New worries in air travel

This article by Annie Jacobsen is going around the blogosphere at high speed (I got my link from James Lileks' Bleat). It describes her recent flight from Detroit to LA on a flight with a large number of Syrian men who were acting very suspiciously. Having read the article, I can understand why she and her family were very worried about their chances of surviving the flight.

My own recent air travel in the US was fraught with problems, but more because I was considered a suspicious character than for any concerns after I'd cleared customs. Ms. Jacobsen raises concerns about the TSA's ability to perform their putative task of making air travel as safe from terrorists as it can. These are valid concerns: none of us want to feel that we are risking our lives every time we get onboard a commercial jet. And yet, there are real limits to how much security can be provided by abandoning individual rights and freedoms.

Even if all baggage is searched by professionally trained and competent technicians, running all sorts of high-tech detection equipment, it still does not reduce the chances of terrorist action to zero. Strip searches and body cavity searches of passengers will not make it totally safe to travel by air: mandatory X-ray or ultrasound scanning would not do it either. No means of security is absolutely sound or effective in all cases. Perfect security is a myth (ask the ghosts of all the assassinated political leaders over the millenia for proof).

I'm not a trained intelligence operative, so I can't pretend to be well-versed in the ways of smuggling weapons or explosives into secured areas. I'm moderately well-read and have access to the internet: what I don't know, I can probably find out without too much effort. What is available to me is available to almost anyone else who has the interest and the time.

It's a strategic maxim that the attacker has the advantage over the defender because the attacker dictates the time, location, and direction of the attack. This is especially true for guerilla or irregular warfare, and absolutely true for terrorists who are not trying to attack the military of their victims.

Let me say it again: absolute security is a myth.

We have had a long period of peace, here in the civilized western world. We have successfully delegated others to look after our protection for so long that we no longer think of ourselves as being responsible for it individually — that's the job of the police or the armed forces. One of the glories of western civilization is that this has been true and we have been freed from the need to be constantly on the watch for criminals and criminal gangs attempting to run our lives for us. My contention is that this may no longer be true.

The police can't protect us at all times and in all places: even in a true police state, you can't always find a policeman when you need one. As we are herded towards more police presence and the militarization of the police force, we start to lose more and more of the freedoms that made western civilization worth creating and defending. Until we grasp that we cannot make ourselves absolutely safe, and that we have to take up once again the responsibility for our own defence, we will continue to move away from the ideals that we were raised to believe in: individual freedom, individual responsibility, trust in others, freedom to speak, freedom to worship, freedom to trade, and so on.

As Benjamin Franklin is reported to have said:

They that can give up essential liberty to gain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.