Tweezed

The other day I needed to pull a splinter from my hand. I had to improvise on the removal because my tweezers were gone. A friendly, regretful TSA agent at Burlington International Airport had confiscated them a month ago. My tweezers were roughly 2 ½” long and pointed, so as to be useful in pulling splinters. The agent helpfully showed me a pair of blunt, useless tweezers and told me that if I had that type I could have gotten them through.

I didn’t take it up with him then, as I was in a hurry and not ready to endure whatever abuse the TSA dishes out to recalcitrant passengers, but let’s try a visualization exercise.

A man on a commercial flight stands up, pulls out a pair of 2 ½” long stainless steel tweezers, their wicked points glinting, and declares a hijacking. What happens next?

Here’s my most probable scenario. Chances are that everyone on the plane is already pissed off. They have fought traffic to get to the airport, endured petty humiliation as they partially disrobed at security, and probably waited in the plane for an hour and a half for a chance to take off. They know they have already missed their connections, so another bureaucratic kerfluffle isn’t going to cost them anything. There is the sound of a hundred seat belts clicking open, and then a feral growl from a hundred throats. There follows a brief period of mayhem, and the tweezer wielding hijacker is reduced to fist-sized chunks.

Perhaps you think that is extreme? Place yourself on that plane. You, along with every other inmate, are preoccupied with steaming, stewing resentment and thwarted plans. Then fate offers up a lightly armed hijacker, or even a heavily armed hijacker. You now have the opportunity, with a clear conscience, to literally rend the flesh and bone of some deserving moron. And you’ll be a hero. It’s like Christmas morning. Passengers will walk off the plane cheerfully whistling, sharing handi-wipes with complete strangers and tracking blood through the terminal.

A number of experts have pointed out that the two most effective deterrents to hijacking are now in place. First, locked and armored cockpit doors. Second, passengers with those 9/11 video clips in their minds, ready to fight dirty.

I don’t mind the whiteshirts checking luggage for bombs. In fact, I’ll join the chorus for better luggage tracking to make sure that a bag doesn’t get on a plane without a matching passenger. It might have the side effect of getting people’s bags to their intended destination. I’m fine with the prohibition of actual weapons on aircraft. I’ll put my broadsword in my checked luggage with my Leatherman. But tweezers? “Do what I say and nobody loses any nostril hairs.” I once had to go back to the luggage counter and put my multimeter in my checked bag because it had ½” long metal points on the wire leads. Oh...please.

Oh, and the one ounce liquids rule? Utter crock. Theoretically it prevents a would-be hijacker from concocting binary liquid explosives in his juice carton. In reality, it would take three hours under a fume hood with a temperature controlled cooling bath to produce the deadly explosive.

While I’m at it, let us keep our shoes on. We are the only nation on earth that makes people take their shoes off at airport security, thanks to that ding dong Richard Reid and his sweat-thwarted (and seat-mate thwarted) attempt at shoe bombing. I don’t want to give anyone ideas here, but a bomb you can fit in your shoe is a bomb you can fit in your underwear. Nude flying is only an option right now, but that is what it would take to assure absolute security.

Terrorism is a politically motivated crime: the use of violence to create fear in order to achieve a political goal. Its solutions lie first in political change and second in criminal investigation. Think of the classic standard of proof for murder: the suspect has to have means, motive, and opportunity. There is little we can do about means – the world is awash in guns and explosives. We can lessen opportunity, but it will always be there in an open society. The only sure way to minimize the risk of terrorism is eliminating the motivation. I should note the obvious - threats don’t work on people willing to die. People who have exhausted all normal channels of political change without success are most vulnerable to the appeals of violence. Promoting political reform, both here and abroad will make us safer in the long run. Cooperative international criminal justice efforts (with the emphasis on “justice”) will provide some near-term protection. In the meantime, barefoot, tweezerless airline passengers are so much security theater.