Well, I’ll see your freedom to keep your shoes on during airport check-ins and raise your freedom to marry any single consenting adult you fancy irrespective of gender.
I’m not crazy about airline security procedures myself, but I think it’s a bit hyperbolic to moan about how freedom is always being restricted but never increased. Uh, no, sometimes and in some ways we do get more freedom to do what we want in our society.
uh, I read it just the opposite. There are gazillions of targets. Most can’t possibly be protected. So if we spend tons of money and waste millions of hours of time making airplanes safer, terrorists will just strike something else.
But there are some. And we’ve done nothing to make them harder to do.
Because not enough Americans take trains. So it’s not scary.
It’s not about body count per-se, it’s about scaring people. It’s about making us afraid to fly, and adding burdensome requirements that put a drag on the economy.
What I wonder is why lots of other soft targets that I can easily think of aren’t attacked. Like the line to get through airport security. If you have someone who doesn’t mind dying, it would be really easy to take a suitcase full of explosives into the security line, wait until you are in the middle of pack of people, and detonate yourself. Bonus points if you take out the security screeners and the scanning machines.
I don’t want to list all the others I’ve thought of, both because you’ll all think I’m a terrorist and because I honestly don’t want to give ideas to potential unimaginative terrorists. (The security line thing has been published dozens of times that I’ve seen.) But there are plenty of easy opportunities for terrorism. And really no way to prevent that without locking up the entire population.
The most likely explanation I can come up with is - FOREIGN-ORIGINATED TERRORISM IS FAR LESS OF A THREAT THAN WE ARE GIVEN TO BELIEVE! I’ve never heard an explanation why foreign terrorists are fixated on planes, and could not shift their attention to malls, major highway interchanges, commuter train stations, concerts and sporting events, amusement parks…
But someone must be profiting (monetarily or otherwise) from the expenditures toward airport security theater, and the fostering of a culture of fear in airports.
There have been attacks like that. At the Rome and Los Angeles airports, IIRC. And a major one at the Brussels airport not all that long ago. How quickly we forget!
The impact of 9/11 was not just the buildings destroyed (which can’t happen for crowds or trains) but that the entire air system shut down. Yes, doors are now reinforced - but if you can get anything on the plane, some plastic explosive will solve that problem for you.
Surely you’ve been screened when going into a place with lots of people like a concert or even a fair. And the police have ways of controlling access to places with lots of people, like Times Square on New Years Eve. I remember at least one shooting in a terminal outside security, but there are enough armed officers there that it is not going to be that major of a problem.
All subways I’ve been on recently have had multiple announcements about abandoned packages.
The drag has been there since the Cuban hijacking. The economy has managed. And I’m happy to see that explosive sniffing dogs eliminated the requirement to take off my shoes on my last flight. TSA seems to be (slowly) moving to less intrusive methods. Plus the new scanner at the Indianapolis airport didn’t require laptops to be removed. (For those without laptop friendly bags.)
As I noted, there is screening at amusement parks and concerts and fairs. And courts also.
Thanks to action against ISIS and al Qaeda, there is probably less of a threat now than in 2002, say. Alas I don’t think we can ever go back to the age of innocence from the 1960s.
Yes, and countless bollards installed. And cops now tuck their pants in their combat boots! :rolleyes:
I’m not suggesting zero security, but the whole - remove your shoes and belt - unless we don’t want you to today, and treating you as a terrorist if you forget to remove a quarter or a TUMs from your pants pocket, serves no useful purpose that comes close to justifying the costs.
As I view the recent death toll, I think we have more to fear from homegrown crazies than foreign air terrorists.
By the way, in Shanghai they x-ray your bags before you can enter the subway. I just came back from a visit to China and they have far more security measures visible than we Americans do. So it is possible to increase security at many of those soft targets. But do we want to?
yup
and to be clear, I am not arguing for no security. Strategically placed bollards and metal detectors seem like a good thing. It’s the ridiculous security theater at airports that I object to.
Let’s make everyone remove their shoes. Fondle transwomen who have penises. Make people buy their drinks and snacks inside the airport. (No home made pb&j for you, that’s a jell.) Forbid small pocket knives. That’s all crazy, and adds very little of anything to our actual safety, but it makes flying a lot more expensive and unpleasant.