In a response to an attempted attack on the U.S. by a terrorist creating a bomb from a printer cartridge on a plane, the Transportation Security Administration has implemented deficient procedures in an effort to prevent another attempted terrorist attack.
Specifically, the TSA is phasing in two practices: the use of backscatter X-ray imaging techniques and extensive pat downs.
Backscatter imaging technique produces a 2-D image of the passenger naked in an attempt to find contraband items.
Extensive pat-downs “are one important tool to help TSA detect hidden and dangerous items such as explosives,” according to a statement on the TSA website.
To explain the problem here, we have to go back a little. The TSA was created shortly after Sept. 11 as an ongoing effort to prevent a repeat event, most notably through more intense security measures.
But according to two studies by Cornell University, when people flock in droves away from safer flights, they instead move to car travel — with often fatal results.
Some 1,200 deaths occurred not as a result of the 9/11 attack but the increase in car use, even after accounting for time trends, weather, road conditions and “other factors.”
In a 2007 follow-up study, Cornell researchers found a 6 percent decrease in flights as an unintended result of baggage screening, leading to a $1.1 billion loss annually for airlines.
Stricter security measures deter passengers, leading to a significant loss in revenue for airlines and increased fatality rates.
And those screenings are a joke compared to the modern experience.
Today, you drop your belongings into a bin for easy theft. You pass through a machine where you are exposed to potentially harmful radiation and displayed naked for a stranger, or sexual harassment in the form of a pat-down if you refuse.
I encourage you to read an article published in the Washingtoon Post on Nov. 28 by Jeffrey Rosen, George Washington University law professor and author. He outlines why he believes invasive security measures are illegal.
Simply put, he cites an opinion written by current Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito when Alito served as a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. The judge upheld the measures must be “minimally intrusive” as well as “effective.” He explained further measures should be taken only if lower-level security arises suspicion.
The TSA fails these provisions.
Of course, this is deterring terrorists, isn’t it? I mean, that’s the point.
Well, it doesn’t seem so. We haven’t caught any yet, though it’s probably too early to say for sure if the scanners and pat-downs will be effective.
Consider this: The 9/11 hijackers used box cutters, and they didn’t have to tuck them away in their pants. They used what was legal.
Neither of these new security measures would have changed 9/11, or in all likelihood any terrorist event.
The same situation occurred with the recent printer bomb plot. There are officials and politicians now pushing for a check of 100 percent of cargo within the United States as well as internationally inbound.
But that wouldn’t have helped at all. Remember, printer cartridges of that weight were legal to fly at the time, so a more intense cargo check would not have changed a thing.
Airports Council International Chairman Max Moore-Wilton said the 100 percent screening policy would be “massive overkill,” crippling the flow of goods, according to an article in Aviation Week magazine. ACI Director General Angela Gittens also said in the article that the policy would only be “comfort in a public relations sense.” The system, she argues, would be no more secure.
We can all strive for safe flights, but would you be willing to pay twice as much for every plane ticket or 30 percent more on every imported good you buy to help fund additional staff needed for security checks?
The government’s job is impossibly difficult here. They have to conduct security checks perfectly every time, while a terrorist group only needs to get it right once.
But these measures ensure the terrorists win. If they blow up a plane, all the better for their cause, but if they just get caught? We lose our fundamental rights and cripple our economy and cause thousands to indirect deaths.
The greatest victory we give our enemies may not be the lives lost in their few success, but everything we lose in trying to stop them.
Devin Graham is a 21-year-old business management senior from Prairieville. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_dgraham.
 
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Contact Devin Graham at [email protected]