While undoubtedly there are those who will tout the announcement that the UK has foiled a massive plan to blow up a series of trans-atlantic planes a success and we should all be growing warm fuzzies about now, I’d suggest that perhaps the exact opposite is true: About now, we should be feeling even less secure than ever.
The reason? Because the plot itself centered around a decade-old plan that uses liquid explosives to do the damage. This in itself should probably not cause any new panic, but the problem is that existing detection equipment cannot detect the explosives in question. That should make you wonder. The reaction of the government in our country is not to try and figure out how to do so, it is instead to make it mandatory that you remove your shoes.
If you don’t want to go through barefoot, you can even wear disposable booties – but you have to get rid of them before you leave the screening area. Really. I’m not making this up. This is what our government does. Read it for yourself. It’s from their web site. I only made a screen capture in case they change things one day. That’s probably against the law (or will be), but we’ll just keep it between us and consider it my little act of civil disobedience for the day.
Back to the point – does a line of shoeless people make you feel any safer? I certainly don’t, if for no other reason than most people already took their shoes off because it made things go faster than if they told you to do it after the little buzzer went off on you and then you had to do it anyway.
The only thing that has made me feel safer since the day of the terrorist attacks on 9/11 are the alleged actions of the people on United Flight 93. Yes, everyone, I said alleged. Because we don’t really know what happened, do we? No, I am not trying to infringe on the memory of those people in any way, and they are safely enshrined as heroes, okay? I’m just saying that we’ll never know for sure, and (follow carefully)… it doesn’t really matter.
At this point, we believe what happened – and to use a quote from Robert Wuhl, who himself took it from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” If you’ve never seen Wuhl’s HBO special entitled Assume the Position, try to catch it. It’s very entertaining.
To paraphrase, it’s not important if the legend is factual or not – once enough people believe that something happened that way, then that is the way that the story will be told and that is the way that people will believe it happened. In this case, whether or not the people on Flight 93 brought down the plane or simply were given a hero’s banner is irrelevant – everyone now believes that they stepped up and said “we’re not gonna take it”. That’s the legend, that’s what people believe, and so whether it is fact or not no longer matters.
Which brings us full circle. In a simpler time, when a hijacker wanted money, they presumably wanted to live (so they could spend the money). It was an easier problem to solve. When the hijackers don’t care about money, and they are willing to die, it makes no sense to look at a checklist of prohibited items. Any item at all – even innocuous things like pencils, car keys and paper clips – can be deadly.
Listen closely, security screeners: They really don’t even have to have items at all that they carry on a plane. A pillowcase filled with soda cans is plenty deadly and easy to come by. Ready to prohibit soft drinks being served? If so, better take on not only the airlines who are only too happy to charge for things, but the large sugar water providers, and the passengers may not be happy about losing yet another “luxury”.
Maybe instead of that we should look at how we approach things instead. Looking at behavior instead of inventory may make a load of sense. But we don’t want to offend anyone, do we? Perhaps it’s not a problem if we pick on the person who is nervous, can’t tell you what they did last night and looks like they don’t belong. The smart thing to do is use it wisely. Maybe I do see the problem. Getting “government” and “wise” to work together will be awfully challenging.