No Fly Zone

Perhaps it's my overdeveloped sense of privacy.  Perhaps it's my sense of modesty.  Perhaps it's that I believe in personally assessing risks and personally taking responsibility for those risks.  Perhaps it's simply that I never wish to see a day when my body must be publicly violated (again) just to get on an airplane.  I don't like the new security standards, and I'll unhappily demand a refund for any ticket that requires me to be patted down, stripped or searched for weaponry before boarding.

Yes, flying is the most practical way to travel in many cases, but to go to extremes to make us "safe" on a plane is ridiculous.  What we're doing is creating a false sense of security, much like a gated community feels safer though it's really a bit more vulnerable than your standard neighborhood.  Afterall, no one questions you once you've made it past the gate.  Similarly, if you can make it past security at the airport, the assumption is that you belong and are unarmed.

Personally, I'll take my chances.  No, I don't want to take down the security stations and just let people walk onto planes carrying guns, knives and bombs.  I'm all for metal detectors, sniffers (similar to metal detector arches, but it "sniffs" for chemical particles in the air) and X-ray machines.  None of these devices are intrusive; none of them require physical contact with my body.

The current talk of requiring pat-downs and strip searches scares the wits out of me, though.  Short of cavity searches, you can never guarantee safety on a plane.  Even then, if you know what you're doing, you can get around it.  I won't describe how as I don't ever wish to be accused of giving the enemy ideas.  Nonetheless, I can think of two ways off the top of my head to get around even the most stringent of security measures.

That said, my opinion is that increasing airport security to a level that routinely requires physical contact with passengers' bodies does little more than routinely humiliate the citizenry.  Let's stick with the scanning technology that we have and work to develop better scanning devices.  Let's put our efforts into security measures that have a chance of stopping attacks WITHOUT violating the average passenger's body.

For my money, I'd rather get on a plane that has no security in place than one that requires a stranger to touch me intimately in public.  I realize I may be in the minority on this one, and I accept that.  I hope you will think, though: if you really wanted to get something taboo on a plane, could you think of at least one way to make it happen?  Don't worry about how extreme your method of breaking the rules would have to be; the terrorists aren't worried about extreme.

Happy flying,
MK