On Flying in the United States

Holiday Greetings to my loyal readers (which means I'm talking to myself here). I have just recently returned from the internet desert that is my parents-in-law's house, which explains my long internet absence. As you know, my wife and I live in Oxford, UK, so the holidays equals airline travel. In the past month I have flown from Oxford to Atlanta via Amsterdam and from Atlanta to Durango, CO via Salt Lake City. How appropriate then that I stumbled upon an opinion piece in the New York Times blog by Patrick Smith. In it, Smith addresses the current lunacy that is airport security in the US. I provide a few relevant quotes:

Unfortunately, at concourse checkpoints all across America, the madness of passenger screening continues in plain view. It began with pat-downs and the senseless confiscation of pointy objects. Then came the mandatory shoe removal, followed in the summer of 2006 by the prohibition of liquids and gels. We can only imagine what is next. To understand what makes these measures so absurd, we first need to revisit the morning of September 11th, and grasp exactly what it was the 19 hijackers so easily took advantage of...What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings.

In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail.

For several reasons — particularly the awareness of passengers and crew — just the opposite is true today.

How about this nugget for those, including me, who have had innocuous toothpaste confiscated:

“The notion that deadly explosives can be cooked up in an airplane lavatory is pure fiction,” Greene told me during an interview. “A handy gimmick for action movies and shows like ‘24.’ The reality proves disappointing: it’s rather awkward to do chemistry in an airplane toilet..."the idea that confiscating someone’s toothpaste is going to keep us safe is too ridiculous to entertain.”

Does the TSA really think these liquids are dangerous? No:

consider for a moment the hypocrisy of T.S.A.’s confiscation policy. At every concourse checkpoint you’ll see a bin or barrel brimming with contraband containers taken from passengers for having exceeded the volume limit. Now, the assumption has to be that the materials in those containers are potentially hazardous. If not, why were they seized in the first place? But if so, why are they dumped unceremoniously into the trash? They are not quarantined or handed over to the bomb squad; they are simply thrown away. The agency seems to be saying that it knows these things are harmless. But it’s going to steal them anyway, and either you accept it or you don’t fly.

What does our willingness to tolerate TSA absurdity indicate about our society? Smith speculates:

rather than rethink our policies, the best we’ve come up with is a way to skirt them — for a fee, naturally — via schemes like Registered Traveler. Americans can now pay to have their personal information put on file just to avoid the hassle of airport security. As cynical as George Orwell ever was, I doubt he imagined the idea of citizens offering up money for their own subjugation...

How we got to this point is an interesting study in reactionary politics, fear-mongering and a disconcerting willingness of the American public to accept almost anything in the name of “security.” Conned and frightened, our nation demands not actual security, but security spectacle. And although a reasonable percentage of passengers, along with most security experts, would concur such theater serves no useful purpose, there has been surprisingly little outrage. In that regard, maybe we’ve gotten exactly the system we deserve.

I'll relate my own travel stories, two of them. First, upon arrival from Amsterdam in Atlanta, TSA required me to go through the standard shoes off metal out of pockets screening. Upon arrival. That's right. I had gone through security at London Heathrow, again in Amsterdam, and still had to go through US security when I arrived in the US. If I was a terrorist, wouldn't I have done my evil deed before I reached the US? After all, I was on a plane for 10 hours before US security got me. And if I was planning on smuggling something into the US, there are much easier ways than taking an international flight into the US...like swimming over from the UK. I should at this moment note that the Europeans, long accustomed to the threat of terrorism, do not make travelers take off their shoes. At all. Even in the UK, where the retarded shoe bomber originated. That I should have to go through security yet again after all the hassle of flying is ridiculous beyond absurd.

Second, my wife and I went through security at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson airport on our way to visit her parents. Like 'good' travelers, we took off all non-essential clothing, which for my wife meant her Columbia jacket, which had in its innumerable pockets her boarding pass. I saw nowhere in the line up to the x-ray/metal detector a sign that said that we needed to keep our boarding passes on our person. After all, attentive security people checked our boarding passes against photo ID before we could even get into the security line. The only place I have seen the boarding pass/ID check carried out in similar repetitive fashion was in (authoritarian) China.

Back to the story. My wife went through the metal detector, where she was promptly asked for her boarding pass. Of course, it was trapped in the bowels of the x-ray machine. The TSA guard got belligerent. He harassed my wife for the boarding pass repeatedly, even though it was impossible for her to show it to him before the jacket came out of the x-ray machine. Her shoes come out first. As she set them down to put them on while waiting for the jacket, both the male TSA guard and another female TSA guard accosted her, telling her she could absolutely not put her shoes on before the boarding pass was displayed, as if she was going to make a break for it if she got her shoes on. When the jacket did come through, my wife put it on to facilitate her effort to retrieve the boarding pass. At this point, the male TSA guard began threatening her with a strip search. A strip search! For my wife, who posed no security threat and was simply trying to fulfill the request to produce her boarding pass. Needless to say, the guard's aggressive and belligerent manner was completely unwarranted and inappropriate. Unfortunately, we did not think to get his badge/ID number so we could place a complaint until after we were out of the security line.

What's the moral here? It is exactly what Smith gets at in the final quote above. Americans are so paralyzed by fear we are numb to the stupid policies of our elected leaders and the bureaucracies they control.