From The Land of the Brave To A Nation of Bedwetters

My buddy Sully links to this article about a tourist's run-in with security conscious officials. At the outset, I want to add the same caveat I suggested in the case of the Jena 6 when I first began to read about the case. It is possible that this story is a hoax, or that it's been exaggerated, or that salient facts have been omitted. Of course it would be a good idea to have independent verification, to hear more accounts, to know more facts.

Still, assuming the article is accurate, it's a horrible story: an elderly Japanese tourist who speaks no English is riding an Amtrak train from New York to Boston. He rides along, threatens or bothers nobody, and then does the unforgivable: he starts to take pictures. Well, we can't have that, can we? Sensing danger, the heroic Amtrak conductor swings into action:

The train is a half hour west of New Haven when the conductor, having finished her original rounds, reappears. She moves down the aisle, looks, stops between our seats, faces the person taking pictures. “Sir, in the interest of national security, we do not allow pictures to be taken of or from this train.” He starts, “I…….” but, without English, his response trails off into silence. The conductor, speaking louder, forcefully: “Sir, I will confiscate that camera if you don’t put it away.” Again, little response. “Sir, this is a security matter! We cannot allow pictures.” She turns away abruptly and, as she moves down the aisle, calls over her shoulder, in a very loud voice, “Put. It. Away!” He packs his camera.

And it gets worse! When the train arrives in New Haven, two police officers enter the train and remove him, apparently because he "refused" an order he couldn't understand. Hopefully these dim bulbs managed to find somebody who spoke Japanese, determine that he wasn't a terrorist, and send him on his way.

I got in a bit of trouble in the comments a while back when I said that some (though not all) TSA screeners were morons, and I suppose that I may offend an Amtrak employee here, but I don't really care. I don't know whether the "policy" against photography from speeding trains is an actual Amtrak rule, or merely a policy put in place by an idiosyncratic conductor on a power trip. I suppose the theory behind it is that terrorists could scout locations for attacks from the train and use photographs in their planning.

But this is utterly idiotic. What are the chances that terrorists would actually scout locations and take photographs from a speeding train? Wouldn't they be far more likely to get off the train and take pictures of their targets? And how many terrorists use photographs anyway? This policy is beyond stupid. It has no possible intelligent defense.

As to this conductor, if the policy is a real policy rather than simply her own personal policy, then she may not have had any choice but to enforce it. However, even if she had no choice, she didn't have to be an asshole about it. She didn't have to call the cops on a guy who obviously didn't speak English and who represented no threat. She didn't have to go into that whole "this is a security matter!" act. She could have been nice about the whole thing.

I know nothing about this woman, or her life. Maybe she is just somebody who hates her job and takes it out on the passengers, whom she resents. Maybe she's just a small person who gets to feel big by pushing people around. But one of the worst aspects of the War On Terror and the security theater it has engendered is that it gives uniformed bullies a chance to throw their weight around. When we give petty officials the power to enforce arbitrary and stupid rules, it is hardly surprising that many of them become abusive.

I sometimes think that our friends on the left get overwrought, and maybe I am a bit overwrought myself, but I have to ask: what kind of a people have we become? What kind of country is this? Is this the America we want to live in? Do we have to be afraid all the time, so afraid that we put in place stupid security measures against phantom dangers?

Let me make a radical suggestion: let's stop being afraid. The object of terrorism, after all, is to inspire fear. I am fine with putting in place reasonable precautions, with hunting down the folks behind attacks on the United States and killing them. But we can't sacrifice what we are as a country. This constant, unreasoning, debilitating official paranoia just has to go.

Lady Jane's Run-In With the TSA

Megan McArdle, aka, Jane Galt had a bit of a run-in with airport security which she was nice enough to blog about. It seems that she wanted to bring home a few travel-sized containers of shampoo and such, but she had a bit of a snag: she hadn't acquired the requisite Ziploc bag, and the screeners made it clear: no baggie, no carry. As Megan noted, shampoo doesn't represent an independent security if it's not in a baggie -- the sole purpose of the Ziploc bag is to make it easier to inspect. Megan offered to put the offending soaps in some other sort of bag, but the screener apparently lacked the discretion or judgment to accept this offer, and so, her shampoo had to be abandoned.

Megan is offended by this rigid application of rules in a context in which they make no sense:

It's not that I particularly mind the loss of a travel size sleek 'n shine shampoo set. But I resent being treated to rule applications so blind that they zip past moronic and straight into The Kafka Zone. And I suspect that they are so moronically applied because we treat the TSA people like morons. How low does one's IQ have to be to indicate that one cannot comprehend the security purpose, and limits, of a Ziploc baggy? Whatever the cutoff, I am sure that this woman was above it. But hey, terrorism! So we create a bunch of silly rules, and then demand that our silly TSA people follow them blindly . . . and we all go merrily down the road to airport hell together.

Megan, we treat TSA screeners like morons because some of them are morons. Oh, not all of them, or even most. But, predictably, some of the people we hire for this (let's face it) really tedious job are going to be morons. Lest any screeners read this and offended, note the word "some." Some will be of ordinary intelligence; some may even be of above-average intelligence. But, predictably, some will be morons. I will say I know one airport screener, and, well, he's a pretty dull fellow. But the rest are probably smarter.

And so, rather than rely upon their discretion, intelligence, and judgment -- which, predictably, will be lacking in some cases -- we give them clear, rigid orders. Some of which, inevitably, will be stupid. But if you start letting them apply the rules in accordance with their understanding of the reason for each particular rule, well, somebody might make a stupid decision and some contraband might get through. Which could, theoretically, lead to trouble. (How much damage somebody could actually do with a pair of scissors in the post-9/11 world is a different issue.)

Moreover, if you allow screeners to apply their independent judgment, you will necessarily have a certain degree of disparity in how passengers are treated. Maybe one screener is smarter than another, more able to discern the purpose behind the Ziploc-bag rule. Maybe one is a jackbooted thug too dumb to land a job as a potbellied small-town Sheriff who applies every rule as rigidly as possible out of sheer sadistic glee. Maybe the guy next to him lacks the energy and just waves everybody by. But whatever the source of the differences, if you allow screeners latitude to exercise judgment, you will get differences.

In differences lie lawsuits. If it so happens that a tall, elfin, good-looking white female blogger is allowed to pass through security unhindered without the proper Ziploc bag, the Muslim fellow who got a different screener will inevitably complain when the screener insists on a proper baggie. Which will lead to a nasty discrimination lawsuit. Remember the flying Imams?

Also, in a purely practical sense, I don't want to be waiting in line behind the person who is rules-lawyering the TSA screener. For that matter, I don't want to be in the line when twenty people ahead of me are doing the rules-lawyering, many of them in a less sensible manner than Ms. McArdle.

Now, those who complain that our current regime is nothing more than "security theater" have a point. I think that the TSA should try to keep bombs, guns, and swords off of airplanes. If, in the post-9/11 world, somebody can hijack an airplane with box cutters or a pair of scissors, then we deserve to lose. But argue that with the idiots making the rules, not the idiots behind the x-ray machine. After all, as Megan observed, they don't have a choice.