Is there a reason why the concept of "security theater" hasn't caught on in the mainstream? It seems like it should be easy to oppose things that make us feel safer but objectively make us less safe.
I opted out of the scanner just as they started letting people go through the metal detector again. The TSA agent told me, "you know these are completely safe and no human sees the pictures anymore, right?" If I had gotten in line just a few seconds later, I wouldn't have had to go through the scanner or be subject to the enhanced pat down. I mentioned this to the TSA agent doing my screening and he said, "sometimes timing is everything". If the scanners are as necessary as they want us to think, I'm glad to know that the chance that my plane gets blown up doesn't depend on how well those scanners work but simply on whether a would-be bomber went through security during a busy period.
The most embarrassing bit of security theater is that, even if these new devices were safe, even if they were necessary, even if they were effective at presenting the relevant data to their operators, that those operators simply do not catch actual weapons ~80% of the time. [1]
And that number has been that bad year after year after year.
Truly, a given flight's chance of getting blown up depends on little more than the chance that someone capable is trying to blow it up.
The only comfort to be found is in the relative difficulty in assembling a suitable explosive and the low co-incidence of that skill alongside murderous intent.
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/loaded-gun-slips-past-tsa-scre...
I also went through a full-body scanner at MCO for the first time recently. It's not faster - in fact it is a giant bottleneck. Instead of just walking through, as per a metal detector, you have to stand there like an idiot with your arms above your head, for what seems like an eternity. If you move, the TSA resident rottweiler barks at you and the whole process is repeated.
In the meantime, you have 400 or so people jammed up in an unsecured area wiating to be processeed, which is a far-worse security risk than being on the plane.
But the worrying thing is - is this a ratchet? Will it be politically untenable to ever relax the security screening? I shudder to think at the GDP lost by people standing in airport screening queues. It's like a giant 24 hour stop-work protest that never ends. Even if only 1% of the time wasted would otherwise be productive work, well....
I know I'm expressing a view that's probably been expressed.
Nevertheless, I hope you can explain how/why this statement is wrong: "The scanners are deterring people from carrying weapons right now. If the scanners were removed, there would be more people carrying weapons."
I suppose you could argue that the people who really want to carry weapons wouldn't be stopped by a scanner. Then again, there are definitely "impulse crimes", where people are driven to commit crimes based on nothing but impulse/pent up anger. Those people would have been stopped by scanners, but are let through, if there were no/less effective scanners.
I could see why explosives would be more dangerous on a plane than elsewhere. However, people don't generally carry large amounts of explosives with them for no good reason, so explosives also don't lend themselves to impulse crime.
Other dangers, like getting shot or stabbed--something that is actually likely to be an impulse crime--are not much more dangerous on a plane than on the ground. Since we're perfectly content running the risk of being shot walking around outside, I don't see why airports would need special security just to prevent impulse crimes.
Of course, this is not an argument against all airport security. While I am personally against it, I would have to spend more time and do some research before being confident of making a compelling case against it. I'm just explaining why I think preventing impulse crimes would not be a good reason for tight security at airports.
The scanners aren't deterring anyone who wasn't already deterred by simple metal detectors.
Has there ever been a single case of an "impulse crime" committed with a weapon on a plane, prior to the installation of body scanners?
Because you need to weigh benefits against costs?
A certain number of people die from vaccines (side effects, negligence etc) every year. That's a fact. Do we stop vaccinating? No, we don't, because the number of lives saved is probably >10000X the cost.
That's not even limited to airports. I've seen it on festivals and concerts as well, and I'm sure it extends to other public events. Most notably I remember the security checks at the entrances of the infield on the Wacken Open Air 2010. When Iron Maiden or other very popular bands played, they just waved everyone through. It was ridiculous, really.
Also, there's a really amazing video[1] from a German talkshow on Youtube where Werner Gruber[2] completely embarrasses one of the most fervent supporters of the body scanners, Wolfgang Bosbach[3] of the CDU party. He easily smuggles enough thermite to blow a decent hole into the wall of a plane through a body scanner, and later demonstrates its destructive capabilities on a frying pan.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrKvweNugnQ - German, I sadly cannot find a subtitled version, though it's quite possible to understand the basic gist by merely watching what Gruber does (he's the slightly chubby guy with the red tie).
[2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Gruber - Also German, he has no English wikipedia entry.
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Bosbach - Quite uninformative, the German version is much better. He's a supporter of all sorts of completely ridiculous laws and measures, including a ban of "Killer Games" (violent video games) and all sorts of surveillance and anti-privacy laws.
Wouldn't the obvious response be, "If nobody sees the results of the detector, why are we walking through it?"
I've gotten lucky on more recent flights: Tucson and La Guardia still appear to be using basic metal detectors.
They certainly don't want to confront the idea that sometimes, despite setting our minds and hundreds of billions of dollars against a problem, that we can't solve anything; let alone consider the notion that we might have made things much worse for trying.
Look no further than the War on Drugs. It's been clear for decades that by every objective measure it's a (barbaric, costly) accelerant for exactly the kinds of social problems it was conceived to fight. But it's still deeply unpopular to say that.
I think you're right about the War on Drugs being a failure but wrong about this being an unpopular viewpoint.
A Zogby poll referenced here shows 76% of respondents think the War on Drugs is a failure: http://civilliberty.about.com/od/drugpolicy/p/War-on-Drugs-F...
I consider this one of the most common failure cases of government; if they don't stumble on the essentially-correct policy the first time out, it becomes virtually impossible to change it later because it involves someone (possible very large and powerful someones) having to admit they were wrong. For another example where the only acceptable solution is "the same, only more more more", see school reform. "Everybody" knows that isn't going to work, but nothing else is acceptable.
"You don't hear it very often/emphatically from the mainstream media, nor spoken aloud by anyone in a position to change policy, nor spoken aloud by anyone who has a serious desire to gain the positions that could change policy."
Most people want to be safe; they don't want to understand security.
Imagine the outcry in New York if they announced that they were going to install metal detectors and x-ray machines at the entrance to every subway stop. --That would (hopefully) never be implemented because the number of people who would complain and campaign against such measures would be much higher.
Anyone who declines the search can simply exit and enter the same station from a different entrance.
They make no sense as anything related to security.
If Americans were intelligent enough to understand the concept, it probably wouldn't exist in the first place.
Security theater benefits those in the oligarchy in two ways: highly profitable contracts for expensive machines, and a normalization of invasion of privacy.