jarbabyj, let me see if I can rephrase your concerns in a way that may shed more light on what you are really asking and what you really want.
In your posts (and those of others) I keep hearing I’m scared and I want to be safe. Not I want to feel safe but rather I want to be safe. And that’s cool - I think everyone would like to be safe, or at least be as safe as possible.
Where we fail to communicate is when it comes time to discuss how to become safer.
My biggest concern since 9/11 has not been a terrorist attack (although I have some fear of them, what with working in a Chicago skyscraper, riding a commuter train, and so forth) but rather false security. That is, I am adamantly opposed to measures that seem to increase security but do not in fact do so. I am opposed to making people merely FEEL better about security without actually making them safer.
Thus, if I feel there is some evidence that searches of airline passengers actually increases safety then I find them acceptable, perhaps even laudable. If, however, they do not truly increase security, if they only make you feel better, then I must adamantly oppose them as being both a waste of resources and a pernicious deception. I will never enjoy these security procedures but I can be an advocate for them if the benefit outweighs the negative side effects.
That is MY test of what is and isn’t acceptable. (Well, one of the tests…)
Which is why I am opposed to unlimited searches by the government - it’s too easy to turn them into a fishing expedition. The gentleman from Oregon? He’s innocent. Do you understand that? He was arrested, held incommunicado, his home searched, his reputation besmirched world wide - and he is innocent of all charges. Did searching his house without a warrant make us safer? Did holding him incommunicado make us safer? Did smearing his name in the press make us safer? Or should the government have been forced to build a solid case prior to abducting a citizen of the United States? If they had had to build a real case instead of being able to charge in on the slightest of pretextes, perhaps they would have discovered he wasn’t involved in the Madrid bombing without expending so many resources, creating a media circus, and spent some of that time, money and effort on finding the REAL “bad guys” out there.
Tracking every citizen? Is this really a good idea? The sheer amount of data that would be generated every day is staggering - who could possibly sort through all that? Inevitably, some sort of profile would need to be used, and those who did not fit the profile would not be discovered until too late - so what would all that time and money and effort have accomplished?
Here’s another example - shortly after 9/11 there were numerous proposals to perform an in-depth background check on each and every holder of a pilot license in the US - or even everyone who had ever taken so much as a single flight lesson. I don’t mean a quickie cheap test - we’re talking about the sort with a price tag in four digits. To do so, however, would have been a waste. Why? Because the vast majority of pilots are law-abiding citizens. You’d spend a LOT of money to net a very, very few fish, if any. Using the super-background check on the 700,000+ pilots in the US would cost over $1 billion. We just can’t afford to take that sort of brute-force approach - we don’t have the money. No one does.
Here’s the rub - most, if not all, of the 9/11 hijackers could have easily based just such a background check. In other words, it wouldn’t have caught the Bad Guys.
Other areas with this applies are numerous - MOST people who buy amonium nitrate fertilzier and diesel fuel have legitimate, lawful uses for those items (farmers, for instance, growing the food you eat). MOST people with hazmat trucker licenses are using them to make an honest living, not blow things up. MOST people who buy Sudafed do so to treat their sinus condition, not to make methamphetamine.
What you are really looking for is effective searches. That is - you need a system that concentrates your efforts on where the Bad Guys actually are to be found and doesn’t waste resources on the innocent. You want systems that will actually prevent hijackings, not just look good. A good, solid cockpit door, for instance, may be much more effective than a half dozen air marshalls in passenger seating, for instance. Know something else? Over the long run the fortified doors are cheaper, too. You don’t have to expend huge amounts of cash to get real security or improved safety - on the flip side, spending lots of money doesn’t guarantee you’re getting anything other than an illusion of safety.
So, jarbabyj, here’s what YOU can do to prevent terrorism: keep your eyes open, maintain your critical thinking skills, and question every security procedure. Here’s why:
Keep your eyes open - if everyone just freakin’ paid attention it would be a lot harder for the Bad Guys to cause damage. Remember the bombing at the Atlanta Olympic games? A security guard spotted something suspicious and had started moving people away from the area when the bomb went off - if he hadn’t done that, the death/injury toll would have been higher. And this pays off not just in terrorism - just before the new terminal at Charles DeGaulle airport in Paris fell in someone had noticed cracking sounds and falling debris - an evacuation was already in progress and some people escaped because of that evacuation who otherwise might have come to grief. KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN. If you notice something - tell someone.
Critical thinking skills - you need to think, especially if something goes wrong. A bunch o’ folks in the WTC meekly went back to their offices because the loudspeakers said to do so - but the ones who said “Uh-uh - something is wrong here” and left are the ones who survived. Yes, 99 times out of 100 you should listen to authority - but that 100th time you should not. Keep your fact checker running. Listen to your suspicions and fears - not to let them dominate you, but to hear when they are telling you to run or to hide or to take other action.
Question everything - yes, really. Is this procedure effective? If it was effective yesterday, is it still effective today? Is there a better way, a more efficient way, to do this thing?
Another example from the World of Aviation As I Know It - there are serious proposals to require every airport with scheduled passenger service to have the exact same security systems. Initially, that sounds pretty good, hey? Right? Wrong. Here’s why:
Let’s take an example - O’Hare International, for instance. THOUSANDS, nay TENS OF THOUSANDS of people a day walk through there. Hell, it’s probably HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS on occassion. The place is HUGE. HUGE!. You need very efficient, very fast, very accurate means of screening all those thousands and thousands of people, all the millions who pass through there in a year. Yes, it makes sense to invest in automated baggage x-ray, a veritable army of searchers, sniffer dogs… LOTS of money, but the systems do make the searching more efficient. Could you imagine searching every piece of luggage by hand? {{{shudder}}}
Let’s take another example - Gary International Airport. It has, at most, one scheduled airline flight PER DAY. Most days - it has NONE. Zippo. The rest of the traffic is things like cargo and charter and folks like me 
Spending 10 million dollars on a baggage screening machine for that airport is stupid - it would sit idle 90% of the time. It’s not cost-effective. There are few enough passengers passing through that what makes sense is a simple metal detector and a dozen baggage screeners - employed there ONLY when there is a scheduled flight - and search every bag by hand. Why? Because size matters. Scale of operation matters. The manpower required for the few hours per year needed for a hand-search is far, far less than the cost of even ONE of the big automated machines. And the money you save by accomodating the scale of operation could be better spent on things like maintaining runways, lighting systems, bad weather approach systems, the on-site weather station, and so forth - items that affect the safety of EVERY flight. So your safety overall improves, and not just in the narrow area of terrorism prevention.
I do NOT oppose huge application of automation to O’Hare’s security - I do oppose it at Gary because at Gary it’s a very poor use of resources. I want effective security, not showy security.
