[Reader-list] The Illusion of Security: 9/11 and aftershave

[Paul D. Miller]

The Unkempt Results of Post-9/11 Airport Security Rules
A humorous review of the "illusion of safety" airport security brings-along with the lack of personal hygiene products
By Steve Mirsky
Scientific American Magazine
January 30, 2009
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=not-a-close-shave&sc=CAT_SP_20090202

"'Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much
surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to
speak good English). 'Now I'm opening out like the
largest telescope that ever was! Good-by, feet!... Oh,
my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes
and stockings for you now, dears?'" The smart money says
that it won't be the folks from the Transportation
Security Administration, who make two million travelers
take their shoes off every day at airports in the U.S.

Lewis Carroll's Alice would have had trouble
distinguishing reality from Wonderland had she been with
me on the Sunday after Thanksgiving as I watched a TSA
officer confiscate my father's aftershave at the airport
in Burlington, Vt. It was a 3.25-ounce bottle, clearly
in violation of the currently permissible three-ounce
limit for liquids. Also clear was the bottle, which was
obviously only about a quarter full. So even the members
of some isolated human populations that have never
developed sophisticated systems for counting could have
determined that the total amount of liquid in the vessel
was far less than the arbitrarily standardized three
ounces. But the TSA guy took the aftershave, citing his
responsibility to go by the volume listed on the label.
(By the way, the three-ounce rule is expected to be
phased out late in 2009. Why not tomorrow? Because of
the 300-day-rules-change rule, which I just made up.)

Feeling curiouser, I did a gedankenexperiment: What if
the bottle had been completely empty-would he have taken
it then? No, I decided. When empty, the bottle becomes
just some plastic in a rather mundane topological
configuration. Not to mention that if you really banned
everything with the potential to hold more than three
ounces of liquid, you couldn't let me have my shoes
back. You also couldn't allow me to bring my hands
onboard. I kept these thoughts to myself, of course,
because I wanted to fly home, not spend the rest of the
day locked in a security office explaining what a
gedankenexperiment was.

I first commented on what I used to call "the illusion
of security" in this space in July 2003, after attending
a conference on freedom and privacy. We heard the story
of an airline pilot who had his nail clippers snatched
away by the TSA just before boarding his plane. He then
walked into a cockpit equipped with an ax. (Which is a
horrible tool for cutting your nails, although, I have
to admit, my dad might try. A former U.S. Marine and
builder, he does his manicuring with a foot-long metal
carpenter's file and some 80-grit sandpaper. And you
wonder how I got to be this way.)

It used to be that you could bring shaving cream with
you when boarding a plane, but they would take away your
razor. Now you can carry on a razor, and they take away
your shaving cream. (They did indeed seize my dad's
shaving cream at the airport in Fort Lauderdale the
Monday before Thanksgiving.)

Although the mostest curiouser thing has to be when
hundreds of people docilely snake through security lines
amid announcements that the "threat of a terrorist
attack is high." Compared to what? The day before,
perhaps, when the real threat posed by terrorists to
your life was much, much smaller than your chances of
dying in the bathtub. And today the threat is only much
smaller than your chances of dying in the bathtub.
Here's how you know that the terrorist threat isn't
really high: the airport is still open, and your flight
hasn't been canceled.

A much better term than "illusion of security" can be
found in an article by Jeffrey Goldberg in the November
2008 issue of the Atlantic: "security theater"
(www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/airport-security).
Goldberg holds that TSA agents and passengers go through
performances designed to make everybody feel better, but
with little effect. He talks about how he has been able
to carry knives and box cutters onto planes-he even got
past security with a device on his torso called a
Beerbelly, a bladder that holds up to 80 ounces of
liquid you can drink from through a tube.

Goldberg didn't fill the thing up, but he did exceed the
three-ounce limit by just 21 ounces. He believes that
our current airport procedures may succeed in catching
dumb terrorists. But the time, energy and money would be
better spent on gathering intelligence if we want to
catch the smart ones. And keep my dad clean-shaven.

Note: This article was originally printed with the
title, "Not a Close Shave".