Posted By Ariel & Dave Lindorff July 18, 2008
I was injured thanks to the government’s ridiculous airport
security program last week on a US Air flight from Chicago to
Philadelphia. I also saw how pointless the whole thing is, if
the supposed goal is really to prevent airline hijackings.
First, my injury. Because of a silly fear that I might blow up a
plane with explosives tucked into my running shoes, I, along
with everyone else in the security checkpoint line at O’Hare,
including two-month-old babies wearing little booties, had to
doff my footwear. Clad in just socks, I tried to maneuver my way
around a metal counter that held those plastic trays carrying my
laptop, my shoes, my belt and change and keys, and my carry-on
bag, and in the process my unprotected big toe hit a sharp piece
of metal protruding from the table.
The metal sliced right under my toenail, making a painful and
bloody cut into the soft tissue under the nail. Cursing and
bleeding, I made my way through the metal detector, and
collected my goods.
Now, inside my bag, unbeknownst to the Transportation Security
Administration inspectors, was a bottle of mouthwash. It was
larger than the approved 2-oz size, and it was not in an
approved sealed plastic bag. But TSA inspectors looking into
their video screens at the X-Ray machine didn’t see it, because
I made sure that it was vertical as it passed through. All they
saw was a little circle of plastic. Likewise, on an earlier
flight, I had made my way aboard with a Swiss Army knife. By
standing it in my carry-on bag so that it would be vertical for
the X-Ray, I was able to slip it through and onto the plane.
Now clearly I’m not a terrorist (though for a time, thanks to my
anti-Bush, anti-war journalism, and an expose about the TSA’s
“no-fly” list abuses, I was on the watch list, and would get a
circled “S” written on my boarding passes that ensured that I
would be pulled aside to have my carry-on luggage hand
searched). But if I were a terrorist, I sure wouldn’t try to
commandeer a plane with a jackknife. I’d want something bigger.
But that would be simple. One could easily carry on a 10-inch
blade the same way. If one were nervous about doing that, it
could be a ceramic or better, a Plexiglas blade—plenty
dangerous, but invisible to X-rays and metal detectors.
For that matter, if I were into suicide bombing and wanted to
manufacture a liquid explosive, why on earth would I try to do
it by smuggling on two large jars of ingredients, when I could
just put them in plastic baggies and carry them aboard in my
pockets? Unless you happen to be singled out for special
handling, nobody at the security checkpoints pats you down. They
just have you walk through the metal detectors while TSA
inspectors are busy patting down randomly selected elderly nuns
and racially profiled people, like unfortunate Sikh men wearing
turbans.
Any dedicated terrorist hijacker could figure out numerous ways
to get explosives and weapons onto a plane past these security
arrangements.
And that’s not even counting having the weapons smuggled into an
airport gate area along with all the goods that are offered for
sale there, where they could be picked up after a hijacker had
already cleared security. There is no way that all the
newspapers, magazines, clothing, trinkets, bottles of booze and
personal hygiene products, etc., are screened adequately as they
are brought in each day to fill the concession stands for the
day’s business. First of all, one would have to open and check
every bottle and box offered for sale.
If you were genuinely worried about protecting against
hijackers, you would have those inspections at the entrance to
each plane, not at the entrance to the terminal, and you
wouldn’t have all that commerce inside the security zone. Ah!
But what a roar of outrage we’d hear from the business community
if that lucrative business venue were eliminated!
Which brings me to the real question: Why do we have all this
pointless and easily breached security, not to mention a list
that contains an astonishing one million names of suspected
“terrorists”?
Clearly, the security program is not about protecting the flying
public, or the nation’s tall buildings. That could be done much
more cheaply by putting air marshals on all flights, the way
they do at El Al, the Israeli airline that has never had a
successful hijacking.
No, this is all about heightening the fear level of the American
people, to routinize us to living in a police state.
The truth is, nobody is really interested in trying to hijack
planes anymore. First of all, the “crash into buildings” tactic
is dead. Pilots are now flying armed in armored cockpits that
cannot be easily entered, and would not accede to a terrorist’s
demands any longer, knowing what happened last time. And
passengers would not sit passively in a cabin takeover attempt,
either. As a result, we don’t have to worry about such things
any longer.
The ease with which security could be breached, and the fact
that it hasn’t happened now for seven years, is evidence enough
that nobody is even trying to do it.
So let’s do away with all this time-consuming, costly, and
politically motivated nonsense before I injure my other big toe. |