Absolutely, the lizard part of our brains are wired that way. Typically, folks manipulate our assessment of risk, as we are terrible at assessing that.

Most of the most awful atrocities in history fit that pattern, from Ceasar in Gaul forward.

It's certainly a fact that some people prefer security to freedom. In addition freedom is a very abstract concept, and as a consequence it is much more often fetishized than adequately understood. Absolute security and absolute freedom are both essentially death.

That all gets very philosophical though, and most people can recognize a good balance of freedom and are watchful of security paranoia stepping up and curtailing that balance.

But here's the problem. This isn't actually security. Security is the straw man. This is power masquerading as security. Nobody is becoming significantly safer thanks to these overreaches of surveillance in any way that really matters. The likelihood of falling victim to a failure of airport security is outrageously low, and these security firms are taking advantage of our inability to accurately assess risk when it comes to things like this.