Flying blind: Airport screeners treat everyone the same. They shouldn't

National Post - Canada ^ | Saturday, August 12, 2006 | David Frum

[garjog]

"Most of this "security" is window dressing"

Ever notice how TSA workers all seem to have 40 percent body fat?

Don't you feel real safe knowing the TSA is looking out for us?

[Badray]

I do that from time to time. ;-)

Thanks.

[goldstategop]

Political correctness and liberal touchy-feeliness will mean the death of civilization. We are forbidden to even acknowledge the identity of the enemy.

(Go Israel, Go! Slap 'Em Down Hezbullies.)

[DugwayDuke]

Banning Muslims from airplanes would not do the job. There is at least one example of a muslim male using his unwitting girl friend to smuggle a bomb on an airplane. The bomb exploded killing the girlfriend.

[Erik Latranyi]

Lipstick too? They've already banned my face moisturer, my contact conditioning solution and cleaner, my contact soaking solution, my hair gel, my hair spray, my shampoo, my hair conditioning lotion, my deodorant (and this is truly a necessity in a confined space with people who don't shower on a daily basis), and my bottled water. When is enough, enough!

Stop bringing all your crap on the plane! You probably have a large roller-board, laptop bag and huge purse that takes up three rows of overhead space.

Check your bags.

[Erik Latranyi]

The fact that you have to pull an isolated incident out of your butt from 1987 proves the point against you.

No, it proves you cannot think past your nose, hence you should never be trusted with security.

[MarineDad]

TSA = "Thousands Standing Around"

The airports' concession areas are very secure, however, since that's where you're most likely to find them providing, ah, security.

[dirtboy]

The liberal hand-wringers had no problem during the DC sniper incident with cops stopping every white guy driving a white truck, even though that turned out to be an erroneous profile. Whereas Muslim males have committed all the recent terrorism here and in Britain, but we can't profile them.

[Erik Latranyi]

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.

So, you propose to wait until a few planes are brought down by old white men in wheelchairs before we screen them?

[Erik Latranyi]

There is at least one example of a muslim male using his unwitting girl friend to smuggle a bomb on an airplane. The bomb exploded killing the girlfriend.

Please don't cite inconvenient facts for those smart-asses around here that think they are security experts.

If all those advocating profiling alone were in charge, it would have resulted in thousands of additional deaths since 9/11.

[ABN 505]

"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." It's because this country has lost it's Balls since WWII and has become emasculated by the screeching feminists and their cohorts in the media. Thats why they have to pick on little old people in wheelchairs while Mohammad walks blithely past the checkpoint and takes his seat!d

[Jim Noble]

Please notice that neither program -- neither risk profiling nor trusted traveller -- would make any use of information about ethnicity or religion.

And why not, Mr. Frum?

[rollin]

Please provide your source documentation for this assertion.

If all those advocating profiling alone were in charge, it would have resulted in thousands of additional deaths since 9/11.

[rahbert]

Actually I didn't think it was so bad. Of course I brought
a letter from the company I work for (in Hebrew) explaining
the reason for my presence in Israel (that was on departure back to the States, where the full security monte occurrs.).

Keep your passport handy and your hands in plain sight at
all times. Their "TSA" folks even manage to be civil unlike
many of ours.

[GMMAC]

"And why not, Mr. Frum? "

Answered in the 4th from last paragraph of Frum's article above:
"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."

To which I added in post #32 above:
"Liberals love inefficient, cost & time ineffective approaches to most of life's problems & attempt to justify same under the guise of 'fairness' & supposedly proper universality.

Why?
Aside from creating additional government jobs which they can then demand be meted out to their political constituents on the basis of gender & racial quotas, 'shot gun' approaches - by definition - are the antithesis of two concepts which liberals thoroughly reject: individual responsibility & personal accountability."

[Moiraine]

I quit smoking for a while last spring and thought I had taken all lighters out of my purse. I later discovered I'd made it through security with three of them.

[TexRef]

Stop bringing all your crap on the plane! You probably have a large roller-board, laptop bag and huge purse that takes up three rows of overhead space.

Check your bags.

You must not fly much. I hardly ever check bags - not because it is too inconvenient to get them after we land, but because it is too inconvenient to get them when the airline LOSES them. I've only checked bags half a dozen times in the last couple of years and I've had my bags lost or delayed THREE TIMES.

And you are out of your mind if you think that I am checking anything of value. Notebook computers? Cameras? Ipods? If you want to see them again you had best carry them on... I had a package of unopened socks "confiscated" by one of the TSA goons that searched my checked luggage on my last trip. I can handle them stealing a $10 bag of socks, but I'm not going to give them the opportunity to go Christmas shopping through my luggage.

[TexRef]

I quit smoking for a while last spring and thought I had taken all lighters out of my purse. I later discovered I'd made it through security with three of them.

I know of a similar situation in which a *ahem* friend of mine forgot to take two loaded magazines out of his briefcase. Sailed right through the metal detectors. This was pre-9/11, but still...

Everyone feel safer yet?

[TChris]

Our prescreening process may be ethnically neutral, but the results will not be.

Every FReeper should read Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions to delve deeper into this phenomenon. He treats this subject with his typical, brilliant analysis.