Gavel Gamut

(Week of 08 June 2015)

THE LION SLEEPS TONIGHT

The Transportation Security Agency’s airport security system was put to an internal test recently. The results were that 95% of weapons and drugs passed through without detection.

I suppose this means out of every 10 passengers, 10 were subjected to so-called security measures but 9 ½ of them could have still brought down a plane.

Passengers are not even the greatest threat. According to a statement made by Lauren Stover, the Miami airport security director, to CNN:

“One of the greatest vulnerabilities for this airport, and probably any airport is the insider threat.”

In other words, the baggage handlers, cleanup crews, restaurant workers, etc., who have daily access to the airplanes are potentially more dangerous than a baby in a perambulator or an elderly person in a wheelchair. And there is no federal requirement that employees be screened at security checkpoints.

This was well documented in December 2014 when a baggage handler was found to have brought guns to the airport in Atlanta and given them to passengers who had cleared security. This occurred on twenty different flights from Miami to New York.

The estimates for what the hydra-headed TSA costs America are widely divergent. But, estimates of one trillion dollars since 9/11 are probably in the ballpark. That does not consider the costs in delays and inconvenience to hundreds of millions of travelers.

Sometimes one might hear some politician whose district benefits from TSA employment and investment say, “But, who cares if we have to take off our shoes, we are safer now than before 9/11. Of course, the results of the recent test prove that 95% of the time we are no safer with TSA than without it.

In fact, pre-9/11 and post 9/11 look the same in terms of non-attacks. Many passengers can remember when there was no airport security and also remember there were only a handful of incidents for almost one hundred years.

Gentle Reader, you might be thinking, “Okay, Jim, so what should we do differently?” I respond: The FBI, the CIA and NSA are documenting every conversation of every potential passenger. They know the potential terrorists before they get to the airport. For all but a tiny portion of 330 million Americans that does not mean them. With the old PATRIOT Act and the new FREEDOM Act we are as close to 1984 as we can get. So why pretend otherwise? If our government cannot trust us, let’s at least quit the charade and avoid the indignity.

The results of the recent test of TSA remind me of the people who think their thoughts can control the actions of others, even of animals. If one convinces himself or herself that what they do keeps the lions away, then if they see no lions, it does not mean they are correct.

Or if one chants, “Wimoweh”, over and over and no lions appear, the village is no safer than before.