Jay P. Greene's Blog

(Guest post by Greg Forster)

Last week I was on the road, and coming through airport security on my way home Friday I was selected for special scrutiny. It was a truly disheartening experience.

Not because I mind being scrutinized, but because of the amazingly incompetent way it was done. If I’d been carrying any contraband, it would have been ridiculously easy to evade security.

We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. Look at the irrationality of the way they screen the general population. They scan our shoes separately because years ago some guy snuck in a bomb in his shoes. I guess there’s no other part of our clothing we could ever use to sneak in a bomb! And they strictly control the liquids we’re allowed to bring on. Unless those liquids are contained in a baby bottle or prescription vial, in which case they’ll be waved through without inspection.

And let’s not forget Danielle Crittenden’s experiment wearing a full burka for a week to see what it was like. In the last of the four installments, she goes to DC’s National Airport wearing the burka and buys a one-way, same-day, refundable ticket to New York, announcing to the ticket agent that she has no luggage. She’s pulled aside for additional screening – but they never look under her burka. She could have had a bomb under there, and nobody would have known. They don’t even feel confident that they have the right to look at her face to confirm that she is the person depicted on her ID:

“Do you have to wear black?”

“No,” I replied. “But black is more traditional, more conservative. You blend more in.”

“Not here.” He laughed. “You stand out.”

The woman began telling me about her religious upbringing. It was at this point I realized my security inspection was over, and I was now conducting an Islamic tutorial: Burkas 101. Other passengers selected for secondary screening came and went. I’d been held back for a good quarter hour.

Then the female guard, growing cautious again, asked if it was “culturally okay” for me to remove my face covering. “When women like you come through, we don’t know what’s ‘correct.’ Like if I want to see that your face matches your ID, can I ask you to show me your face?”

It’s a good thing I was wearing a mask so the guard could not see my astonishment. The security agents at the airport serving the nation’s capital–bare seconds of air distance from Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, the White House–did not feel entitled to check the identities of veiled women. Clearly, they hadn’t even received any special sort of instructions about it.

I assured the security agent that it was indeed okay for a woman officer to ask a veiled woman to show her face. More than okay! I stressed again and again: So long as only women saw my face I’d have no trouble removing my mask if you wanted to check my ID!! Really, it’s fine…!

The guard nodded. “Thank you–you’ve been so helpful,” she said, rising. “We don’t want to keep you. Hey, have a great time in New York!”

And so I passed through security without ever having to show my face.

Fortunately, my ticket was refundable. Just as the friendly Delta agent had promised.

If you want to read the whole thing, here’s parts one, two, and three, along with three subsequent discussions.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s my own excellent adventure:

When the guy at Dulles checking boarding passes looked at my pass, he turned around and shouted, “runner!” Then he turned back and, without a word to me, started checking the next person’s pass.

Let me pause for a moment to note that here in Milwaukee, I’ve seen people selected for extra screening, and they’re politely told that they’ve been selected for extra screening, and the process is then briefly and politely explained to them. And there was almost no line behind us, so he wasn’t rushing to accomodate a crowd.

But the more important point is that, while he was waiting for a “runner” to come and take my boarding pass, the man paid no attention to me whatsoever. My carry-on and my “personal item” (a plastic bag) were sitting on the floor. If either or both had contained contraband, I could have simply left them there and picked up the bags of my associate who was travelling with me, and my associate (who was the next person checked and who therefore knew right away that he had not been selected for additional screening) could have picked up mine. No one would have been the wiser.

Then the “runner” comes and takes my boarding pass, and the guy checking passes grunts that I’m to take my bags (not that he knows which ones are mine) and go through security.

So I take my bags over to the security line and start taking off my coat and shoes, etc. The “runner” has now handed off my boarding pass to the guy on the other side of security and is doing other things. Nobody is watching me as I fiddle with my stuff, open my bag and put my keys and cell phone inside, etc. If I’d wanted to dump something under the table, it would have been easy enough to do – I had a bulky coat that I had to take off and fiddle with, which could have been used to transfer something to the floor while I was bent over to take off my shoes, even if somebody had been watching over my shoulder, which they weren’t.

I go through security, then I’m taken aside and wanded. Then I’m sat down in a chair and my bags are brought over and placed on a table. The guard explains that he’s going to open my bags one by one and inspect them, and it’s important that I not touch my bags until the inspection is complete.

Then he picks up the first bag and moves it over to another table to open it, turning completely around so that his back is toward me as I sit there, unobserved, right next to the bags that I’m not supposed to touch.

He inspects each bag with his back toward me the entire time. Then I’m free to go.

I would feel nervous about revealing these weak points to potential terrorists, but they’re so obvious that anyone who cares to know about them already will. It’s clear that the TSA isn’t anxious to prevent people from circumventing security, and who am I to try to be more TSA than the TSA?

Airport security is a placebo. They knew it was a placebo when they tightened it after 9/11. The goal was to get people feeling like it was safe to fly, so that the economy would come unstuck and grow again. But now, they dare not admit it was a placebo. So the farce rolls on, year after year, getting ever more farcical as new and more ridiculous features are stuck onto a system that does nothing whatsoever to accomplish its ostensible core task.

It’s kind of like how we hold elections whose real outcome is determined by which side is more proficient at vote fraud and judicial manipulation. It’s a collossal lie that the smooth functioning of society requires.