Peggy Noonan is on to something:
"...So we're all talking about port security this week, and the debate over the Bush administration decision to allow an United Arab Emirates company to manage six ports in the United States. That debate is turning bitter, and I wonder if the backlash against President Bush isn't partly due to the fact that everyone in America has witnessed or has been a victim of the incompetence of the airport security system. Why would people assume the government knows what it's doing when it makes decisions about the ports? It doesn't know what it's doing at the airports.
This is a flying nation. We fly. And everyone knows airport security is an increasingly sad joke, that TSA itself often appears to have forgotten its mission, if it ever knew it, and taken on a new one -- the ritual abuse of passengers.
Now there's a security problem. Solve that one."
Indeed, she is! As Tom Barnett likes to say, TSA stands for Thousands Standing Around. Precisely two things have made flying safer since 9/11: sealing off cockpit doors and passengers becoming aware that they will probably have to fight back against would-be hijackers. The rest has been a net negative.
...And "security kabuki", to boot.
On the bright side, I'm seeing a lot of activity in the "very inexpensive bizjet" sector. As that comes to fruition, I think we're going to see something of a revival of charter services that fly from smaller airports and skip the security hassle.
If Dubai Ports World is a security risk, we've got bigger problems than the six ports everybody's been up in arms about since they also own CSX.
snort Good find, Dave. The more you dig, the sillier this looks.
They own CSX? I knew there was a reason they were such jerks about me crossing the tracks that run right through public hunting land.
I can't imagine it's being driven by airport security.
We had a 767ER corporate jet, one of the ultimate bizjets, held up by customs for over 6 hours as customs dug through their luggage on the flight line.
Passengers actually had to stand under the wing in front of their luggage.
And folks who spend 140 million on their airplane get might perturbed by such inconveniences.
Actually, they do not own CSX. CSX sold them some assets. Big difference.
What is this "managing 6 ports" meme anyway. They will manage some loading and unloading facilities. Geez. DTP has a good post on this. Also see here for an earlier post.
By the way, TSA actually stands for "Taking Scissors Away".
-I agree the security is pretty useless.
-Noonan sounds really whiney. Its hardly East Germany. Just count on it taking an hour to get to your gate, thats just the way it is.
Everything Noonan said if anything made me bad for the screeners. Every hour of every day telling oblivious travelers the same simple things which they will inevitably fail to do. The thing that pisses me off at airports isnt the screeners, its the fellow passengers that just cant be bothered to follow instructions. Its really very simple, take your coat and shoes off take your laptop out of the bag, toss that and everything else in your pockets onto the xray- show the guy your bording pass and walk through when he glares at you. Somehow 50% of the people cant handle all those instructions. I would be smacking people silly within an hour. The fact that the screeners remain reasonably professional after having to tell the 5000th shmuck of the day he cant walk through the metal detector talking on his cell phone is whats amazing. Once again the system gets blamed because most of us are the tuned out morons who cant follow simple instructions.
I believe you nailed it Mark!
And I'd rather spend 2 hours in line for security here than have to attempt an entry into the terminal at CDG where the concept of a line has obviously never crossed their mind.
If anyone needs a reason to be annoyed by the french, go to CDG!
Agreed, bravo Mark. A very accurate transcription of my own mental narrative when I go through security.
I agree with Matt McIntosh here on TSA. He's right. Securing the cockpit doors and passenger awareness that they may have to fight to the death are the reasons why hijackings stopped.
But the biggest issue with TSA is PC run amok.
It's ridiculous to see the late Joe Foss or Al Gore or some elderly grandma pulled aside for intensive screening instead of the sensible measure of examining Muslim men and women who fit the profile risk. We are so PC that we allocate scarce resources (extra screening) based on ridiculous PC formulas instead of reacting to the obvious: terrorist attacks against us have been done by Muslim men (and abroad by some Muslim women). THAT'S who we should be checking, thoroughly.
Is this unfair in one sense? Sure. Almost ALL Muslim men and women are not terrorists. Yes it's discriminatory. A process such as that would have saved 3,000 lives on 9/11 however. We are more afraid of offending someone, somewhere, than saving lives. Pick one: PC or saving lives.
Michelle Malkin btw has her site back up, some extensive commentary on the security risks of DPW and corrupt nature of the autocracy there (basically, a criminal bazaar which it always has been, trading with Iran and AQ Khan and a trafficking point for nuclear weapons technology as seen in US criminal cases).
I certainly hope the President gets burned on this politically. It will teach him that fire should be respected and not played with.
Like I said in another thread below, it's about MONEY, not security.
"Weeks before one of its companies sought U.S. approval for its ports deal, the United Arab Emirates contributed $100 million to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, officials confirmed Thursday."
Real hard one to figure out, eh?
At least the Bush/Abramoff administration is consistent.
Anyone else feeling a little guilty about thinking these people actually care one single iota about anyone but themselves and their "business" partners?
"It's ridiculous to see the late Joe Foss or Al Gore or some elderly grandma pulled aside for intensive screening instead of the sensible measure of examining Muslim men and women who fit the profile risk."
1. If you want to profile, you have to keep your stats even.
2. I'll third or fourth Mark's comment. It's worse than you think - I had a TSA guy make me walk halfway down the terminal to the crew entrance even though there was nobody in his line. When I got to my "bus stop", it was right by his station, and he apologized for making me take a hike, but said he'd get into trouble, if not fired, for letting a crewmember go through a pax entrance.
3. TSA workers would be better utilized downstairs using TNA equipment to look for explosives.
4. Let's focus on guns. Enough with the scissors - even hijackers with box cutters are more likely to get the Jonathan Burton treatment (http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/southwest1.html) than successfully hijack an airplane.
