Time To Close the Security Theater

An anonymous reader writes "An editorial at Forbes calls for the dismantling of the TSA, pointing to recent headlines as the latest examples of 'security theater' at its worst. From the article: 'The problem isn't that the TSA is harassing the wrong people. The problem is that the TSA is harassing anyone. The TSA is encroaching on fundamental liberties and providing no discernable benefit. ... Naturally, the TSA responds to incidents like these by saying that the agents are highly trained and that they have followed proper procedure. This indicates a signal failing for the agency: if "doing it by the book" involves touching people in ways that would be considered sexual assault in virtually any other context or telling a 90-year old breast cancer survivor to remove her bra lest it contain explosives (as happened to a friend's grandmother), then the book needs to be shredded and rewritten. Better yet, it needs to be replaced with a competitive market for air travel in which the airports, the airways, and the airliners are in private hands. Some might object that private firms will have incentives to cut corners on safety. It is a legitimate concern, but competitive mechanisms tend to weed this out.'"

Comments

Israeli security

[Kupfernigk]

Yes.

So when a colleague of mine went to catch his plane home, and they asked him where was the latest place he visited, he said "I was in a meeting with the Defence Minister".

So they locked him in a cell with an armed guard outside. After several hours they were persuaded to, you know, actually try the Ministry. Most of whom had gone home. They eventually reached the Defence Minister, who confirmed that indeed Dr X. Y. had been in a meeting with him that morning and had left to catch a plane to the airport.

Now, you would think that in any civilised country an apology would be in order. Not in Israel. Instead, they refused to speak to him or make eye contact, and eventually almost pushed him onto the plane home without a word of apology.

This apologia is unwarranted. Israeli security goons are surely no better, no worse than security goons anywhere. There are just far more of them and they search far more people more thoroughly.