Too-Frequent Flyer Part 2 – Counting Threats

[See part one of this series on air travel and security.]

Let me propose a heuristic: it may be a good time to reevaluate the effectiveness of a national security institution when it becomes the subject of a Playmobil play set. 
”Airport Security Check-in” has reached that point. 

Don’t get me wrong, getting playmobiled isn’t an automatic demerit; there are plenty of realistic, practical things in play land.  Still, it's worth some hard thinking just to make certain that on the scale of practical reality,  our airline security processes are closer to  “Rescue Equipment Trailer” than to “Bunny with Wheelbarrow”. 

I think we might be somewhere in the middle.
   
Please pardon the sudden shift from absurdist humor to serious and unpleasant realities in this post.  I think it mirrors the experience of modern air travel.

Before discussing the effectiveness or practicality of new security measures, it’s useful to understand what threats they’re designed to prevent.  There are basically four broad categories of attacks which can be directed against the air travel system:

1. Hijacking – to use the airplane as a weapon or for hostages or safe passage
2. Bombing – to blow up the plane with a stowed device or suicide attack
3. Infiltration – to transport dangerous individuals into or out of the country
4. Smuggling – to transport or disseminate hazardous materials such as chemical or biological agents using the air travel infrastructure

Each of these threats has important national security repercussions.  However, the vast majority of the new publicly visible security measures implemented at U.S. airports are focused on preventing only the first one.  This is an understandable political and psychological reaction, since preventing a 9/11 style hijacking is at the top of everyone’s immediate demands.  Unfortunately, anti-hijacking measures are some of the most costly and burdensome to implement.  They may also be the least necessary – maybe even counterproductive.

Only two changes were necessary to virtually guarantee that a hijacking intended to crash a passenger plane into a building could never happen again.  One of them - unbreachable cockpit doors – was relatively cheap and implemented within months of the attacks.  The other one was excruciatingly expensive, but the price was paid in full before the day ended and implementation was immediate and ubiquitous: everyone became painfully aware of the possible cost of losing control of an airplane.

Someone attempting an exact replay of the 9/11 attacks today would likely be beaten to within an inch of death - and I wouldn’t take that inch for granted - by passengers with nothing to lose.  Even if the terrorists managed get to the cockpit, physical locks and airline policy would make it impossible to take control of the plane.  They could kill everyone on board and blow up the airplane, but that makes this kind of attack identical in effect to the “bombing” type.  The “hijacking” category, at least for commercial passenger flights, has been largely negated.  “Never again” is not just a solemn vow here.  It is a statement of fact.

Why, then, do I still have to surrender my nail clippers, take off my belt and wait three quarters of an hour to go through a metal detector honed to such a level of sensitivity that the steak taco I had for lunch sets it wailing?  What harm could I inflict with a one inch piece of flimsy metal on a hundred instant air marshals, a bank-vault quality door and pilots specifically trained to never give up control of the airplane?  Why is our still-recovering economy being subjected to this level of delay and inefficiency?  More importantly, why are our dramatically finite security dollars being spent here as opposed to on other, largely unsolved, problems - like the other three types of threats outlined above?  Are these measures effective security, or are they primarily meant to comfort us?  There's nothing wrong with comfort, as long as it's not the fuzzy, anthropomorphic-rabbit type.

Also, can I have my nail clippers back? 

Next Up: The Other Shoe

[Update: The Playmobil site is not very link friendly.  If you get errors following the links in IE, just ignore them and the pages should open fine.  Also, I just remembered where I saw the Playmobil link originally – thanks Boing Boing.

Update 2: I replaced the Playmobil links to direct links to the right product images.  That seems to be the only way their website wants me do it.  Who doesn't love JavaScript?

Update 3: Yikes, this post got a link from Instapundit, lots of great comments here, and my answers in a new post.]