Airport security has great costs and no benefits

Damien Grant writes:

Wellington Airport security generates an extra degree of irritation because, despite being designed with two security wings, only one is ever in operation, no matter how many passengers are waiting to take their shoes off.

To emphasise the indifference of management to the factors of production that us commuters are, at the front of queue is an officer who points you to the empty spot immediately in front of you.

Unless Wellington is expecting a tsunami of the visually impaired, this is the second-most-useless public servant, after the chair of the Commerce Commission.

Heh.

Airport security serves no purpose. In the three decades we have endured this nonsense, not a single act of sky-terrorism has occurred. Or been prevented. Not one.

Tens of thousands of toenail clippers, toothpaste and a small number of extra-large tubes of personal lubricant have been confiscated, but not a single terrorist has been thwarted.

Having security screening for international flights makes sense, but it is a pointless exercise for domestic flights.

I know. I know. The head of the airport security agency will be rushing to the Media Council to make the point that it has been their effectiveness that has prevented our own 9/11, but this argument fails as soon as it is examined. …

The argument that it has been the diligence of the pre-flight screening programme that has prevented airborne terror is an example of the false cause fallacy.

Tossing salt over your shoulder prevents the evil that would occur from the spilling of salt. If conducted faithfully, no evil occurs after spilling salt. Ergo, tossing salt into the eye of Satan is effective at warding off the devil.

A simple thought experiment confirms the point. If there were individuals willing to die to bring down aircraft for some religious or political cause, yet our current processes thwarted this ambition, what would their second-best alternative be?

Would these frustrated martyrs shrug their shoulders and live out a quiet civilian existence, or would they express their ideological belief by attacking the limitless other soft targets that a free society presents?

The opportunities for carnage are limited only by the imagination of the prospective terrorist and their access to chemical fertiliser.

If airport security has prevented hijackings, what has prevented attacks at sporting events, schools or airport security queues?

The rationale that lies behind scanning carry-on luggage should require similar measures at malls and nightclubs.

Damien nails it here.

The rationale for flight screening is you don’t want a terrorist taking over a plane. But this would never happen post 9/11. For one cockpits are no longer able to be accessed, and secondly passengers have shown that they will overpower any attempted hijacker (even armed ones) rather than let them take control of a plane.

We should scrap entirely security screening on domestic flights. It produces no benefits and inflicts great costs, both fiscal and time. Smaller flights in NZ don’t have it anyway.