Quoth nickelplated:
Like I said in another thread[...], it's about MONEY, not security.
Well, if "it" were really guaranteed to be about money -- if Dubai were isomorphic with Switzerland -- then we ought to rest easy, because MCW (mass casualty weapons) reaching the USA would be bad for business.
I hear a lot of people making a lot of noise, and that makes me suspect that whatever the hell is actually going on is not being covered by any of the noisemaking, on any side. Most of them talk as if they think they've got perfect enough information fo draw conclusions. I have my doubts about that.
I flew a lot in the last three or four years, and airport security in Europe is not too intrusive but quite efficient. Of course I follow the instructions and try to do my part to speed up the process. I am always afraid that residues of chemicals on my shoes from the laboratory where I work may result positive at the explosive analyzer tho.
On the other hand, many tell me that airport security in the USA is intrusive but inefficient. My colleague went to a conference over there, and had her suitcase pried open for a security check, plus other hassles.
In January 2005, DPW acquired CSX's international port operations assets. In other words, CSX was doing in foreign ports what P&O was doing at the 6 ports at issue now (and what DPW will do as soon as everyone realizes that this acquisition is nothing to worry about). We should want a company like DPW as a port operator 1) because they're good at it, and 2) if their involvement has anything impact on security, it's likely to be a positive, because of the UAE's cooperative efforts with the US to provide container and shipping security. There's no reason to believe that DPW would be any easier for terrorists to infiltrate than P&O or any other firm, for that matter. By now, we should have been cured of any notion that terrorists only come from Arab countries. Take a look at some of our own Code Pink/International ANSWER/WWP wackos, not to mention the home-grown terrorists who self-detonated in London last summer.
IT'S DEAD, JIM
This 72% of the public paying close attention is unquestionably fatal. It also proves (again) that the Bush administration is absolutely clueless. But we knew that.[John Podhoretz]
Noonan is a great writer in that she exaggerates for effect well. And it seems to me that her painting the screeners as uncaring, incompetent, rude robotrons says more about Noonan than it does about them or TSA. If she wants to be fawned over while traveling, she should consider taking her nanny with her on trips.
But she does provide a laugh: Noonan hits peak airport time, at LaGuardia no less, gets stuck in line and lives to damn the TSA. Next up: Noonan gets stuck in morning rush hour and then condemns the entire US highway network.
I've concerns about TSA but I won't give the appearance of blessing Noonan's snit by airing them here.
Come to think of it, that the ol' girl is complaining about the rough and tumble courtesy at a NYC airport and attributing that attitude to TSA is hilarious. What is she, a hermit?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, even Israel does not use racial profiling.
Why? Because a simple system like racial profiling is easy to get around. If you know they're looking for a muslim male, you get someone else to do your dirty work. Take this paragraph from a salon article:
Enemies, Israel has learned, don't always look like the known enemy. Terrorists, both willing and unwilling (such as Murphy, who was unwittingly used by her Palestinian fiancé as a carrier for his bomb), come in many guises, including color, ethnicity and gender
If we really want to make planes safter, the best thing to do is make a security check for crew workers, which is where most terrorists have gotten their 'equipment' aboard airplanes in the past.
Time out. There is a difference between using 'racial profiling' as a method in itself. Obviously that is wreckless and foolish. But just as clearly it is also foolish to intentionally turn off your security people's common sense in the name of cultural sensitivity. In other words race is one factor in evaluating a threat. Along with gender, age, temperment, etc. The position you dont want to be in is having a really suspicious looking Arab acting nervous but deciding not to check him out because you already did 2 Arabs today and 3 would look bad on your form. We need to find a happy medium. Israel's system works because its screeners are highly trained and allowed to use their experience and intuition. Certainly having a policy based on racial profiling negates that, but equally a policy prohibiting profiling takes that away from them as well.
Oh yes, Mark, often spotting suspicious people is a matter of instinct that cannot be coded in any written procedure. The problem, indeed, is when the written procedure says to put politcal correctness above all, even what looks definitely strange or suspicious.
The position you dont want to be in is having a really suspicious looking Arab acting nervous but deciding not to check him out because you already did 2 Arabs today and 3 would look bad on your form
Yes, but the same should go for a white, black, japanese, hispanic, etc. If there's a guy who's visibly nervous of any ethnicity they should be questioned. I beleive that falls outside of the random check guidelines.
"Yes, but the same should go for a white, black, japanese, hispanic, etc. If there's a guy who's visibly nervous of any ethnicity they should be questioned. I beleive that falls outside of the random check guidelines."
I dont think you can say that uneqivically. How many non-Arab/North Africans have hijacked airliners in the last 50 years? Im going to say roughly none. Does that mean we shouldnt suspect others? Certainly not, but a good screener should know the odds and not ignore that peice of information to simply be politically correct. A young nervous Arab male should cause slightly more concern than a young nervous Asian male.
Its like an NFL defense knowing that Payton Manning has thrown 40 TDs this season but that they could always run a halfback pass. Of course you keep that possibility in mind and defend against it, but you still have to play the odds. If you equally protect against every player on the field throwing the ball the guy that almost always throws it is going to torch you and make you look very foolish for overthinking things. Sure, the enemy could resort to trickery and do something not-obvious, but if you arent taking proper steps to prevent the obvious there is no reason to bother.
Yeah, but we're not dealing with only 11 players on a field. we're dealing with millions.
Cops should be trained to watch for suspicous behavior of anyone. You can't guarantee that the next bomber will be of arab descent. The infamous 'shoe-bomber' for example was british-jamaican. Or what about John Walker-Lindh? Or someone from Chechnya? Or Bosnia? OR south-asia?
Let's face it, the 'GWOT' is going to be bigger than the middle east soon, and you better stop thinking about it as the 'white-arab' war.