28.10.06

Why airport ID checking is Kabuki Security

ABC.com: Web Site Lets Anyone Create Fake Airline Boarding Passes

Note the amazing strings of nonsense from the Transportation Security Administration's spokesperson, who completely tap dances around such significant threats to commercial airliners as:

  • The (literally) tons of unscreened, unaccompanied cargo aboard regular-carrier passenger flights;
  • Access to aircraft not through an airport terminal's "security" checkpoint, but via its sterile zone's side and back doors by concessionaires, terminal employees and groundcrews;
  • Miles and miles of unsecured airport perimeters.

The price tag for U.S. security theater: $6 billion for FY2007.

If you look up the ideogram for 'kabuki', you'll find that it translates as “song,” “dance” and “skill.” I guess for the TSA two out of three ain't bad.

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