Does airport security make sense?

Rob Lovitt Travel writer • E-mail

Knitting needles, a couple of Christmas presents, and a half-cup of lukewarm coffee.

If you were tasked with the job of preventing terrorist attacks on airplanes, which would you let through security without a second glance?

Apparently, the correct answer is the knitting needles. And if a flight I took last week is any indication, that’s true even if they’re 10 inches long, as big around as a railroad spike and as pointy as a pair of bayonets.

How is it, I asked the needle-wielding woman across the aisle, that she could carry a pair of small spears onboard while I had to toss my last few ounces of coffee before passing through security? She just shrugged and said, “I don’t know. I guess they figure I’m not a terrorist.”

Well, neither am I (and neither, it seems, was that nice grandfatherly man who had to go through secondary screening because he had a few pre-wrapped presents). And while I understand the need for airport security, I sometimes wonder about the reasoning behind the regulations.

Lighters are banned, but safety matches (up to four books) are OK. A six-inch screwdriver is considered safe, but a six-ounce Yoplait is not. Unlike most liquids, baby formula or breast milk is allowed in any quantity — but only if a baby is actually present. And in the newest addition to the TSA’s list of prohibited items, snow globes (of any size) are now forbidden.

Is this any way to run an airport-security system? Are such seemingly random restrictions truly making us safer, or are they, as some critics suggest, simply “security theater,” designed to make us feel safe? And if screeners spend their time searching for snow globes and tubes of toothpaste, can they give truly dangerous items the attention they deserve?

Bombs, blades and penile pumps
It’s not an idle question. In the most recently publicized test of screening procedures (conducted at Newark Liberty International Airport last October), undercover TSA agents managed to smuggle fake guns and bombs past security in 20 of 22 attempts. One explosive device was apparently “hidden” beneath water bottles while another was missed during a secondary pat-down.

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And that failure wasn’t an isolated incident. Previous tests in other airports have had similar or even worse results, and the sheer volume of passengers and bags passing through security these days doesn’t bode well for improvement any time soon.

(On the bright, or at least lighter, side, screeners have detected a dazzling array of potentially dangerous items, including chainsaws, ax heads and at least one, ahem, male-enhancement device that apparently resembled a grenade.)

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