PORT COLUMBUS AIRPORT–I‘m not terribly shy or insecure about my manhood, so when the TSA selected me five minutes ago to go through the nudie-scanner, I went along. If I had protested and thus missed my flight, it would have imposed an added burden on my wife, home alone the past few days with a gaggle of kids (don’t tell the Washington Post’s Lisa Miller). The bourgeoisie will always sacrifice liberty for convenience and comfort, I suppose.
What pissed me off most was not the invasion of privacy or the inhuman way in which they deal with you — the TSA lady didn’t say a word, she just held her hands over head, and I was supposed to imitate her, posing like a criminal the cops are afraid might be armed. (Another agent ordered me to stand on a mat, not telling me why or for how long. When I asked why, he was surprised, and answered that someone sitting in a room needed to review this picture — essentially a nude picture of me — presumably to ensure I wasn’t carrying any explosives.)
What pissed me off the most was knowing that his whole dog-and-naked-pony show wasn’t doing anything to make us safer. It was security theater — intended to show that the federal government is serious about keeping us safe. If it provides some profits to well-connected companies at the same time, that’s fine too.
Security expert Bruce Schneier puts it well.
He wants us to trust that a 400-ml bottle of liquid is dangerous, but transferring it to four 100-ml bottles magically makes it safe. He wants us to trust that the butter knives given to first-class passengers are nevertheless too dangerous to be taken through a security checkpoint. He wants us to trust the no-fly list: 21,000 people so dangerous they’re not allowed to fly, yet so innocent they can’t be arrested. He wants us to trust that the deployment of expensive full-body scanners has nothing to do with the fact that the former secretary of homeland security, Michael Chertoff, lobbies for one of the companies that makes them. He wants us to trust that there’s a reason to confiscate a cupcake (Las Vegas), a 3-inch plastic toy gun (London Gatwick), a purse with an embroidered gun on it (Norfolk, VA), a T-shirt with a picture of a gun on it (London Heathrow) and a plastic lightsaber that’s really a flashlight with a long cone on top (Dallas/Fort Worth).
I found this story via Ryan Young.
