The illusion of safety
There's an essay in today's New York Times called "My liquid-free flight abroad"--which is at turns amusing and just plain bizarre. This essay is even weirder after an article I read in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about how aviation security is beginning to switch from trying to stop dangerous things to trying to stop dangerous people. But come to think of it, this whole cliche of the "post 9/11 world" in itself is beginning to feel increasingly bizarre. One wonders if the next thing they're going to come up with is a supposed plot to blow up planes using exploding underwear--and how, exactly, they would try to deal with such a threat (one can only imagine). And do we really expect to stop terrorism with such quaint notions as "behavioral profiling" which sounds to me like some voodoo methodology of trying to figure out if someone's carrying a bomb aboard a plane by the way they wiggle their eyebrows. Perhaps the most sane point in the Journal article was the fact that the idea should be to stop terrorists before they ever get to an airport--because by the time they get to a security gate, you are already in trouble. Seriously, exactly how many terrorists have we caught going through security lines to get on a plane recently? Does anyone recall even one?
So now we have a group of people planning to blow up planes allegedly using a mixture of Drano, nail polish remover, and hydrogen peroxide. Stop and think about this for a moment: It is possible to blow an airliner out of the sky with ingredients anyone can purchase at their local neighborhood Rite-Aid. Given this fact, how safe can we really expect to be with draconian police state tactics? Airport security has a cost-benefit trade-off just like anything else. What about train security or shopping mall security, or the insane number of cargo containers that come into the country uninspected that contain God only knows what? And OK, liquids are dangerous on planes. As insomnia points out in a very good analysis, so are liquids and solids. Ah, so there's an idea: we prohibit any materials of any kind on board airplanes and we'll be totally safe.
Is anyone not convinced yet that there is no possible way that we're ever going to increase security enough to be completely safe? Is there anyone who doubts that in order to truly stop terrorism, we have to address American policies that cause so many people around the world to hate us enough to blow us up and kill themselves just to get back at us? Do we really think that we can continue this self-delusion of thinking we are "the good guys" forever?
So now we have a group of people planning to blow up planes allegedly using a mixture of Drano, nail polish remover, and hydrogen peroxide. Stop and think about this for a moment: It is possible to blow an airliner out of the sky with ingredients anyone can purchase at their local neighborhood Rite-Aid. Given this fact, how safe can we really expect to be with draconian police state tactics? Airport security has a cost-benefit trade-off just like anything else. What about train security or shopping mall security, or the insane number of cargo containers that come into the country uninspected that contain God only knows what? And OK, liquids are dangerous on planes. As insomnia points out in a very good analysis, so are liquids and solids. Ah, so there's an idea: we prohibit any materials of any kind on board airplanes and we'll be totally safe.
Is anyone not convinced yet that there is no possible way that we're ever going to increase security enough to be completely safe? Is there anyone who doubts that in order to truly stop terrorism, we have to address American policies that cause so many people around the world to hate us enough to blow us up and kill themselves just to get back at us? Do we really think that we can continue this self-delusion of thinking we are "the good guys" forever?