Folks should read Jeffrey Goldberg's quirky article on the inanity of "airport security theater" and the case for rolling back the transportation police state. They should probably not follow Goldberg's lead and try and board a plane while wearing an Osama bin Laden t-shirt and holding a Leatherman knife tool. One of the points that's often missed in the airport security debate is that the 9/11 hijackers didn't bring anything illegal onto the planes. Their box cutters were perfectly within the guidelines. And their success had less to do with the relative deadliness of a box cutter and more to do with the assumption that this was a hostage situation rather than a suicide mission. When the occupants of the fourth plane realized that they would not be allowed to live, they downed the craft. Successive moments in the ceaseless march of airport security have been similarly oddly interpreted: The shoe bomber failed, but now we all remove our shoes. The liquid bombers were a joke, but now we can't carry toothpaste on a plane. In Goldberg's article, he says we've built a security state around yesterday's threats. That's true, but it almost gives us too much credit: Much of the security state is built around yesterday's failed threats. It's like hearing a robber deterred by your deadbolt and responding by replacing your door with six inches of heavily fortified, extremely expensive, steel. And our strange decisions create new vulnerabilities: The awkward and slow screening system means more travelers are gathered at security checkpoints. But the screening happens at the end of the checkpoint. Until then, travelers are utterly unexamined. A suicide bomber could walk into that line and murder hundreds, having much the same effect on national travel as if he'd downed a plane. Update: Jealous Monk comments:
I can imagine Osama and his buddies laughing and saying, "Next time, let's send someone with underwear made of plastic explosives. Then they'll all have to take their underwear off!"
