Just in case you’re curious about what’s going to happen down the road with airline security, in the wake of the recently foiled liquid-bomb plot, there’s an article by a Time correspondent here that pretty much paints the picture. It’s about airport security in Israel, a country that has forgotten far more about conflict and terrorism than we know, that has never had an outbound airplane hijacked.
The gist of it is this: you can’t win this game by looking for the weapon. You have to look for the people whielding the weapons. It’s like any other arms race: as soon as one side invents a new weapon, the other side invents a way to disarm it, a means to protect against it, or a bigger weapon. Ultimately nobody wins. Just like copy-protection for software, DVDs, and CDs: a few bright people inventing ways to prevent something from being copied are no match for an endless number of fanatics figuring out ways to circumvent that protection.
In some sense the terrorists have won. They didn’t get the body count they wanted, but once again they’ve brought the air travel industry to its knees, and the US economy is going to get kicked in the guts again. Personally speaking, if I can’t carry stuff onto an airplane, I can’t travel, because there’s no way I’m checking as baggage the ~$3000 worth of computer and audio equipment I tend to carry with me on vacations. Travelling internationally without being able to bring beverages is out of the question. It’s literally dangerous; you dehydrate badly on such flights, and the airlines don’t give you enough liquid to compensate. (They probably wouldn’t be able to get the plane off the ground if they carried enough water for all passengers.)
Until we switch the battle from a technological playing field to a psychological one, the terrorists will continue to win. Don’t like profiling? Too bad. The alternative doesn’t seem to be too much fun either.
