Act IX: Elites and Cattle
The latest thing on the desk of Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Edmund S. “Kip” Hawley sounds like a good deal at first. We won’t have to take our shoes off for the TSA Safety Dance at the airport. That is, unless we set off the metal detectors or the TSA employee thinks we are acting suspicious. Furthermore, buying a one-way ticket or buying on short notice will no longer automatically get your ticket marked for extended screening. Apparently, someone realized out that there are plenty of legit reasons this might happen, and Real Terrorists have figured out that this will single them out.
They are also planning — pending Kip’s approval — on lifting the ban on certain sharp objects, such as scissors, small pocketknives, razor blades, throwing stars, icepicks, and arrows. Now, doesn’t that make you feel better? Not only will you not have your swiss army knife confiscated, you can put your shurikens in your carry on bag. No worries!
The new rules also aim to minimize the number of patdowns, and reducing patdowns is a good thing. Or, more precisely, reducing unnecessary patdowns is a good idea. Some are going to be necessary, but there ought to be a clear protocol that is followed.
The controversial bit is that the recommendations are “certain categories of passengers be exempt from airport security screening, such as members of Congress, airline pilots, Cabinet members, state governors, federal judges, high-ranking military officers and people with top-secret security clearances.” There are many problems with this. First, it assumes that these people are universally trustworthy, universally sane, universally Not A Terrorist. I think this is a big assumption.
The next big problem is identifying these people. Would you know your Congressman if you saw him crossing the street? Me neither. I think I have a good shot at recognizing my Senators and maybe even the top ten most influential Senators. Are we honestly talking about letting people flash a “top sekrit” ID at the TSA guy and passing through security unmolested? I can’t see biometrics solving this problem. I anticipate a great market for fake IDs, and incredibly increased risk of identity theft for the air travel elites.
And that brings us straight to the next big problem, that this creates a small group of elite fliers and a huge mass of normal people lining up like cattle before the magic TSA checkpoint. This system makes the cattle line longer, because the TSA employee who could be helping move the line faster is instead checking the credentials of the elite. This will cause some resentment among the cattle, but they know better than to say anything, lest they be accused of “acting suspicious.” This system is self-entrenching, because the elite no longer know what it is like to be in the cattle line, no longer know what it is like to be singled out for additional security, no longer know what it is like to get a patdown, no longer experience the absurdities of the system — they no longer know what it is like to be a normal, average person — but they certainly have no desire to eliminate this valuable fringe benefit for themselves.
In short, a Do Not Search list is even dumber than a Do Not Fly list.
Act X: Big Brother says it’s a Secure Flight
“Just weeks after congressional investigators found that officials in charge of a new airline passenger-screening system violated a federal privacy law, the Department of Homeland Security is pushing Congress to reduce oversight of the program and to allow it to use commercial databases to screen for terrorists.” Or, “Yeah, we messed up. We broke the law. So you caught us. Now can you stop paying attention, please?” In fact, it turns out that they are destroying millions of records they shouldn’t have, or as some prefer to call it, “evidence.”
Secure Flight wants to gather up information on law abiding American citizens. They would like to aggregate the kind of data the Feds already have on you — tax records, date of birth, etc — with the kind of data the big commercial consumer databases have on you — credit info, what kind of peanut butter you buy with your Shopper’s Savings Club card, what’s on your Amazon wish/recommendations list, how expensive your house is — and probably the data that can be gleaned from an average everyday search engine (yeah, I bet the Feds know I write this stuff). Now, unless you can think of some reason that Terrorists might prefer Skippy over Jif, collecting this level of information is absurd.
However, both houses of Congress have “prohibit[ed] Secure Flight from using commercial databases or using computer software to profile passengers, a reflection of congressional concern over the Transportation Security Administration’s privacy scandals,” thus gutting the entire purpose of Secure Flight, trying to figure out from various data sources and computer models whether someone is likely to be a terrorist before they get to the airport. It leads one to wonder what exactly the point of allowing Secure Flight to continue is.
Ah yes, this is Security Theatre, and all the world’s a stage.