In A.D. 2010, due to lax airline security, war was beginning.
What happen?
Someone set us up the bomb.
We get signal. Main screen on.
It's you!
Hello, gentlemen. All your base are belong to us.
What you say?
You have no chance to survive make your time.
Activate mind reading device!
You know what you doing?
For great justice!
Since the Christmas Day attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound flight by a wayward Nigerian student--I mean, terrorist, I have read several stories about unruly passengers, diverted plans and so-called thwarted terrorist attempts. It's like because of this kid, suddenly the cosmos are out of order and more passengers than ever are trying to blow up airplanes, which in turn, will destroy the evil United States once and for all.
That's just my bored-at-work overactive imagination at play here, but it seems like I've heard more about terror attempts in the past few months than my entire five years enslaved--I mean, employed at TSA. Yes, I was one of the dreaded Transportation Security personnel. I used to dig in people's bags and force them to take off their shoes in attempt to humiliate them by displaying their holey socks and unwashed undergarments. Look, (I had to eat, so sue me.)
I worked at one of the area airports, and most of the five years that I worked there was pretty standard, nothing to write home about: irate passengers irritated with the confusing rules, smug holier-than-thou airline crew who looked down on us as if somehow they were better than us (we might be mall cops, but they're just flying waitresses), and of course, the pissy-faced management who did their best to demoralise those of us who worked on the floor mainly because they themselves had no idea what they were doing.
I never saw any attempted acts of terrorism, only America's dumbest criminals smuggling drugs, weapons and other prohibited items. But any time something happened anywhere around the world, TSA would come out with a long list of new rules that we had to memorise and try to explain to the idiotic flying public. Most days I just wanted to shove the SOP in passengers' faces and tell them to read the directive themselves because I didn't understand it anymore then they did. It was--and still is--a reactive business. Things only change after something happens. After a plane incinerates mid-air, then security officials come out with half a dozen rain forest trees citing how they knew this was going to happen and they were just about to do something about it.
Every morning during our in-briefing, I would just roll my eyes and do what I'm told. If they say tell the passengers take their shoes off, I tell the passengers, "take your shoes off. " If they say, "make the passengers dance a jig," I'll make the passengers dance a jig. I don't want a bomb to go off on a plane anymore than the next person, but I always thought the "newest" security implementations they would hand down were already sadly outdated. After the shoe bomber attempt, the TSA gods immediately mandated that everybody take their shoes off. News flash: the terrorists have already moved on.
Now look, this guy had explosives in his underdrawers. So now are we going to demand all passengers remove their thongs so we can give them a crotch fluff? It doesn't make any sense to close the barn door after the horse is down the block. This Nigerian guy--they said his name was on a list of passengers that should be screened after the plane was to land in Detroit. Oh, that's helpful. We'll just screen his blown up body after we finish scraping up the fuselage off the runway. What sense does that make?
Well, now the TSA gods have come up with something else. Preventing crime after it has happened does not work, they have discerned. We should prevent the crime before it happens. A novel idea. But how should we do this? How do we know what they are going to do?
I know!
We should read their minds. Yes, there is a system being tested as I write this to read passengers' minds as they stand in line waiting to be screened. So basically it will work like this: You know those big jumbotron screens that you see while you're standing in line at the airport? Usually, they post helpful information like how many miniscule ounces of cheap European cologne you're allowed to bring and how much skin you must bare before being permitted through the magnetometer. Under the mind-reading device premise, these screens will now reflect certain negative images like terrorist groups, bombs, PETA and Hannah Montana movies.
When people see things, they can't help but react to it, no matter how cool they try to be, especially when an image appears in a place it normally wouldn't. What if your senior picture showed up on the display board at McDonald's? Would you not bat an eyelash, or would you freak out, break out into a cold sweat that someone might recognise your frosted bangs and braces? Yeah.
Your heartrate would increase, you'd start blinking rapidly, there would be some reaction and the mind-reading device would pick up on that. Hidden cameras around the airport would spot sweating terrorists who have recently seen an image of Osama bin Laden or a Hamas rally. Once sensors have detected you, you would be taken out of line and beaten until you admit to your upcoming terroristic act. Well, TSA says "further screening" but what really is the difference?
Doesn't this sound like it came straight out of a sci-fi melodrama? Do you feel like your privacy and civil liberties will be violated even more? It's bad enough I have to walk around in public without my shoes on, or stand in a degrading position while some brisk poorly educated woman fluffs my tits looking for plastique, now you want to dig into my private thoughts. I may not react to images of the Taliban, but then again, I might. If I'm standing in the airport minding my own business and I see images of angry Palestinians on a screen nearest me, I might get nervous too. I would think, "My God, has the airport been hacked?" So now I get pulled out of line and beaten until I confess.
