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A quick word on the TSA scanner/pat-down outrage, after reading Digby’s piece on “security theater”, and TSA Administrator John Pistol’s op-ed in yesterday’s USA Today.
I attended Yom Kippur services a few months ago at Temple Beth Am synagogue in Williamsville, New York, as I do pretty much every year. Every year patrons are asked to remove objects from their pockets and are patted down. I was, it went smoothly, and I went on my way.
I was in Charlottesville last Saturday for a Dave Matthews Band show, and I was patted down before entering John Paul Jones Arena, like every other patron.
I will be home for Thanksgiving this week and will attend a Buffalo Sabres game on Friday, and will be patted down, like I am at every Sabres home game.
The attendance at these three events, non-overlapping, is just under 35,000 people. Yet those screenings were and always are so pathetically cursory that I often joke with my companions on the way in about the knifes or other weapons I could have easily hidden in my shoe, under my belt, or any number of other places. If they can’t stop a guy like me from bringing a weapon in, they sure can’t stop someone a lot better and more dangerous than me. But hey, we shouldn’t go too far into people’s privacy- just far enough to keep people feeling safe.
And you know what? That’s the real security theater, here- not the airports. It’s the events that have tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand people attending, but don’t involve an airplane, so just-a-little-screening-but-not-too-much will do. Often it’s because of money- I bet some authorities would like to have screening at every DC metro stop, but it’s not doable. And I don’t want my civil liberties violated, but I’d also like to not get hurt attending a concert, or religious service, or sporting event. Yet when TSA decides it will do that job, except doing it in a way that is far more thorough, people feel violated.
I don’t know what the balance is, and I don’t pretend to be a terrorism expert. And the new procedures have certain civil liberty concerns. But I will say that the new TSA procedures aren’t the outrage, to me. It’s in what Digby writes:
It’s not like the they haven’t shown that they are creative enough to do something other than blowing up an airplane to make their point. Look at the London and Madrid subway bombings or the Mumbai operation or that horrible Chechen school hostage taking.
Exactly. Terrorism goes far beyond the airports. The outrage is what is not being done to improve just-a-little-screening-but-not-too-much checks- or none at all.
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