Are We Safer?

I do a fair amount of flying over the course of a year, mostly for work, but some for recreation. And as a frequent-ish flyer, I've become very familiar with the "routine" at American airports: shoes off, jacket off (the definition of jacket is quite broad), laptop out of the case, toiletries out and in the 3-1-1 baggy, all through the x-ray machine; no liquids through the security checkpoint (including what appears to be a number of common cosmetic products women carry in their purses), boarding pass in hand, etc. The new rules are no matches and no lighters, even in checked baggage (?)--those rules don't really affect me, though.

To be honest, the nuisance of all this doesn't really bother me--I've gotten used to it.

What bothers me is the nagging suspicion that this stuff actually makes us less safe in going through the airport. Why? Well, here's the reason. I think I understand the bureaucratic mind, and the typical TSA screener is a bureaucrat, a low-level one, doing a pretty boring job. ("Security is boring," as Frances always says.) Bureaucrats become very good at enforcing process/procedural rules, but in doing so, they become very, very bad at substance. The TSA airport rules are just a long list of process rules--see the list above. And if you've flown lately, you know that an inordinate amount of energy is actually expended to enforce those rules.

TSA agents swoop in like hawks to police the no liquid rule. I'm a few days late to the party, but this recent flap over the sippy cup at National Airport is Exhibit A.

Now, it's possible that terrorists, in the guise of middle-class women pushing baby strollers, with babies in them, may try to infiltrate security checkpoints with explosive liquids in small quantities in their babies' sippy cups, but I think that everyone has to admit that this is not that likely a possibility.

The same goes for women's cosmetics, or water bottles. I carried an empty water bottle in my backpack in going through security last weekend--you know, in that pouch on the side of the backpack that's made for the water bottle? The TSA agent gave that completely empty water bottle a close examination. Now, I'm sure that that is what the rules say to do. I mean, a Nalgene bottle could have a false bottom in it, hiding liquid explosives. And there was a woman nearby who had her purse searched because of some cosmetic item--I didn't see exactly what--that she hadn't realized was, more or less, liquid.

But the question I would ask is what are the TSA agents missing while they are expending so much energy in enforcing these extensive process rules? Or, to put it in a slightly different way, couldn't a savvy evildoer think of ways to exploit the TSA's obsession with water bottles, women's cosmetics, and shoes to actually do something dangerous?

This is not to blame the TSA people themselves. They are just doing their job, and they have strong incentives to enforce the (process) rules, no matter how silly or asinine. And each of the rules, taken by itself, probably makes some sense (although the jacket thing--why doesn't the metal detector suffice to check out my fleece?). But we are expending a lot of energy in this country making sure that shoes are x-rayed and that no one carries liquids through security checkpoints at airports.

Of course, all these procedures may give people (travellers) a sense that things are safer, even though the actually rules are neglibly related to that end. On the other hand, nothing may be so dangerous as a false sense of security, no?

TMcD posted on another interesting case last year.

One more, I can't resist: at BWI, there is a sign that says that it is a violation of Maryland law to take photographs of the security checkpoint. I'm pretty sure that this law is unconstitutional, at least "as applied" in certain circumstances I can easily imagine.

OK, just one more "funny" example of this: Where I work, if you go out of the building for coffee, and you set off the metal detector coming back in, with coffee in hand, they wand you, and then, just to make sure, the security guards make you open the coffee cup's lid so that they can see whether the coffee cup contains coffee. They don't, of course, make sure that the cup contains only coffee. So I'm not sure what this rule actually achieves, although it is followed, to the letter.