At Chicago’s Midway Airport, there’s a sign at the security checkpoint declaring that no knives or forks—metal or plastic—will be permitted past the inspection station. Once past the inspection station, it’s only a few short steps to the food court, where there are plenty of plastic knives and forks. Those with a bit more initiative could even steal metal ones from the concourse restaurants.
This is not a warning about the alarmingly lax security at Midway. Indeed, the things people eat in the Midway food court are probably considerably more lethal than the knives and forks. The point here is that people who’ve resumed business flying—and there aren’t that many of us yet—are starting to suspect they’re being used.
It means enduring the hour-long waits at security checkpoints—featuring a massive show of force and a massive show of inefficiency—and knowing there’s a lot less going on than meets the eye. People are losing time in line—and sometimes even missing flights—because the political public demanded that the politicians do something about the intelligence and security failures of Sept. 11. And in politics, it’s more important to do something—anything—than to do something intelligent. Oh yes, and for the privilege of this folly, we’re all facing an additional surcharge on our tickets.
There’s a basic futility to airport security measures. The system was never more than a rough screen, capable of weeding out the amateurs, the inept and the undetermined. Of course, it wasn’t able to stand up to the comprehensive planned assault of Sept. 11. But it has largely served the country well over the past 30 years, and expectations of absolute impermeability are unrealistic.
Some security enthusiasts have gotten post facto attention for pointing out the limitations of current security measures and suggesting even more precautions, but that is largely a reflection of what it takes to get on cable news these days. To be sure, airport security could be more effective. The trouble is that it cannot be made infallible. The job of screening passengers and carry-on luggage is a mind-numbingly tedious one. Millions of people take off every day, and almost none of them are carrying weapons. To find the half-dozen people who might try to carry weapons on board with malign intent in a given month—while screening the millions of others—calls for an alertness beyond normal human capacity.
While better technology and procedures might help, the fact remains that even the maligned pre-Sept. 11 security measures were right 99.9 percent of the time in determining whether a passenger was carrying a weapon. Is that good enough? It’s not, considering the tragedy, but we also have to look at the tradeoff involved in getting better, since we will never get to perfect unless we prohibit passengers entirely.
To a certain degree, airport security these days is reminiscent of the old story of the policeman who found the drunk on his hands and knees beneath a street lamp. When he asked the drunk what he was doing, the fellow replied that he was looking for his lost wallet.
“Where did you lose it?” the policeman asked. “Back in the alley,” the drunk replied. “But the light for looking for it is much better here.”
The real potential for stopping terrorist assaults in the air lies in the activities of the CIA and FBI. It’s the heightened vigilance of these agencies, more than the aggressive campaign to keep people with tweezers out of the skies, that has prevented other attacks like Sept. 11’s. After all, the easiest way to find a needle in a haystack is to apprehend the fellow putting it there, rather than randomly sifting through all the hay.
Moreover, in a free and open society like the United States, preventing terrorists from boarding airplanes will only succeed in redirecting them to other kinds of targets, unless the effort is accompanied by aggressive police and intelligence measures.
The aspect of current security measures most painful for the traveling public is the part driven by politics. In the wake of any major national failure, Congress can invariably be counted on to investigate. While that’s usually within the scope of congressional authority, it doesn’t necessarily yield good outcomes.
It’s the combination of well-meaning people with massive egos, huge appetites for the spotlight, and abundant sanctimony that produces ample finger-pointing and little dispassionate analysis—the pursuit of culprits and scapegoats and things that can be fixed with the easy passage of a simple-minded law. Congress is not good at dealing with subtleties.
To be sure, airport security could also be made more efficient, which would make air travel more tolerable. While the airlines were criticized after September for penny-pinching on security, the federal government’s takeover of such functions is reason for concern here, as a government operation will be risk averse and immune to the balancing consideration of getting passengers on their way.
But that’s another matter, and air travel remains difficult and stunted because of the heightened hassle factor. There is an engineering rule of thumb that holds that 80 percent of a project’s benefit could be achieved for 20 percent of the overall cost, and that securing the last 20 percent of the benefit accounts for 80 percent of the cost. Security planners might do well to keep that balance in mind.
