Slate beats me to it
I was working on an article about this very aviation security loophole -- indeed, I have it as a draft in NewsBruiser -- but Slate beat me to it and wrote it up first. (Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.) Maybe I'll go back and add some more detail to my own version.
I was sad to see that Slate backs down on its initial skepticism of the No-Fly List. The article starts off this way:
The Homeland Security Department's No-Fly List has always seemed a bit absurd to me. [...] But even if you assume the No-Fly List serves an important purpose, the system as it presently operates contains a gaping, dangerous loophole that makes the list nearly useless.
(Of course, the loophole is only "dangerous" "if you assume the No-Fly List serves an important purpose", which the author initially claimed not to believe.)
But instead of ending the piece by advocating the elimination of the supposedly "absurd" and "nearly useless" No-Fly list, the author abruptly backpedals and calls for more rigorous procedures to enforce it:
Could an extra ID check slow us down a little? Yes, it probably would. Tough luck. We've already endured two wars and countless other disruptions in the name of safety. A few extra minutes at the airport isn't going to kill anyone.
Other people thinking about the effectiveness of security measures have thought that some of those measures were simply worthless. But these measures are not simply random and meaningless; they are often intrusive, demeaning, repressive, and error-prone. When a practice is actually useless for security, it ought to be at least a plausible argument for doing away with it.
For example, when I was at Oakland with Cory Doctorow (in his previous incarnation as a cigarette smoker) and he had to empty his cigarette lighter before carrying it on the plane, he tried to show the security screener the futility of this gesture by walking to a convenience store immediately inside the security checkpoint, buying a new lighter there, and bringing it back to the checkpoint. He had just purchased an item inside security comparable to what the screener had made him give up.
Now, a journalist could write a story about how awful it is that the convenience stores in airports are selling cigarette lighters. Or the journalist could write about how silly it is that screeners are taking them away from people. (Hint: TSA still expressly permits matches, and every airport seems to have stores selling enormous glass bottles of vodka.)
(Update: TSA rules apparently prohibit carrying those bottles on the airplane, but this might be hard to enforce -- especially the quantity limits -- since they get sold inside security checkpoints.)
