Please Remove Your Underwear

What's Next For Air Travelers?

The recent attempt by a few British citizens to detonate liquid bombs on board international bound airplanes set off dramatic security impositions on European and American airports. The thwarted attack came just in time to prevent the loosening of restrictions by the Transportation Security Administration.

For a moment ignore the fact that the potential bombers were stopped not by an actual security checkpoint at an airport, but instead by preventive investigative anti-terrorism. Indeed, recent events have proven one thing: security checkpoints will inevitably be breached through innovation and the best anti-terror tool is pre-attack investigative work.

The would be bombers found what amounts to a loophole in airport security; common household objects can be combined to create explosives. The result was a blanket ban on liquids which will likely continue during the foreseeable future. But consider just how safe the world thought they were on August 9th when everyone was carrying bottles of water and toothpaste and shampoo in their carryon luggage.

On December 21, 2001, no one thought twice about passengers bringing matches or butane lighters onto airplanes. Twenty-four hours later, Richard Reid attempted to light his shoe bombs using a match. Suddenly both became prohibited items. Passengers since have been allowed to bring matches, but not lighters onto airplanes. Gas lighters were about to be unbanned by the TSA largely because screeners were wasting their time confiscating tens of thousands of them each day.

Now the TSA has expanded the list of prohibited items. Assuming of course that the one reason airport screeners have failed numerous breach of security tests performed by government auditors and journalists, adding to the list of prohibited items will likely detract from screening efforts.

Airline travelers should not expect to bring baby chew toys with gels. Travelers with bad feet won't be allowed shoe inserts that contain gel. Liquids like bottled water, factory sealed or not, will also be banned. And now every flight will come with the odor of an Italian subway as deodorant will also be prohibited. The list of banned items is now so comprehensive that the next step will be to require passengers to incinerate their clothing before boarding a plane, at which point travelers would be given hospital gowns for the duration of their flight.

The bottom line is that no matter how "secure" airports become, terrorists will find a way to breach that security. If clothing was prohibited, terrorists would no doubt hide weapons in flaps of fat and body cavities. The point here is that security resources should be turned to preventing terrorism before terrorists even show up at the airport. As tight as security has been, security screeners were not responsible for stopping Richard Reid or the most recent bomb plot. Indeed, the government should cease wasting time and money on mundane screening restrictions which have proven over time to be grossly ineffective and instead divert money away from airport screening to intelligence services provided by the FBI, CIA, and NSA.

Law enforcement on the state and local levels should step up efforts-- sting operations that put the local meth lab out of business or the deportation of dish washers from local restaurants are doing nothing to make air travel more secure. Indeed, even efforts such as random bag searches on New York's subway system have failed to thwart terrorists. The big arrest that random bag searches yielded last year was one poor schmuck dumb enough to have a firecracker in his bag.

The only items that should be confiscated at airport screenings are firearms, knives, and sticks of dynamite. Confiscating shampoo, contact lens solution, and baby formula waste time and resources that could be better spent on counter intelligence. Terror plots are not stopped at airport gates. They are stopped in local neighborhoods where terrorists live, plot, and plan. Terrorism is prevented by vigilance and training, investigations and research. Compared to the long security lines, the expensive shiny x-ray machines, or the invasive rubber glove or a strip search, intelligence gathering may not be sexy or make headlines or even seem particularly pro-active, but in the end, the only proven strategy that effectively prevents terrorism.

That being said, we can only imagine what a long distance flight might entail now: smelly passengers unable to apply deodorant, crying babies denied their chew toys, angry old men with aching feet, and not enough bottled water to go around.