Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Ongoing Kerfuffle Over
TSA Enhanced Security Techniques....
One of my guilty pleasures is late Saturday mornings on Fox News, which has four half-hour shows (Bulls & Bears, Cashin In, Forbes on Fox, Cavuto on Business) discussing business, the economy, national policy issues, and investment. There was a heated discussion on Forbes on Fox this morning over the new TSA policies (see below). I found one particular panelist, Kai Falkenberg, unduly provocative when she started waving the flag over our young soldiers sacrificing and dying in the Middle East and if we can't put up with a minor inconvenience of a virtual strip search or molestation... (I would argue that our young soldiers are fighting so we remain free, without Big Brother violating our privacy and and affronting by disregard for our dignity.)
This kerfuffle is interesting in nature, because it makes for odd bedfellows. Many law-and-order conservatives are willing to accommodate whatever policy is perceived in the best interests of public safety, and of course progressives feel that government is the best arbiter of what is in the public interest. On the other hand, many conservatives with a libertarian twist, including myself and many Tea Party advocates promoting limited government are allied with many liberals worried about corruption and unequal protection for certain groups.
I want to make a few points here. I'm not motivated by modesty concerns; it has more to do with an increasingly convoluted, unsustainable, reactive TSA, still not fully integrated with our nation's intelligence systems. It has to do with a warped sense of reality that it is more important to treat each person equally as a prospective criminal, even 3-year-old little girls or elderly nuns, rather than based on a confluence of factors, including suspicious behavior, travel history to or from nations or areas harboring terrorist groups, past communication with known radicals, etc.
The emperor here really is wearing no clothes. Does anyone really feel any safer at the sight of TSA personnel taking stuffed animals out of the clutches of small children, confiscating various incidental everyday items or forcing an old man to take off his shoes? Never mind the fact than more often than not my everyday belts almost always end up getting special attention. And I'm not sure TSA releases these statistics, but I'm willing to bet that less than 1% of all shoes or belts have been found problematic, and if anyone has been arrested trying to go on a flight with hidden weapons of that nature, I don't know about it. No doubt proponents of unrestricted TSA activities will argue that it "proves" the check is working. Nonsense: shoes and belts haven't been problems for decades. But all these checks have a very definite cost. Everything is based on risk, and here's a thing that nobody on that segment was talking about: everyone thinks that these boorish indignities means that the TSA is protecting the public. But, in fact, I submit that the TSA is addressing the symptoms, not the disease.
Let me give a simple example I haven't heard or seen others raise. Suppose you have a terrorist highly skilled in the martial arts. Certainly that constitutes more of a threat than, say, a woman carrying tiny scissors in her purse. How are TSA personnel going to check for someone's knowledge of the martial arts? Or maybe a pilot ate something poorly prepared at lunch or is upset and distracted by a conversation with his wife.
As I've mentioned in other posts, many things affect airline safety, and yet airline safety is probably better than highway safety. Other examples include pilot performance, weather conditions and aircraft maintenance. Not to mention TSA personnel performance and training issues in carrying out relevant searches.
Another point is that I don't hear any of these pundits questioning whether there are less intrusive alternative methods (e.g., technology able to detect distinctive characteristics), or (if the chemicals have a certain odor), trained dogs. (Even if they don't, the presence of police dogs may affect the behavior of relevant suspects.)
Moreover, it makes no sense to do a detailed screening of everybody. A properly implemented sampling procedure maintains deterrence while minimizing the inconvenience of most passengers.
Finally, there's the sheer arrogance of the government which believes that citizens must surrender to its arbitrary fiat which makes a mockery of liberty; in fact, it derives its consent from the governed.
Charles Krauthammer, "Don't Touch My Junk":
Thumbs UP!
Everyone knows that the entire apparatus of the security line is a national homage to political correctness. Nowhere do more people meekly acquiesce to more useless inconvenience and needless indignity for less purpose. Wizened seniors strain to untie their shoes; beltless salesmen struggle comically to hold up their pants; 3-year-olds scream while being searched insanely for explosives - when everyone, everyone, knows that none of these people is a threat to anyone. The ultimate idiocy is the full-body screening of the pilot... All he has to do is drive [the plane] into the water.I have been a vocal defender of the rights of Muslim Americans. But even they must acknowledge the facts that the 9/11 terrorists, Richard Reid (the shoe bomber), Faisal Shahzad (the Times Square bomber), Major Hasan (Ft. Hood), and others professing a fidelity to Islam have murdered or attempted to murder Americans in a disproportionate percentage relative to the other world religions. Chechen women are suspected of suicide bomb attacks on Russian flights and subways. There is no doubt that the relative percentage of these terrorists is low compared to the number of Muslims worldwide. But I would submit that any properly structured sampling would contain a commensurate number of Muslim passengers. This is not "discrimination" any more than a woman with a family history of cancer has more frequent medical tests or a good driver, with fewer accidents/costs, shouldn't have to subsidize the insurance of a bad driver.
But I would like to go beyond Charles' analysis and suggest that the detailed inspections also serve a political purpose, i.e., the TSA is on the job, it's on the lookout for rogue elements, it's catching the bad guys by targeting everyday Americans. Never mind time and again it's been a day late and a dollar short.
Of course, I disagree; I think instead of wasting its resources fruitlessly inconveniencing everyday Americans, the TSA should focus its energy and resources on identifying risks based on available data and relevant factors...
Political Humor
A thief broke into a house in Alaska and found $100,000 but only took $20,000. Police are searching for a man with simple dreams. - Conan O'Brien
[Only 20%? I think we can safely rule out the IRS...]
TSA agents can now feel the inside of passengers’ thighs. I get more action going through airline security than I did all through high school. - Jimmy Kimmel
[Great...The TSA gets to third base with my girlfriend, whereas I can barely get to first...What's worse is when she gives the agent her phone number... My friend and his wife have decided to spice up their sex life; she has him don a TSA uniform... My problem is with those passengers whom want to help out the TSA by not stopping with taking off their shoes....]
Musical Interlude: Instrumentals/One-Hit Wonders
Walter Murphy, "A Fifth of Beethoven"
