I've been trying to sort out airline security vs. airline security practice. None of us wants to get on a plane with a shoe bomber or the Christmas Day bomber.
But I'm beginning to come around to the security folks who say that TSA - with the support of our government! - isn't employing security practice, but "security theater" - something that looks good but is ineffective. Like taking off your shoes, or being unable to take cosmetics on board with you, or some baby/children products. For heaven's sake, as soon as the shoe bomber was apprehended, the bomb-makers probably stopped using shoes as a delivery vehicle.
Common sense in the security world says that you cannot defend against unknown events. The longer the laundry list of explicit events becomes, the more likely it is that no one will spot the event characteristic that requires a countermeasure. And while the list grows longer the public, despite its impatience, will think "Well, something has to be working or we wouldn't have to go through all this." Remember the joke about the man sent to the psychiatrist because he's constantly snapping his fingers? "Why?" "Because I'm afraid of the elephants." "I don't see any elephants around." "See? It works!"
In my darker moments I can think of all sorts of ways a terrorist could strike, and it doesn't have to happen on a plane or in an airline terminal. And more threats to life, limb and community are caused by "insiders" (Timothy McVeigh comes to mind, as well as disgruntled employees, angry spouses, and some types of political protestors) than by those based on foreign soil.
What has worked to deter terrorist plots is the monitoring of internet channels (and those channels are pretty well identified, and can be pretty well discovered, by the way - we don't have to have all our emails under surveillance). What has worked is the time-consuming process of infiltrating these organizations. [edited: Consider the young man who intended to kill people attending the Portland Christmas-tree lighting. Searching the people who attended wasn't the answer - intelligence work prevented a tragedy.]
What would really work would be the sharing of intelligence within and across security agencies. Heavens! The FBI, the CIA, the DEA, and so on, and international security forces like MI (add your number) in the UK, all working together? Sharing turf? Sharing victories? Sharing failures (instead of distributing or avoiding blame)? Unheard of, especially on the US side.
A blogger that I read, who often has some very far out ideas, wrote today about BF Skinner's "operant conditioning". Skinner's behavioral theory has its points. For instance, given two choices to reach a goal, one unpleasant and one more unpleasant, the lesser unpleasant will be chosen to the point that it will become a social norm. This acceptance will come despite the fact that neither choice is really acceptable. Today, if you want to get on a plane, you will choose between two unacceptable choices, and over time one will become acceptable to society at large.
Freedom is not just being able to do as we please. Freedom requires that we exercise our right to say "No", whether that is to inappropriate behavior in children, or to domestic violence, or to government actions that insist on subservience or personal denigration. Freedom means making our own decisions about the nature of the greater good, rather than acquiescing to those who would make decisions for us about what the greater good really is. Freedom means being able to make decisions for ourselves, without imposing our decisions on others.
In the years of segregation, African Americans sat in the back of the bus. "It's not a big deal to me. If you don't like it, you can always walk." They had to enter a theater by the back door, and sit in the back rows of the balcony. "It's not a big deal to me. If you don't like it, seeing the movie isn't a required life activity." Enough people said "This is acceptable to some, but it's not acceptable to everyone" that anti-discrimination laws were passed.
Today, we want to be able to fly to take a vacation, to see our loved ones, or to conduct business. "It's not a big deal to me. If you don't want to deal with the security measures, don't fly." That's imposing your decision on others. The response should be "These security measures may be acceptable to some of us, but security measures should be acceptable to everyone."
Our cultural heritage is based on personal choice and human dignity. Soldiers cannot be billeted in homes without the owner's permission. Slavery is illegal. The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution prohibits "unreasonable search and seizure", and this has led to the judicial doctrine of "probable cause." Some security measures are inconvenient, but no security measures are worth the loss of dignity now being imposed upon airline workers and airline passengers.
I don't have an airline flight in my near future. But I'm thinking about that eventuality, and trying to decide whether I'll make an easy choice between bad and worse, or a more difficult choice about what's acceptable and what's not.
If you want to read that blog, go to http://wandervogeldiary.wordpress.com/2010/11/23/operant-conditioning/
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