The Nightmare of Airport Security
Every time I fly, I'm amazed at the idiocy of airport security. (Six years after 9/11, and they still haven't figured out a way that people can take off their shoes without hopping around on a bare linoleum floor, then shuffling through the metal detector like some prisoner of war?)
When I came back from Miami a couple weeks ago, I lost some toiletries because, even though the amount in the clear tubes was well underneath the permissible amounts (amounts which are, as far as I can tell, completely arbitary), the
stated volume of the tubes was greater than that which is allowed.
So I love
Patrick Smith's Ask the Pilot column in which he talks about the absurdity of it all.
...It's our own United States that retains the crown for loopiest behavior. Any argument was put to rest earlier this fall, when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security presented the latest version of its "Secure Flight" anti-terrorism program, requesting that governments hand over a docket of personal data on all foreign airline passengers bound for the United States. (This would affect not only commercial flights arriving in the United States but those merely overflying U.S. territory -- an Air Canada plane, say, flying between Toronto and the Caribbean.) This data may include, among other things, a flier's union affiliations, reading preferences and -- look it up yourself if you don't believe me -- sexual habits. What somebody's sex life might have to do with blowing up a plane is something I can't begin to fathom; how any government might actually get wind of this information is even more troubling.
...I'm continually startled by the number of otherwise smart and reasonable people who believe that concourse security actually needs to be more intrusive and rigorous.
Yes! And meanwhile, the average TSA employee still looks he's taken a few too many punts to the head.....
