One of the Washington Post’s columnists has a wonderfully scathing rebuke of the airport security system.

Almost none of the agony you are experiencing is making you safer, at least not to any statistically significant or economically rational degree. Certainly any logical analysis of the money that has been spent on the airport security system since Sept. 11, 2001, and the security that the system has created, must lead to that conclusion.

This is not to say that the uniformed screeners aren’t more professional than they were in the past or that their presence doesn’t create a degree of psychological comfort, both for government officials, who can claim to be doing something to keep us all safer, as well as for those passengers who continue to believe that engaging in ritualistic shoe-removal gives them mysterious, magical protection against terrorism. On the grand scale of things, though, that’s all it is: magical protection.

Personally, I now refuse to take my shoes off unless they tell me to, and they haven’t told me to for the past few months. Of course, I haven’t had to go to DC recently, either. Still, I’ll give up my Safety Magic to mitigate the risk dying in a crowd rush after someone notice the holes in my socks form an image of the Virgin Mary.

Getting back on-topic, we’re reminded that

Probably the most significant measure taken in the past four years was one funded not by the government but by the airline industry, which put bulletproof doors on its cockpits at the relatively low price of $300 million to $500 million over 10 years. In extremely blunt terms, that means that while it may still be possible to blow up a plane (and murder 150 people), it is now virtually impossible to drive a plane into an office building (and murder thousands). By even the crudest cost-benefit risk analysis, bulletproof cockpit doors, which nobody notices, have the potential to save far more lives, at a far lower cost per life, than the screeners who open your child’s backpack and your grandmother’s purse while you stand around in your socks waiting for them to finish.

But, then, this isn’t a country that has ever been good at risk analysis. If it were, we would never have invented the TSA at all. Instead, we would have taken that $5.5 billion, doubled the FBI’s budget, and set up a questioning system that identifies potentially suspicious passengers, as the Israelis do.

Which is why I conclude that we don’t actually want value for money. Magic words, it seems, are what make Americans feel really safe.

I’m always glad to see a major news outlet pointing out that “Inconvenience” is not “Security.”

I agree with this: security screening at airports is a major nuisance, nothing more. Over here, the ridicule goes even further. Apparently, airports decide for themselves how to handle security.
Frankfurt had me pull out my laptop and turn it on while they watched. That actually makes sense as it shows them that it’s not just a front for a blow-up device. Munich had me take it out of my backpack and run it separately through the X-Ray scanner. God only knows what for. Stuttgart didn’t make a fuss at all and had me go through like they should.
Brussels, I’ve been told, has you pull off your shoes more often than not. Palma de Mallorca had me even remove my belt and the metal detector still went off from the rivets in my pants.
So, all it shows is that it’s a mess that’s only supposed to be useful.

What always amazes me is how much attention is given to ordinary passengers while all those contract screeners, contract security staff, contract baggage handlers and other personnel with access to restricted areas generally doesn’t go through even the most lax background screening.

We haven’t learnt anything from the past, unfortunately. We constantly undermine the adversary, overlook clear risks and work on ’smoke and mirrors’ approach. What feels secure because it’s inconvenient is not necessarily secure.