The TSA is Security Theater

My wife recently returned home from a trip to Washington DC. On line next to her through Dulles Airport security was an Arab woman in full burkha with two small children. As they are herded towards the body scanners my wife politely opts out, so does the Arab woman. Both are escorted from line where my wife is given the full pat down treatment, even having to lift her shirt above her navel so the eager agent could really get a good feel around her waist. Meanwhile the Arab woman, covered head to toe, is guided through the metal detector, then sent on her merry way.



Now I'm not here to promote any sort of profiling, rather to highlight that our TSA amounts to nothing more than security theater. If security were truly the prime concern, wouldn't it be important to search the individual whose attire is more conducive to smuggling contraband? Who's better equipped to bring a bomb or a kilo of coke aboard an airplane, a woman in tight jeans and a tank top, or an unidentified individual hidden beneath loose, flowing robes? And I say unidentified as it's impossible to determine who is beneath the burkha without lifting the veil. When you hand the TSA agent your ID at the first checkpoint, they match it to the name on your ticket, then check the picture against your face before allowing you to proceed, a step in the process made impossible by the wearing of a burkha. For all that agent knows it could be a man beneath that veil. If I were to walk into an airport wearing any sort of mask covering my face, I would be lucky to make it as far as the ticket counter before being being tazed and arrested, I certainly would never be allowed on the airplane. I can't even pass through security with a baseball hat on my head.

This is just another story that proves how ineffective and asinine airport security is. In short, the TSA is a joke.