I am afraid to fly.
There, I said it. So, I guess "the terrorists" have defeated me. Except, I'm not afraid of in-flight terrorism. And I'm not afraid of my plane falling out of the sky due to some random equipment malfunction or operator error. I'm more afraid of the humiliation and intimidation that the TSA will inflict upon me if I am randomly chosen to submit to an intrusive "full-body scan" or an even more intrusive "pat down," known in some circles as "Government Sanctioned Sexual Harassment." I'm not afraid of being blown up by a radical terrorist; I'm afraid of being rudely treated like a criminal in front of hundreds of other waiting passengers by some random TSA agent. I'm afraid of being handcuffed if I protest to some random "rent-a-cop" fondling my "junk." I'm afraid of the $10,000 fine that will supposedly be levied against me if, after I purchased my ticket, I decide I don't want to be X-rayed in public or groped in private and I instead decide not to fly. I'm not afraid of the terrorists; I'm afraid of being "treated like a terrorist."
Between January, 2002 and December, 2009, 318 people were killed in the US due to lightning strikes and another 1,882 were injured. At today's US population rate of about 310 million people, that's 1 death each year by lightning strike out of every 7.8 million persons. During the same period from 2002 through 2009, the staggering number of people who were killed on US domestic airline flights, due to acts of terrorism was zero. So why are so many Americans being subjected to the undetermined health risks of a full-body-scan, using a glorified chest X-ray machine or, if they opt out, a "pat-down" that entails a TSA agent touching them in private places that, in any other venue, would be considered sexual harassment and require the "toucher" to be registered as a sex-offender? And why are millons (if not trillions) of dollars slated to be spent on the equipment and personnel to perform these invasions/perversions? Wouldn't more lives be saved if we used that money to build a giant wire cage (electrically grounded, of course) to cover our entire nation, thus preventing the deaths of hapless golfers and Little Leaguers throughout our great country?
I'm not advocating the removal of all security checkpoints in airports. After all, those measures thwarted the infamous "shoe bomber" and the even more insidious "underwear bomber." Oh, wait… they actually didn't! Both of these failed attackers were already on-board their flights and in the air before alert passengers discovered them. Of course, it is precisely because of these would-be attackers that all passengers must now removes their shoes, belts and jewelry and be subject to random body-scans or searches before being allowed to board a plane.
So, let's review; the number of US Citizens killed by a bomb hidden in a shoe is zero. The number of US Citizens killed by a bomb concealed in a passenger's underwear is, again, zero. The number of shoe-bomber's who have been caught by the added security measures since the first such attack in December of 2001 is… (sigh)… zero. The number of underwear bomber's who have been thwarted, since the original attack on Christmas Day of 2009, by the newly implemented full-body scans and alternate "manual" body searches is exactly… zero. To be fair, these newest security measures have only just begin but I predict, over the next five to ten years, the number of shoe and underwear bombers who will be detained by these checkpoints will multiply. And, of course, when you multiply any number by zero you get… (you guessed it) zero. If current trends continue, it will only require one Jihadist with a chunk of C4 crammed in his rectum before all airline passengers will be required to, not only arrive at the airport 3 to 4 hours before departure but they will also be forbidden from eating any solid foods for the 24 hours preceding their flight. Before boarding, they will be subject to random colonoscopies or, if they opt out of that technological probe, they will be required to submit to a "manual digital probe" by a TSA agent. Again, if I may be so bold as to make another prediction, the number of "turd bombers" thwarted by these measures will be zero.
To be fair, I don't really know how many shoe, underwear or turd bombers have actually been stopped at airport checkpoints since the creation of the TSA and its enhanced security measures. I'm assuming it's zero, in all the above cases, because if any of them had been prevented I'm sure you and I and the rest of the world would have heard about. It would have been hailed as the greatest achievement since the moon landing. Of course, the TSA is a Federal government agency, now under the umbrella of the US Department of Homeland Security, headed by an appointed (not elected) official, and they may not be divulging all the specifics of who may or may not have been detained by any alleged airport checkpoint-- as such agencies are wont to do. Even so, I still believe that if any would-be terrorists had been caught at these checkpoints, we would have heard about it. Exhaustive* internet searches and my own feeble memory have recalled no such incidents. However, somewhere in a lonely darkened warehouse (I presume) the TSA has amassed a collection of lighters in the millions. 11,616,249 lighters were confiscated in the year 2006, alone! And that, is a useless fact procured from the TSA's own website. Coincidentally, "common lighters" are no longer banned by the TSA (as of August 2007.) It seems TSA security officers were collecting 22,000 lighters every day! What were their reasons for lifting the ban? In addition to freeing up officers from collecting all those lighters, the TSA web site claims, "Lifting the lighter ban is consistent with TSA's risk-based approach to aviation security. First and foremost, lighters no longer pose a significant threat." [http://www.tsa.gov/travelers/sop/index.shtm] My interpretation of that statement is this: They were wasting a lot of time and resources looking for something that was, in reality, not a significant threat to security. And that, my friends, brings me to my point. Performing embarrassing full-body scans and/or personally intrusive manual pat-downs on random passengers is a waste of a lot of time and resources looking for something that is not a significant threat to security. Some might argue that a terrorist with explosives attached to his nether regions is a significant threat. But if you consider it statistically, I is not. TSA claims to screen over 2 million passengers each day. If you extrapolate that over the almost ll months since the "underwear bomber" was apprehended that's roughly 672 million passenger screenings. In that period, not one of those passengers has managed to blow up a plane using explosives in their underwear. If we go back to the December 2001 "shoe bomber" then the number of passengers screened since that time who have NOT turned out to be shoe bombers is something like 7.3 billion. Even if we pretend that the shoe bomber was detected at an airport checkpoint (which he most definitely wasn't) then it stands to reason that 1 in 7.3 billion people screened have been shoe bomber terrorists. Remember the statistics I mentioned earlier about deaths by lightning strikes? You and I and every other US citizen statistically has a 1 in 7.8 million chance of being killed by lightning this year. Meanwhile, the TSA has detected and prevented shoe bombers at the rate of less than 1 in 7.3 billion. Statistically, the likelihood that you will die from a lightning strike this year is almost one thousand times greater than the likelihood of you getting on a plane with another "terrorist shoe bomber." To me, that doesn't seem like a "significant threat."
So why, then, are we all taking off our shoes in airports? And better yet, why must we randomly submit to the humiliation and possible health risks of the new full body scanners? And why must those who chose not to be irradiated and have their private parts scrutinized on a computer monitor be subject to a "manual pat down" that is tantamount to molestation? Is the cost of these enhanced screening techniques, both in taxpayer funds and the emotional toll, worth it? I'm not against airport screening. I think it is a necessary evil in the post 9/11 world we inhabit. But these latest measures go too far, in my opinion, and infringe too much on the rights to privacy and modesty of innocent law-abiding citizens.
The definition of terrorism is "the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes" and also "the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization." In this case, I'm not sure who the terrorists are. I'm not afraid of being blown up on a plane. Hopefully I've illustrated to some extent that the chances of that are statistically insignificant. I'm more afraid that I'll be selected at random from an airport queue and be coerced into submitting to an embarrassing "pat down" while others watch. Personally, I guess it's a moot point anyway, since I've already decided that I won't be flying any time soon, especially under the current state of affairs. Because, after all,
I am afraid to fly.
