Airport Security Treatment
This morning the news reported that Lambert Field, the international airport serving Saint Louis, Missouri, had a security breach when a homeless man managed to walk through a service gate when guards were distracted searching a vehicle, and wandered onto the field. The homeless man was discovered sleeping on a waiting plane during a routine security check. Thank god the public safety is being safeguarded with all the new high technology, high security, no liquids outside of a clear zip lock bag, remove your shoes, walk through this machine, surrender to the hand wand search, got to go through your luggage, got to confiscate your lip balm, prove this is breast milk, get out that wheelchair granny so we can pat you down, code blue, agent orange, red alert, shields up, show two forms of identification, have your ticket ready, where’s your boarding pass, what we have here is a failure to communicate, how come your last name sounds Middle Eastern, turn on your laptop, turn off your MP3 player, why are you making eye contact with me, scrutiny at the security gate.
The last time I went through the airport, I had to go through a winding line of removable turnstiles that resembled the queue at the latest, greatest roller coaster on opening day at the amusement park. Nobody moves with any alacrity. Nobody is making any effort to remember that the people going through their machines are actually people and not just livestock on the way to an aluminum tube cattle car with wings. Everybody is so focused on making sure everybody is equally inspected and examined at the front door that nobody realizes that the back door is hanging off its hinges.
The last time I stood in that line waiting impatiently for my turn for “the treatment”, I saw various airport employees come to the gate, flash their identification card, and walk through a separate gate free from X rays, magnetic rays, cosmic rays, and gamma rays designed to find the slightest trace of a fingernail clipper. Some of these people looked like members of flight crews. Other people looked like they might be workers in one of the concession stands or restaurants or bars on the other side. No doubt that these people had legitimate business on the other side. But so do I. I had to wonder why are these people trusted not to be somebody wanting to do harm to the public and everybody else is assumed prime candidates for “the treatment”. There are stories of flight crews falling asleep in the cabin and letting the auto pilot fly past their destination, flight crews working while drunk, and flight crews so unwelcoming to their passengers that they would be willing to detour a plane to the nearest runway to evict a mother for breast feeding a baby. Some of these people are so hostile they would make ideal terrorist.
If I was planning some kind of terrorism against air travelers, the last thing I would do is try to take the tools of my trade though the front door. I’d get one of these trusted airport employees or flight crew members to take my tools for me. I would recruit one of those guards too busy to catch a homeless man. Then again, I’d go through that back door so broken that a homeless man can walk through hell bent on finding someplace to sleep. Imagine what he could have done if he had some nefarious intent. And yet, I’m sure he was, or soon will be, poked and prodded, and interrogated to the nth degree. I’m surprised that the office of homeland security didn’t claim him to be the latest terrorist ringleader that so skillfully broke through the layers of airport security that he has got to be O’s number two man. There are so many holes in the entire system that it just barely has more integrity than the seven hundred miles of fencing being used to protect our two thousand mile long Mexican border.
I’m sure the Federal Aviation Administration has its reasoning for airport security being so draconian for the average traveler. I’m just not sure if it is good reasoning. With all the no warrant wiretapping and secret searches of people’s property and the seizure of business and data records from any and every institution throughout the country, I have no doubt that a federal agent of even modest analytical skills can find a terrorist operating here in the states if he or she really wanted to. The terrorist watch list is pretty useless when the list covers half the population. Having everybody stand at the gate waiting for their turn to be given “the treatment” while homeless people are walking up and sleeping on planes really doesn’t instill me with much faith in the system. It is a tremendous high profile waste of time and money to give the public the impression our government is doing what it can to make us feel safe.
We constantly hear stories about how some government agent tested an airport check point by sneaking a loaded .44 Magnum or the components for a neutron bomb through a detector and through the crackpot nine dollars an hour Transportation Security Agency personnel that run the cattle operation at the “treatment” station. Again, more evidence that this system is totally inept at what we believe their primary job to be. But anyone who really pays close attention will see that their primary job is not to make us safer, but only to make us feel safer. Trust me, the next time somebody manages to take down another plane, the body cavity search will be applied to that half of the population that appears on the watch list.
