The TSA is proposing loosening restrictions on pocket knives on planes. Have the terrorists won?
The federal agency in charge of aviation security is considering major changes in how it screens airline passengers, including proposals that an official said would lift the ban on carrying razorblades and small knives as well as limit patdown searches. The Transportation Security Administration will meet later this month to discuss the plan, which is designed to reduce checkpoint hassles for the nation’s 2 million passengers. It comes after TSA’s new head, Edmund S. “Kip” Hawley, called for a broad review in hopes of making airline screening more passenger-friendly.
Note that it’s not unusual for someone new to come in, look around, say “WTF?” and question hitherto unquestioned assumptions about The Right Way to Do Things. One reason why shifting folks around is often a good idea.
An initial set of staff recommendations drafted Aug. 5 also proposes that passengers no longer have to routinely remove their shoes during security checks. Instead, only passengers who set off metal detectors, are flagged by a computer screening system or look “reasonably suspicious” would be asked to do so, a TSA official said Saturday.
Again, a restriction that never made a heck of a lot of sense, “shoe bombers” not withstanding.
Any of the changes proposed by the staff, which also would allow scissors, ice picks and bows and arrows on flights, would require Hawley’s approval, this official said, requesting anonymity because there has been no final decision.
Good Lord! We’re liable to be hijacked by Robin Hood!
The reality, as DOF points out, is that the 9-11 hijackers succeeded, not because their box cutters were weapons that rendered them immune from the passengers, but because in most cases the passengers didn’t realize the mortal danger they were in, but did realize that some of them (each individual) might get hurt, perhaps badly, if they rocked the boat. Once the hijackers had access to the cockpit, it was pretty much all over.
But cockpits are now secured. And passengers realize that any given hijacker may be posing them at least as great a threat if not taken down as they do standing there waving a crochet hook or pair of scissors.
Nobody’s going to want to be the first person in such a charge, especially if someone is being threatened (a pocket knife or pair of scissors to a stewardess’s throat), but given the very real alternative, I wouldn’t count on a crowd being cowed were I a hijacker.
The Aug. 5 memo recommends reducing patdowns by giving screeners the discretion not to search those wearing tight-fitting clothes. It also suggests exempting several categories of passengers from screening, including federal judges, members of Congress, Cabinet members, state governors, high-ranking military officers and those with high-level security clearances.
Aha. Now I see the reasoning behind this: Congressfolk have been bitching about it.
So, what would it take for someone to fake being a Federal Judge? How does a Federal Judge go about booking or checking into a flight that gives them exemption from screening, and how might a hijacker take advantage of that? That sounds like a security hole. Besides which, as long as Congress-critters have to mingle with the hoi-polloi, they’ll be that much more sensitive to their concerns.
The rest? About damned time. Can’t happen soon enough for me.
Stand by for folks to claim this is all a cynical Administration attempt to pay back their corporate sponsors in the Evil Pocketknife Industry …