Airport Security

I wrote this at the airport last Saturday, and finally got around to posting it.

As I write this, I’m sitting in a terminal at Houston George Bush International Airport. I usually tune out the assorted generic announcements that come over the intercom about security and unattended bags because I’ve heard them all before. Some of them may come off as a bit Orwellian, but I think it’s perfectly reasonable that we be alert for suspicious behavior and refuse to take bags from strangers. What made me sit up and listen today was an announcement that I had never heard before. It may be that this particular warning is unique to Houston, or it may be a new addition to the security warning script. The announcement that struck me was a warning that “inappropriate” jokes and remarks about airport security may result in arrest. I’m not surprised really, because intelligent people have avoided making jokes about airport terrorism for at least the last ten years. There was something about the disembodied voice that really drove it home: our right to free speech is being abridged. I don’t think making jokes about airport security is a case of shouting fire in a movie theater. I think this is another case of security theater. For those unfamiliar with the term, “security theater” is the derogatory name given to the assorted security regulations that have been enacted more for show than effect. Things like removing shoes at security checkpoints and limits on fluids in carry-ons are security theater. They are reactive rather than proactive and they promote inconvenience more than they promote security. I don’t deny that there are people who want to commit horrible crimes on planes and using planes as weapons, and I agree that we need to do what we can to prevent such crimes. What I object to are policies that are expensive, intrusive, and ineffective.

We need to accept that we can’t stop all crime, and that includes terrorism. There’s a certain baseline level that we just need to live with, as hard as that is. We need to punish the perpetrators, and we need to prevent terrorism where we reasonably can, but the post-9/11 notion that we can “beat” terrorism or “end” terrorism is as deluded as hoping to prevent all murder and theft. As a society, we need to accept that there are bad people, and those bad people introduce a certain level of danger. Looked at history, our present level of danger is trivial. For eons, all of humanity has lived in fear that a rival tribe would ride in over the hills and burn the village to the ground. That we have reduced that possibility to something rare and extraordinary is an accomplishment, and we shouldn’t lose sight of how significant that is.

We made a mistake declaring war on terrorism, because terrorism is not an enemy state; terrorism is crime. Terrorists are murderers that operate on a grand scale, and we should pursue them and treat them as criminals. To do otherwise legitimizes terrorism and validates terrorists. Terrorists are criminals. We should arrest those we can, try them for their crimes, and punish them. We have a system of criminal justice for this reason, and I cannot understand why we let the military usurp its authority. In the cases of other nations sponsoring terrorism, as Afghanistan did, or other quasi-nations sponsoring terrorism, as is happening in Somalia, there is a case for military intervention. However tempting, I think nation-building is a mistake. Destroy the threat and get out. Make it clear that we will cause irrevocable harm to our enemies, but don’t get caught up with turning them into our allies.

This brings me back to the topic of airport security. The system we have now is showy and somewhat effective, but it is incredibly inconvenient and encroaches on the freedoms of airline passengers. We need to create a system that is effective, rather than a system that looks good. We should implement more behavioral and demographic profiling. The fact is that very few terrorists are young mothers with babies. Very few terrorists are old men with replacement hips. Will there be people who abuse this? Certainly. There are people who will go to any length to hurt others, including employing young mothers and old men as suicide bombers. But back to my first point, we need to accept that the staggering, overwhelming majority of terrorists are not going to these lengths, and the staggering, overwhelming majority of young mothers are not terrorists. In addition to demographic profiling, we should implement more behavioral profiling. Train check-in agents and airport personnel to identify suspicious behavior, and then track those individuals with more scrutiny. I guess what I’m getting at is stop using a one-size-fits-all approach to security and start focusing our attention and energy on those most likely to harm us.

I would be remiss if I didn’t make a comment about the full-body scanners recently installed at security checkpoints in several airports. When I first heard about these, I was excited because I imagined they would make security go faster. Finally, we could keep our belts on and our coins in our pockets! I was wrong. For whatever reason, these scanners are used in the same manner as the metal detectors they’re replacing, except slower. Not only do you have to remove your belt, your pocket change, and your cell phone, but you also need to empty your pockets of non-metallic items like your wallet. Then you need to stand still in the middle of the machine while it scans you, a process that is slower than striding through a metal detector. Since these machines are slower and more intrusive than metal detectors, the only justification for them is that they make us safer than metal detectors. The question is, do we care about being that safe? Do we want to give up assorted conveniences and freedoms in exchange for a marginal increase in security? Are the returns worth the cost? As I argued above, there is a certain level of terrorism that is so costly to prevent that we have no choice but to accept it. I think these scanners, as they are currently implemented, cost too much in time, inconvenience, and offended citizens to be worth the marginal security gains they afford us. I think that we should continue to employ scanners, but not as a replacement for metal detectors. I think they should be a voluntary option for individuals with piercings, prosthetics, or metallic clothing who cannot go through a metal detector. These individuals would otherwise be required to select a pat-down, and that’s excessive. I should also note that there’s some evidence that the backscatter x-ray technology used in some of these scanners may not be safe. The jury is still out on backscatter, but there is a safe (non-ionizing) alternative in the form of millimeter-wave RF scanners, which have also been employed by the TSA in the same role as the backscatter scanners. The prudent thing to do would be to use only the millimeter-wave devices, if only to quiet the naysayers.