Security Theater

Maureen Dowd nails it:

If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?

The new procedures are all security theater. What is needed is to actually use the tools we already have and to reform them. For example, the no-fly list has so many false positives that it is worthless. The majority of people on it aren’t terrorists and everyone knows it, so they don’t enforce it rigorously. (It’s also unconstitutional, since it is punishment without a trial, being able to face ones accuses and see the evidence against one. Of course the parts of the US constitution having to do with making war and civil rights are largely in abeyance, anyway, except when it comes to being able to tote around a personal machine gun.)

The kid had every possible warning flag. He’s the person they should have been strip searching, as opposed to random strip searches and pat downs which do almost nothing.

As for all the new rules, they won’t make anyone safer, but they will make air travel even more unpleasant than it already is. And given that air travel is already extraordinarily safe, far more so than driving a car or crossing the street, again, the new rules are just security theater.