On one of the busiest travel days of the year, as protesters vow to challenge screening and pat-down procedures by TSA security officers, the US has announced it is reconsidering whether or not all this delaying, annoying, scanning and touching is actually necessary.
A great many people have reported embarrassing or frustrating experiences. TSA gathered and stored 35,000 photos that were supposed to never have been taken. Statisticians have pointed out that your odds of getting cancer from the scans– one-in-35 million– were the same as getting blown to smithereens by an airplane bomber.
It is frequently pointed out that almost all our security procedures are designed to prevent the last assault. We are warned to not carry packages from strangers. Our shoes–and now our underwear–is being scrutinized because of how thwarted bombers smuggled explosives. We cannot bring open water or liquid containers through security because of an attempt at Heathrow.
All this stuff sucks. In fact going to airports itself has come to suck. Flying, once glamorous is now an issue of bad food, uncomfortable seats, callous airline staff and now tightened security feels like a straw breaking a collective camel’s back.
I hate the same stuff as you do. I do not enjoy security. It seems that every time TSA gets systems running smoothly, another step gets inserted in the process.
But personally, I support all these steps and am grateful that they have been instituted. I for one, would rather be frisked and scanned, than bombed and dead and I think that is the real choice.
The odds may be even right now between getting cancer from excessive scanning as from the person sitting next to you having ignitable material in his/her under-garments.
But if we stop searching, scanning and patting, you can bet that the offs of getting blown up will rapidly increase. Every time there is an attempt, successful or unsuccessful, security adjusts to eliminate that attempt. If TSA did not adjust, that attempt would be tried again and again and our odds of getting blown up while flying would dramatically increase.
This may be inconvenient and annoying. It may also sometimes be humiliating or intrusive. I have never had a bad experience with a TSA guard, but there are lots of them and perhaps some have behaved inappropriately.
But the same can be said about cops, teachers or priests.
I for one am grateful for airport security. And when I list reasons for gratitude tomorrow, I will note that I have flown over 1.5 million miles, without once encountering a terrorist assault.
The lines and delays seem like a small price to have paid for that fact, at least they do to me.
