An odd approach to airline security
The Homeland Security Agency is supposed to make terrorists, not ordinary Americans, feel less secure.
The Daily Inter Lake
The Homeland Security Agency is supposed to make terrorists, not ordinary Americans, feel less secure.
But this year, Homeland Security will be best known for the botched early response to Katrina and deciding that Americans have a God-given right to wonder if the passenger seated next to them on an airplane has a 4-inch blade on his person.
That's right. The Transportation Security Administration, a branch of Homeland Security, has loosened the restrictions on what can be brought aboard commercial airlines, and from now on it's OK to bring scissors on board as long as they have blades of 4 inches or less. You can also get through security with knitting needles, screwdrivers under seven inches and four books of matches.
We understand that it's easy to make fun of the concept of a 90-year-old grandma attacking the cockpit with knitting needles, but that's not the point.
What Americans learned from 9/11 is that there's no point in taking chances. If box-cutters were good enough to bring down four planes and two towers, then we don't need to give anyone the chance to see if they can repeat the mayhem with knitting needles.
The officials who make the rules say that security officials are spending too much time looking for scissors and not enough time looking for explosives.
Well, that is their problem. They should be looking for both.
Officials also say that scissors and other small blades are not a danger any more because cockpit doors have been hardened and there are more federal air marshals on board commercial flights.
Maybe so, but we don't think the 9/11 terrorists used their box cutters to pry open cockpit doors. They used them to attack flight attendants and threaten to kill people until they got their way. Such a threat could still be effective since it plays on unpredictable human emotions, but even if the cockpit doors stay closed, there are still the lives on the passenger side of the door to consider.
The Association of Flight Attendants has come out against the policy change, as have many air marshals. "I carry a gun, and this new situation scares me," said one.
The public for the most part has complied with the restrictions, and has become trained over the last four years to understand that certain items are inappropriate to bring into the cabin of a jet. If you want to bring a knife or scissors or knitting needles with you on your trip to Hawaii, then you pack them with your luggage. It's easy, logical and prudent.
Why mess with a policy that has been working?
Fortunately, members of Congress are already working to restore the ban on sharp objects. We don't often agree with Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, but he was right when he said, "We understand we have to plug new loopholes, but that doesn't mean we have to unplug the old ones."
Or as the president of the Allied Pilots Association said, "It's hard to imagine that the federal government would even consider taking such a risk. The TSA should be devising ways to enhance security, not deconstruct and degrade it."