Travel and Security

Most people who travel by air should have reason to wonder about the effectiveness of the so-called security measures.

In the great list of oxymorons, "morbidly obese Transportation Security Agency Screener" has to rank up near the top. Yesterday, I spotted three of them at Dulles International Airport. What use would they be in the case of an unruly passenger?

As usual, the security screening was a farce. Any disabled person of evil intent - traveling with his or her own wheelchair - can easily smuggle large quantities of contraband past the checkpoints.

The biggest problem is political correctness: TSA screeners are prohibited from requiring a disabled person to transfer out of a wheelchair so that the cushion may be properly inspected. They don't have the needed skills or equipment either.

Then, there is the question of prosthetic legs. Again, political correctness prohibits asking a passenger to remove a leg so that it may go through the x-ray machine. Much the same applies to shoes: if you have a plausible reason to claim that removing shoes is too difficult, the only inspection is to swipe for explosive residue. There is no x-ray inspection of those shoes for metal and other weapons.

The good news is that the rules changed in a field in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

Before that, passengers on a hi-jacked airplane were instructed to sit quietly and to do what they were told while being flown to some third world hellhole from which, after three days of extreme discomfort, they would eventually be rescued. Given that the job of passenger on a hi-jacked airliner now includes a death sentence, I believe that the vast majority of us will attempt to take back the airplane and, if necessary, crash it before the nefarious designs of the hijackers can be brought to fruition.

That helps with the problem of using commercial airliners as cruise missiles. The question of blowing them up in flight is now the major issue. While law enforcement and intelligence services will block most attempts, one hundred successes will not outweigh a single failure.

The current system, however, allows the bureaucracy - and politicians - look like they are doing something. It won't save them from retribution after they fail but it keeps the pressure off for now.

Meanwhile we, the people, remain largely unprotected.