A few months ago there was an incident where a man on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit tried to blow up an airliner, but only succeeded in setting his pants on fire before being subdued by the other passengers. The response was quite predictable-politicians and citizens alike were outraged by this lapse in security and demanded that billions of dollars be spent to figure out how to stop incidents like this. Obviously we need even more intrusive, costly, and time consuming scanning of all passengers on airliners. I'm sure that determined, intelligent terrorists will never figure a way to get past that.
This bizarre overreaction is exactly the response that terrorists hope for when they attack. Compared to September 11th, which simultaneously hijacked four airliners, this attack was a joke. The terrorist did not even kill one person. Yet the exact same response is generated-we need more security and we need it yesterday.
There is a point where additional security steps and checkpoints do not add anything to safety and you have to rely on other means to locate threats. Somewhere between half a million to a million people fly each day in the United States-and if you count the other terrorist on a plane a few years ago, that means that there are a total of three days in the last 10 years where terrorists were on-board airliners. So, if we scan every single passenger that adds millions of benign scans to sort through to find the potential criminals. This is not helping to find needles in the haystack, this is adding hay to the pile.
A smarter method would simply be to make sure that intelligence on potential terrorists is actually used to stop them from boarding planes in the first place. In the case of this incident, the man's father told the government that his son was possibly going to be involved with some sort of terrorist act, yet he was still allowed to board the plane. The 9/11 hijackers had some intelligence surrounding them as well, yet it was not acted on. The intel needs to get into action at airports faster and then we will have actually made a step toward real security, not useless scans that make people feel slightly better about flying.
However, the biggest gains are to be made, in my opinion, by simply accepting that there is a tiny risk of a terrorist being aboard a plane. If said terrorist appears on a flight, all that needs to happen is for the passengers to overpower him. The last two attacks showed that Al Qaeda is simply unable to get more than one person on flights, so this should not be difficult to accomplish, even if he is armed. It is simply impossible for the government to defend every inch of border and every airliner from the potential of a terrorist entry, instead citizens must take some initiative to defend themselves. If you see something suspicious, report it. If someone tries to take over your plane, don't just sit there, subdue him.
Incidentally, it's rather amusing that people won't trust the government with anything involving health-care, social security, and taxes, but then come crying for protection from terrorists as soon as any incidents are reported. Yes, I'm sure the government that can barely run Medicare is going to be able to protect every single inch of US territory from potential terrorist attacks. This intense fear people feel about terrorism is completely illogical. If you change your behavior because of terrorism, then they have achieved their goal. The only sensible response is to act as Londoners did after the bombings of their subway, go right back on board the next day.
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