Does Airport Security Really Make Us Safer? | Vanity Fair
Bruce Schneier is a security expert and a strong opponent of “security theater” and other measures intended to confirm the validity of people’s fears instead of actually making things safer. He also doesn’t like the term “cyber war” unless people are using “cyber” things to actually harm people physically. Schneier sees these sorts of things as both impediments to real security and as means by which people are manipulated by the government and corporations. This Vanity Fair article by Charles C Mann is a good introduction to him.
Terrorists will try to hit the United States again, Schneier says. One has to assume this. Terrorists can so easily switch from target to target and weapon to weapon that focusing on preventing any one type of attack is foolish. Even if the T.S.A. were somehow to make airports impregnable, this would simply divert terrorists to other, less heavily defended targets—shopping malls, movie theaters, churches, stadiums, museums. The terrorist’s goal isn’t to attack an airplane specifically; it’s to sow terror generally. “You spend billions of dollars on the airports and force the terrorists to spend an extra $30 on gas to drive to a hotel or casino and attack it,” Schneier says. “Congratulations!”
What the government should be doing is focusing on the terrorists when they are planning their plots. “That’s how the British caught the liquid bombers,” Schneier says. “They never got anywhere near the plane. That’s what you want—not catching them at the last minute as they try to board the flight.”
