singularity's Journal: On Airport Security

At Midway Airport, I was allowed to walk through normally.

At Oakland, everyone is told to take their shoes off.

At Louisville International Airport, I was told to take my shoes off. The gentleman behind me was allowed to keep his on.

I consider myself a frequent traveller, both before and after September 11th. I had flown internationally before that date and had seen the increased security in place in Europe. I had also noticed the very lax security in the States. Now I fly about once a month or so.

I believe we have gone from too little security to too much. TSA does not seem to be able to figure out what it wants to do. Gone are the random checks at the gate. Gone is the check of IDs at the gate. Now we just have over-eager security people at the security check-through.

And heaven forbid you should try to wait at the arrivals area.

My thoughts: A person is always going to be able to sneak things on a plane that would allow a terrorist to take that plane over. So assume we are getting 98% of the things that would allow you to take over a plane. Suppose we make security a lot easier but only get 96% of the weapons.

Sounds good to me.

Besides, all this security at airports just means that terrorists are going to move on to easier targets. Great, we have moved terrorists from a known problem to an unknown, unprotected target.

I have more thoughts on the matter, but those can wait until a later update.

I travel a lot too

[MousePotato]

and I have to agree with you. About once every six weeks I am on a plane to somewhere for a martial arts seminar or camp. There has been way too many times that I have seen 80 year old ladies being frisked or having their stuff opened up and rummaged through. It is infuriating to see happen.

I don't mind if they search me and yet I am hardly ever searched by them. Yeah, I've had to take off my shoes but that has been the extent of it. Never had the carry on bag searched (of course they have been xray'd) or