Refuse the strip searches!

I am prompted to blog by an experience I recently underwent going through that offensive joke known as "airport security". This incident caused me to wonder what the word "security" means these days.

I'm not sure I know what it means any more. Or at least, what it's supposed to mean. I have always thought that "security" measures would refer to that which causes one to be more secure. However, the sad sight of crowds of people willingly submitting to being electronically strip-searched by the government for no purpose made me feel if anything, much less secure, about my own future, the future of the world, and the kind of world our children will grow up in.

We seem to be in a power grab pattern whereby each failed plot leads the transportation "security" administration in the United States (a nation which, sadly, once was at the forefront of freedom, and now leads the world in finding new ways to help governments terrorize people) to announce new ways of harassing and hassling passengers in order to prevent the previously attempted plot from succeeding.

The absurdity of such measures can be seen by breaking down the justification for them into two implicit components, neither of which are actually true.

(1) It is implied that "terrorism" is a serious problem and that measures are needed to prevent it.

(2) It is implied that the measures which are being taken will be effective in preventing such "terrorism"

Let's take the first assertion. That "terrorism" is a significant problem and that we need to take measures to prevent it.

I assert that "terrorism" is not a significant problem, and not worth thinking about. So why does the world have its knickers in such a collective twist over it?

The dramatic, terrifying scenes of 9/11 have imprinted themselves in our minds. We witnessed in graphic detail 3,000 people being killed through an act of wanton violence.

However, this is where a dose of rational thought is  helpful to interrupt the natural tendency of homo sapiens to be inordinately influenced by visually witnessing such scenes of horror. That is, again with credit to Bruce Schneier, we evolved on the plains of Africa. Visually witnessing scenes of violent death, in that evolutionary context, pretty much meant that you, too, were at realistic risk of suffering a violent death, and therefore, it made sense on the savanna, over the course of evolution, for humans to burn images of violent death onto their brains and dramatically alter their perception of the world and their activities accordingly if such incidents were witnessed.

We live in a modern age where electronic transmission of video causes this assumption to no longer be valid. Simply because we visualize a scene of death and destruction, does not mean that we ourselves are at risk of it. We're not used to thinking about denominators, just numerators, because evolutionarily, the denominators were extremely small compared to today. When we witness violence today, we're seeing things happen to a certain number of the over 6 billion people on the planet. It's a different story from seeing other persons killed on the savanna 20,000 years ago.

Roughly 3,000 persons die each month in motor vehicle accidents in the United States. Approximately as many people died in September 2001 from car crashes as died in the September 11 attacks. What's more, that number of people continue to die each month in car wrecks.

Why are we not engaged in a "war on motor vehicle accidents"? Well, we haven't been exposed to streams of horrifying live video of such accidents. Dying in a car wreck is actually pretty awful. Being trapped in a burning building is a horrible experience. However, it also is fairly horrible to have one's pelvis smashed, one's ribs protruding through one's skin, and blood vessels in one's abdomen leaking blood into one's peritoneal cavity. However, the United States and the rest of the world didn't watch horrifying clips of each of the 3,000 deaths due to car accidents each month, so we don't have a "war on cars".

The fact is, "terrorism" doesn't exist. Come again, you may say?

Okay, I will rephrase. The problem of "Terrorism" is so insignificant that it should be neglected in any rational analysis of actual causes of death and risks that we may face on a day to day basis.

Cancer, heart disease, motor vehicle accidents, stuff like that kills people. "Terrorism" doesn't kill people, really, or at least, not a significant number of them. Its major effect is to give governmental organs the opportunities to ram through agendas to increase the scope of their power at the expense of the people.

The underpants bomber tried and failed to kill a couple of hundred people. This was followed by an orgasm of media frenzy and comments from US officials such as "Our national security policy shouldn't be to get lucky."

Pardon me, it's rational thought time again. An attempt to kill a few hundred people doesn't affect our national security. Only the waves of irrational fear that ripple through us for no logical reason following such attempted attacks can cripple us. There are probably hundreds of millions if not a billion or more person-flights a year, on this planet of over 6 billion people. An attempt to kill a couple hundred of them doesn't affect the global calculus. Even if one plane per month were to drop from the sky, it would still be safer to fly than to drive to the airport, statistically speaking. All of life involves risk, and believing that we need to do whatever possible specifically to cause the risk of "Terrorism" related to "Airplanes" to approach Zero, regardless of the costs, is irrational.

So what's up with these virtual strip search scanners? There are a few problems with them.

