I've written to the airline I use for most travel and explained why this holiday season I'll be driving to my destinations.
The airlines have the power in this situation, if they protest, this will be changed.
The airlines have the power in this situation, if they protest, this will be changed.
"the practice of airport security screening of airline pilots has spun out of control and does nothing to improve national security"
They would have deserved more kudos if they had stood up for passengers' rights as well.
This has even happened -- 217 people dead because the pilot wanted to kill himself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EgyptAir_Flight_990
Am I missing something obvious here? Pilots' protest seems totally misplaced.
In the scenario you described, the pilot dies ("A pilot does not need a box cutter to crash the plane. They have full control over the plane by definition."). Hence I am guessing your point is that we only need to be worried about suicidal pilots (who can't be stopped anyway, and who are very few in number), the risk of which it very low.
I was trying to point out that if you don't check pilots at security checkpoints, we will also have to worry about non-suicidal pilots (which is a much larger population), the risk of which is non-trivial.
Again, am I missing something obvious in your two statements? I am not supporting the TSA's gropers, I am just saying that pilots need to go through the same security procedures as the cattle. Otherwise there's a security hole. Are you disagreeing with this? If so, you haven't backed it up, as far as I can tell.
My hope is that if pilots and flight attendants are forced to be groped everyday, they will stop groping us cattle too.
From a government official's perspective, the truth is that when an attack happens, they're going to get blamed. People aren't going to blame the airlines, they're going to blame the government. The more bizarre and nonsensical the "security" restrictions, the better protected officials are from blame when the inevitable attacks finally occur.
There's nothing an airline official can offer a government to compensate for loss of shielding from blame. As long as Americans are pathetic and fearful, we will have the government we deserve.
I believe that is true for other security theaters as well. A large bank, for example, instead of hiring in-house security experts, might contract out their security to an outside firm. Not because it is necessarily cheaper or the consulting company will do a better job, but because they can be blamed if something goes wrong.
A security breach happens, shareholders are up-in-arms, C*Os tell them "we hired the best, we payed them a lot of money, if they can't protect our data, nobody can."
The security firm in the meantime has to do their best to project themselves as "the experts". Usually carefully chosen stock photography of people in the business suits smiling and talking on the phone on the front page of their website, and the ability of the salesman to play and _lose_ at golf does the trick.
TSA does the same thing. They are the scapegoats. So when shit hits the fan, nobody can point out to the politicians and say "you fucked up". Security theater is not pointless, it has an exact purpose, and that is to protect and serve (the government) from future blame.
Oh. Well, darn.