Keeping the Werewolves Away

We all know the old joke of the man who wore garlic around his neck to keep the werewolves away. When confronted by a friend who indicated there really weren’t any werewolves to keep away, the man replied, “See, it works.” “John S. Pistole, the TSA administrator, cites a travel industry survey that found shoe removal was second only to the high price of tickets in passenger complaints. But he is unapologetic about the practice. ‘We have had over 5.5 [billion] people travel since Richard Reid and there have been no shoe bombs because we have people take their shoes off,’ Pistole said last month.” Washington Post, September 6^th. Reid, the “Shoe Bomber,” changed the way we go through a screening process when he almost took down an airliner with his explosives (he was subdued by passengers before he could detonate).

You don’t take your shoes off anywhere but in the U.S. — not in Israel, in Amsterdam, in London. We all know why we do it here, but this seems to be a make-everybody-feel-good thing rather than a necessity. Yossi Sheffi, an Israeli-born expert on risk analysis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Washington Post). We seem obsessed with the “stuff” and not enough with the “person,” but Homeland Security tells us that this is changing.

The reality is that had common sense been applied to Mr. Bomber’s travel plans, there were sufficient warning signs to have prevented the mishap even back then: “ ‘Richard Reid left a trail of suspicion with everybody who was in contact with him during the boarding process, yet Richard Reid was allowed to board an American Airline flight,’ said Rafi Ron, former director of security at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv and now a security consultant in the U.S. ‘Both Richard Reid and [Umar Farouk] Abdulmutallab [the underwear bomber] checked into a transatlantic flight without checking any baggage, which is very unusual. Both had one-way tickets. There were a lot more red flags about them, but I’m not sure we should go into all the details in the public media. If we used these in an effective manner, they would have been identified.’” Washington Post.

The security check has created a placebo effect for many who really believe, and there are few in the West who doubt that a determined terrorist couldn’t find a way to circumvent the checkpoints. When they stage their little “tests” to see what gets by airport screeners, TSA officials have often encountered both tip-offs that tests were happening to missing most of the contraband and weapons placed into baggage to be “discovered.” “In December 2010, ABC News Houston reported in an article about a man who accidentally took a forgotten gun through airport security, that ‘the failure rate approaches 70 percent at some major airports.’” Wikipedia. For this, we are paying a handsome price: “For fiscal year 2011, the TSA had a budget of roughly $8.1 billion.” Wikipedia. Are we getting our money’s worth?

We’re moving to a plan where frequent travelers can pre-screen themselves out of such “shoe tests,” and find a shortcut through a pre-qualified line. And when you think about what “terrorists” are trying to do – disrupt the society they are attacking – was Reid’s shoe bomb attempt a failure? Vahid Motevalli, head of the department of mechanical engineering technology at Purdue University, said that even though Reid’s attempt failed, it succeeded in adding a costly and frustrating layer of security… ‘As a result of Reid, now everybody has to take their shoes off and we’ve added another expense,’ Motevalli said. ‘These events create fears, disrupt lives and change the way you’re living. By that standard, that attempt was successful.’” The Post. Remember when you could drop off and greet your guests right by the aircraft? That seems so very long ago.

I’m Peter Dekom, and traveling today is a whole lot less fun on oh so many levels.