What if it doesn't stop there? Technology never ceases. Remember the Sony walkman? You could play tapes on it and walk around. It was cool. Then they made the Discman, and that was even cooler, because it played CDs. Now they have iPods and we're capable of dragging around thousands of albums at a time, and look, we can even watch movies now too, anywhere we want. What will think they o next? The point is, they never stop thinking about what they can do next. Do you really imagine they are going to stop with just images of terror activities? Next it'll be pictures of cannabis and coke lines, and they'll be pulling all the junkies out of line. Then they'll use it to find runaway criminals. Maybe they'll flash pictures of missing kids in the hopes of finding their kidnappers. All of these are a very good idea. Yes, let's get terrorists, junkies and kidnappers off the streets. But what about innocent citizens who get caught up in the mix?
What if they start using it just to dig into my mind, find out what I'm thinking? Do I have mainstream views like the rest of the sheep--I mean, Americans? Oh, she started sweating when we showed a picture of the Chinese flag. She must be a communist. Off with her head!
I know I'm being overly dramatic, making light of a very serious situation. Terrorism is not a joke, and neither is mind-reading devices, no matter how silly I try to make it sound. There are other things the government is looking into: lie detectors, profiling, privatisation, just to name a few. Can you imagine being pulled aside for additional screening and it's a lie detector test: "Are you carrying a bomb?" No. "Okay, ma'am, have a nice day. Enjoy your flight."
In my opinion, we are not looking at the forest for the trees. We are making a small problem huge for no reason. Don't misunderstand my words. I do not mean that terrorism is a small problem, I mean that by trying to come up with all these super extra fancy ways to thwart terrorism, we're just wasting our time, money and resources. Why not make things much simpler? Go back to the basics. Invest the money you would waste on super duper Star Trek technology in better educated, highly skilled personnel--not McDonald's workers. If your personnel are highly educated and paid well, they might actually want to do their jobs instead of not paying attention, like the TSA employee who was on another planet while that guy breached the exit lane in New Jersey. And actually hire some people to do the job. If you have plenty of personnel to do the job, no one feels overworked when they have to thoroughly search bags and people. You don't feel rushed just to "get the line down" and people on their planes, so the airlines won't come around bitching about delayed flights because of the lines at security. All supervisors and managers should have experience and education. In my opinion, airport screeners should be along the same lines as police officers.
Whose dumb idea was it to hire Paul Blart to secure the nation's airports? When I worked for TSA, I felt that many of my co-workers, including myself, were grossly incompetent for the job. I also felt that many times we were poorly trained and that if something major were to go down, we would not be able to cope. I know that many things have changed in the three years I haven't worked there, but judging by what's being shown on the news and the fact that many of my incompetent contemporaries still work at the plantation--I mean, airport that I worked at, I highly doubt that things have changed that much.
We should also get people used to the idea that the security process is a PROCESS. Many people take this for granted. They think it's like the old days where you can show up for your flight ten minutes before it departs and you're just going to breeze through security and into first class. Make it so people understand those days are over, just like the in-flight movie and dinner they used to get. Be prepared for intensive searches of your property. You do not need a mind reading device to determine if I have a gun in my bag. If you open it up and check it properly, you would be able to find it. Stop treating the security process like a trip to the mall. The airlines might fuss, "oh, nobody wants to fly anymore because of the security process." The airlines are shooting themselves in the foot. Everytime something slips past security and makes it onto a plane, an incident occurs. When an incident occurs, nobody wants to fly anymore because they're scared. If the airlines actually worked in tandem with TSA, they would get the public into the right mindset about how it's going to be. If the airlines were smart, they would have something waiting for their customers after they've gotten through the security process: like lounges and a bottle of water to replace the $6 latte they had to throw out at security.
Start checking passengers before they even get to the security line. When was the last time anybody checked the parking garages? What about all the people loitering around in the front of the airport and at the ticket counters? Why aren't there bomb sniffing dogs hanging around the arriving cabs and other vehicles dropping passengers off? Why do they have to find the bomb at security, or on the plane? Why can't they find it when the guy is in line for his tickets?
Make clear-cut consistent rules at ALL airports in the United States and any flights bound for the United States. All rules should apply whether you're departing from LaGuardia, Heathrow or O'Hare or some small rinky-dink airport in Montana. That way passengers can't say, "Well, they didn't do this in Minneapolis-St. Paul." Once you train the flying public on the way it is and how it's gonna be, and stay CONSISTENT, it will be more difficult for terrorists to try something. They will see bomb-sniffing dogs, a heavy police-like presence, consistent rules, and cooperation with the airlines, and decide it might be too much effort. And for the ones who just won't get it, well, our success rate will far exceed the failures. No system will be fool-proof, not even the super-duper extreme technology. Just look at the camera system that wasn't working in New Jersey.
There's a lot of things TSA could do to tighten up on security that do not involve lie detector tests and mind-probing devices. Sometimes people make things harder than it really needs to be.
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