
Its also not just about my sorry ass on that plane.
ANY aircraft lost will have massive ripple effects across the globe and our country. We cant let even one attempt be sucessful again.
Try life in Israel at the airport.
We got it easy.
Wow! That's really sad. The good news is, they'll let you keep your Calagen, Botox and five litres of embalming fluid.
That goes to the heart of my point - I don't think it has to be that way. We needn't get all in a tizzy, and then tiptoe around and alter our every action to bend to the actions of some whackjob Islamists. Such a reaction amplifies the limited power they have, and it's dismaying to see that our government would rather contribute to that amplification than risk offending tender sensibilities, particuarly those who are connected to the offenders. The better solution, and one which (I hope) we are pursuing, is to kick ass, use common sense, and carry on. Anyway I see your point though I disagree - good chatting with you - gotta get some work done - later.
TSA says that lighters burn longer than a match when trying to light a sneaker explosive. In the words of Rush, "I'm not making this stuff up folks!"
I carry a lighter in my pocket through security all the time. Along with a razor sharp ceramic pocket knife.
Most of this "security" is window dressing to make the sheeple more cozzy, warm and fuzzy.
Enough is enough. We need separate lines in stores, banks and airports for Mexicans,Muslims and any non speaking entity. If you don't speak english...separate line. If you are an illegal alien...separate line. If you are a muslim and look like terrorist....separate line. I'm tired of waiting in lines for non citizen dolts.
"I carry a lighter in my pocket through security all the time. Along with a razor sharp ceramic pocket knife."
wow I feel safer already <sarc
Every time I see that picture, my blood boils-My Dad (deceased now) could be that guy's twin-only my Dad would wear his WWII/Korea/VietnamVet baseball cap..
They would always poke him, prod him, and squeeze him down, and afterwards, because he was on coumadin, he would be covered in bruises that would never go away.
Since I know of no instance of eighty year old white men in wheelchairs blowing up planes, I have no idea why they continue to do this.
Taking away lip gloss from 13 year old girls is beyond ridiculous.
I guess I could check my bag...
I did it to prove to a fellow traveler friend of mine to illustrate how stooopid the TSA's policies are.
Suicidal is thinking that the TSA's or any other government entity will keep you safe. Most of their security is mere show for the sheople and utterly useless in stopping a committed terrorist.
I know. My father has had to go there on business a couple of times, and it took a whole lot longer to get there than he'd originally planned. Luckily, the group arranging his trips was Israeli, and they were accustomed to dealing with the situation.
You got that right!!!
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