In light of the Christmas Day \u201chot pants\u201d would-be plane bomber, I would like to make a couple of comments about security \u2013 both for air travel and in general.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
First off, I like security. I used to be annoyed by bag checks and the like \u2013 until I realized that those men and women standing outside the buildings were being paid far too little to take a bullet or a bomb blast on my behalf. Their job is to keep me safe. Here\u2019s the kicker: So long as what they\u2019re doing actually keeps me safer \u2013 I appreciate it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was recently in India. While I was there, the whole damn country was on high alert because several Jihadis had come across the border from Packistan, vowing a repeat of the Mumbai massacres. For those who weren\u2019t paying attention, in 2008 there was a well organized set of attacks in the city of Mumbai. The terrorists struck ten locations simultaneously, killing 173 people and wounding 308. They both set off bombs and (more disturbingly to me) ran from place to place, gunning down groups of people in hotel lobbies and the like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every hotel and public building that I entered on this last visit had both a metal detector and a bag check. After the metal detector, I was patted down \u2013 including a crotch and ass grab \u2013 every single time. When I flew from Kolkata to Delhi, every single passenger passed through a metal detector and got a pat down \u2013 including a crotch and ass grab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These procedures didn\u2019t slow things down too much. A pat down takes less than a minute. You can do it in parallel with the bag check. You probably need a separate line for men and for women. Some people will choose to not travel by air rather than endure it. That\u2019s fine with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You know what? I felt safer on that plane and in those hotels than I do when I fly in the US. For all the hassle with TSA guards, the yelling, the pointlessly changing rules and the constant confusion about who gets to see my footsies \u2013 our airport security theater does less than what India was able to accomplish with their existing personnel, on their existing budget, for their airplanes, hotels, and malls. This is because they have the willpower that we lack<\/strong> \u2013 to impose a bit of inconvenience on everyone in order to make us a bit safer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A lot of noise is being made about millimeter wave imaging in the airports. That\u2019s a red herring. The problem is not one of technology. It\u2019s not for lack of expensive machines at the airports that we\u2019re at risk. We are at risk for lack of willpower.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You want a safe flight? Here\u2019s what I say: Pat downs. Men\u2019s lines, women\u2019s lines. Look in every suitcase. No carry on items beyond a newspaper or a book. Pat everyone down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Security would go faster under the model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t like it? Take a train. Drive. Walk. Take a bus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Security \u2013 real security \u2013 involves trading in some liberty for your safety. Real security is invasive. Real security gets in your face and emphasizes that the safety of all the passengers is more important than the convenience or assumed right to privacy of any one individual. Real security takes more time than security theatre, but not much more. You have to get your crotch grabbed to be sure you don\u2019t have a pipe bomb strapped to your upper thigh. You have to stay seated during critical parts of the flight. People knock on the bathroom door when you\u2019re in there more than 10 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The tactics used by America\u2019s 9\/11 bombers (seize control of commercial airliners and slam them into population centers) will never work again because of two changes that happened immediately:<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1) We put locks on the cabin doors. All the rest of this crap is theater. Taking off my shoes, taking my laptop out of its case, 3oz containers of liquid \u2026 that\u2019s all bogus. With those changes, the stakes change from 9\/11 to a single plane being blown up. Still bad \u2013 but not nearly so bad as 3,000+ people dying. If you\u2019re trying to prevent 9\/11, we\u2019re already done. Now we\u2019re trying to keep pipe bombers off of planes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Obviously, the hot pants bomber represents a failure of the air travel security system. It failed insofar as it could never work reliably over the long term in the first place. Without the will to get in people\u2019s faces, to check their upper thigh for pipe bombs \u2013 we will continue to be unsafe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n No security system is perfect. Locks do not buy you security \u2013 they buy you *time*. All systems \u2013 and all components of systems \u2013 fail eventually. We fly millions of passengers all over the world every single day. In that regard, actually, we\u2019re doing pretty well. Can we do better? Absolutely \u2013 but it will be invasive and and it will involve pat downs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Countries with a little bit of backbone are already doing this. Why aren\u2019t we?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In light of the Christmas Day \u201chot pants\u201d would-be plane bomber, I would like to make a couple of comments about security \u2013 both for air travel and in general. First off, I like security. I used to be annoyed by bag checks and the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,59,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-blog","category-privacy","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1826,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions\/1826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
2) Passengers know that the rules are changed. I grew up under the \u201csit quietly and it will be over soon\u201d school. We will never again sit quietly and allow ourselves to be flown into buildings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n