Security Theatre

As I prepare for yet another very long flight involving numerous airports, I can't help but cringe in advance about the security ordeal I'm about to be put through. I'm already good and sick of having key chains, nail files, combs, lip gloss, and other utterly harmless items stolen from me. I'm tired of removing ever more layers of clothing in filthy public places, especially in countries where security staff find it appropriate to make lewd remarks (and yes, there are still plenty of them). But the latest round of insanity following the crotchbomber incident on Northwest Airlines is enough to make me want to abandon travel altogether.

In a scathing editorial, the Economist describes the latest measures as "absurd", the "worst sort of knee-jerk security theatre". I couldn't have put it better.

Because it is theatre. Every serious article I've ever read about airport security measures suggests that the lion's share of the crap we're put through is largely cosmetic, designed as much to comfort nervous travellers as to catch terrorists. You don't have to read pieces like this to figure it out. All you have to do is apply common sense: if JFK officials seriously thought there was any chance that my lip gloss was actually explosive material, they wouldn't toss it in the trash. They'd bag it, and bag me as well.

Trouble is, common sense seems to be in short supply. Most of the passengers interviewed by the New York Times over the weekend seemed to think measures such as being forbidden to take a pee in the final hour of the flight, or to have a pillow on their laps, were worth it so long as they were safer. As long as people are this gullible, this complacent, the TSA will continue to impose increasingly intrusive, ridiculous measure to prove they are "doing something" about terrorism. Mandatory body cavity searches can surely not be far behind (no pun intended).

This morning, President Obama announced that there had been early signals pointing to a terror plot involving the suspect in the Northwest incident. That these signals failed to prevent the crotchbomber from boarding a plane amounted to a "systemic failure" of the nation's security apparatus. Indeed. And so long as people like that continue to slip through the intelligence net, they will always find ways to hurt innocent people. In the race between security measures and terrorist ruses, the good guys will always be one step behind. I'm all for reasonable security measures, but we passed reasonable a very long time ago. We've run the football through the end zone, off the field and all the way home. Forrest Gump would approve.

We're torturing ourselves for the illusion of security. We're punishing millions of passengers every year in the name of protecting ourselves from something less likely to kill us than lightning. And the most ironic part is, the people we're punishing -- the passengers -- are the ones who've foiled the last two attempts to down an aircraft. The TSA didn't stop the shoebomber or the crotchbomber. Fellow passengers did.

So why are we putting up with this shit?