First, please note that no further underwear bomb attempts have occurred, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of airports on this planet of ours do not have virtual strip searches. The primary reason why planes don't drop out of the sky due to underwear bombs is that nobody is trying to detonate them. Terrorism is rare. Nobody is trying to bomb planes, which is why planes are so rarely bombed.

Further, the fact is that a dedicated "terrorist", extremely rare though they are, will obviously attempt a different method, when they wish to drop a plane from the sky, other than the previous methods for which useless intrusive "security" measures have been put into place. Responding retroactively to the last irrelevant "threat" will not render impossible the next one. In fact, the risk of death due to acts of airplane "Terrorism" will never approach zero. If a terrorist group really wanted to bomb a plane, they could simply acquire a surface to air missle. Why hasn't this happened? For the same reason further underwear bomb attempts haven't happened. Terrorism is rare.

The biggest problem with virtual strip searches isn't the cost, the inconvenience, or even the radiation or the privacy. The biggest problem with the virtual strip searches is that they represent an unnecessary, pointless expansion of the government's power over the people.

These machines appear set to expand. Everyone wins, except the common people. The manufacturers of the machines obviously are giggly happy over expanding their use. Bureaucrats can never lose by agreeing to expanded "security" measures. If another "terrorist" attack occurs, nobody will blame them for buying more machines. When no further attacks happen, they can be congratulated for preventing them.

However, when such machines are prevalent, it will be impossible for citizens to travel without submitting to allowing the government to perform a virtual strip search. The problem with this is that the government does not necessarily represent the good guys.

On an individual by individual level, governmental officials may be corrupt, nasty, or otherwise unworthy of the power entrusted to them by increased government surveillance. But in a larger sense, governments as a whole are not necessarily the good guys. Recall the treatment of the Irish in northern Ireland by the British. Native americans by the United States. The people of the Soviet union at the hands of Soviet dictators. Nazi Germany. Myanmar. Etc. These are just the low-lying fruit.

It seems this very simple and obvious truth is being lost on people. As we expand the ability of governments to clamp down on citizens' privacy and freedom, it is odd that we seem to simultaneously trust that such powers will be used for good, rather than for evil. Historically, governments worthy of such trust are the exception rather than the rule.

In the United States, a few years ago, Amtrak began requiring photo ID of persons purchasing train tickets. Without a clear rationale being advanced, it was stated that this was "closing a security hole". What security hole? Do they fear trains will be hijacked and rammed into buildings? There's a reason why trains can't be used in that manner. Rational thought time again.

With the Amtrak policy in place, the US government has declared that ordinary citizens being able to travel without government surveillance and records of their activities represents a "security hole", and ordinary citizens appear to accept that this is true. This really means that we need to rethink what the word "security" means. I propose that words like "security" and "Terrorism" now actually mean nothing. They're just Pavlovian code-words, designed to cause people to replay in their minds scenes of horror from the 9-11 attacks. The implicit threat is that this will happen again, maybe to you, if you don't accept what the government wants. No further rational thought is required. Such rational thought, of course, would result in the governmental organs in question being denied the expansion of power that they seek, so it must be interrupted through tossing out the magical Pavlovian code words of "security" and "Terrorism".

Let's face it.  Terrorism doesn't exist. About 40 people a year die from falls off scaffolding in the US, according to government statistics. Thus, over the past 9 years, about 360 people in the US have died falling from scaffolding. Zero have died from terrorism incidents on airplanes.

Let's get our priorities in order. Refuse the strip searches, and let's declare a "war on scaffolding". It would be more worth our while than virtual strip searches, the astonishingly pointless ban on liquids in airplances, and the rest of the ridiculous "war on Terror". And it won't expand the power of Governments to terrorize their citizens.

The strip searches can be refused, right now. If not enough people refuse them, this will eventually be done away with.
This is a rare opportunity for the common person to actually do something to stop the ongoing juggernaut of the TSA's assault on liberty. It's worth our while to take advantage of this opportunity. Refuse the strip searches!

If you do refuse the strip search, be prepared for TSA employees to try to hassle you into accepting the search. They will tell you that this means all your belongings will be subject to hand-search, and they'll rattle off some prewritten "talking points" that they've been given to use in attempting to talk people back into going through the machines. It's worth your while to stick to your guns, or lack thereof, I guess, and refuse the strip search.


(The one exception to "terrorism not existing" is nuclear terrorism. That's a real threat. However, we suffered through many years of W doing everything in his power to increase the risk of this happening, and very little or nothing being done to prevent the only form of "terrorism" worth caring about.)