During the second half of November, I compiled a series of stories about new “security” measures the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) has put into place at airports. (You can find an archive of the series, dubbed “The Daily Grope,” here.) Most days, the stories focus on a spcific indignity or misuse of power by the TSA.
For this column, I’d like to highlight the TSA’s corrosive effect on our national character and political culture.
In brief, the TSA is subverting the proper relationship between citizens and the government by over-promising what government can actually deliver and disrespecting the constitutional limits on what government should do.
Contrary to the candy-man mythology of politicians from both political parties, there are constitutional limits on all the “good things” that government can do for us. Equally important, there are real-life limitations.
It’s an unhappy but real fact of life that “stuff happens.” Individually and corporately we can take steps to reduce the frequency of bad stuff happening, as well as the severity of the damage that happens when it hits the fan. But every day we reach the point where the costs of taking preventive action outweigh the benefits.
An example: Over the last decade, we’ve lost rouhly 40,000 people a year to an activity that’s entirely preventable. Indeed, rather than stop that activity, our governments spend tax money to encourage more of it.
What is this deadly activity? Driving an automobile.
We could push traffic fatalities down to nearly zero by reducing the speed limit to 5 mph. But we don’t. Why? The cost is too high. We value life, but also our freedom of movement.
So what is the TSA trying to do? In effect, eliminate fatalities from air travel – and the harmful effects ensue.
Why do we let them do it? Two reasons. One is that while auto accidents kill people one or two at a time, airline crashes kill hundreds at a time. An airline crash (or even worse, a 9/11-style attack) draws a lot of attention and is not easily forgotten. The second reason is that while as individuals, we over-estimate our control over what happens on the roads, we are acutely aware of our limited control over what happens on a plane. (In fact, some of us even have a hard time believing that the thing can in fact fly.)
So when it comes to air travel, a lot of people will say “Hey, whatever it takes,” regardless of how costly “it” is in time, money, dignity, and respect for the law.
So we shuffle like cattle through security lines, removing shoes and belts, putting toiletries into 3-ounce bottles, enduring TSA agents who bark out orders. We even put up with elderly grandmothers getting wanded. We are watching the theater of the absurd.
Then came the naked body scanners and genital groping, along with tales of TSA agents acting like Keystone Kops who have let a little bit of power go to their heads. The use of the scanner/grope technique is just the latest extension of a government policy that combines the worst of egalitarianism (everybody suffers!) with a fixation on preventing harmful objects from getting on board, even as we ought to be focusing on stopping harmful people.
Keeping all harmful objects out of planes is a fool’s errand. Knives and contraband can and do make it past TSA screeners. If authorities can’t keep contraband out of prison –when they can and do conduct strip searches and feel into a person’s body cavities — what makes us think they can keep it off planes?
The key is not going after bad objects, but after people who use those objects towards bad ends. After all, a knife can be used both to kill a human and to cut a good steak for dinner.
So to the extent that government (or pre-9/11, airlines) works to prevent bad things from happening on aircraft, it ought to look for people who are prone to do bad things. It already does look for bad people (no-fly lists and all that) but not as well as it should. Instead, it confiscates nail clippers and gropes Granny, annoying the public and wasting a lot of money and energy in the process.
In going after objects that might be used for harm, the TSA treats us all, in effect, as residents of prison who have already demonstrated that they’re (a) dangerous and (b) undeserving of certain constitutional protections. No probable cause needed. Frisk ’em all, no matter how humiliating the experience may be.
The rectum is a useful place for smuggling drugs into prison; how long will it be before we find out that a two-bit terrorist has tried to smuggle a bomb onto a plane the same way? Once that happens, the phrase “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you” will take on an entirely new meaning. Rather than taking us down that path, our “public servants” ought to focus attention on some good intelligence-gathering, gum-shoe cop work, and intelligent profiling. In other words, a return to probable cause.
For now, we’re “just” forced to endure something less invasive than a cavity search, which is still a significant cost, given that your chances of getting struck by lightning are 20 times greater than of being the victim of a terrorist attack.
The shoe bomber and the underwear bomber escaped the TSA’s watch and were instead stopped by alert and brave passengers and airline employees who were on the lookout for bad behavior. It’s their actions that we should embrace, not the TSA’s dehumanizing security theater.
First printed at The Michigan View.