The Transportation Security Administration has started to phase out its rule requiring travelers to take off their shoes before going through airport security. The New York Times writes that “the agency has not officially announced this change and did not confirm the new policy” but it “appears to be taking effect at airports across the country.” Caleb Harmon-Marshall, a former TSA officer, first reported the soft launch of this policy via his travel newsletter. It appears to be happening first at major airports, then trickling down to all of them.
The requirement was one of the best examples of what Ethics Alarms calls The Barn Door Fallacy: a rare or preventable incident occurs attracting lots of media attention, and lawmakers or regulators react hysterically with draconian measures that are expensive, obtrusive, ineffective and unnecessary to ensure that what had never happened before won’t happen again.
Richard Reid (above) is an incompetent British terrorist who tried to bring down a passenger plane in 2001 by igniting a plastique bomb in his shoe. (The fuse was wet, and he couldn’t get it to light.) This coming being so soon after the September 11 bombings and everyone being freaked out over the failure of airport security that allowed that tragedy, the TSA decided to make all commercial airline passengers remove their shoes and have them x-rayed forever. Morons. (My mother observed that we should regard ourselves as lucky that a female terrorist hadn’t tied to set off a bomb in her brassiere.) And it has taken 24 years for someone in charge to decide, “You know, this is kind of stupid.”
“Why now?” Harmon-Marshall asked in his newsletter. “I think it’s politics, not security. A handful of lawmakers have recently ramped up criticism of the TSA, with some even floating the idea of dismantling the agency altogether. From complaints about long lines to inconsistent screening experiences, the pressure has been mounting. And this shoe change? It feels like a direct response to that pressure.”
To which I reply, so what? Politics is one of the ways common sense takes control, just as it is one of the ways common sense disappears in the first place. The people we let run our lives are, with exceptions, neither particularly wise, reasonable, intelligent, brave or perceptive. The evidence for this is mountainous and indisputable, yet we appear unable to process its clear implications.
Ethics Alarms 
You can not fix stupid and that is the largest majority of our government anymore. It is all about the money they can make and the vote.
Politicians at all levels with allowing this move know very well this is another part of the puzzle to bring about further rules and laws eroding the remaining freedoms one has left by opening the door of possibilities to be made by terrorist to help the government meet their agenda more quickly and easily.
TSA has always been about 98% theater. Even ignoring the abysmal failure rate of TSA finding undercover Homeland Security test runs (67 of 70 undercover runs went undiscovered by the TSA per ABC News back in 2015), they make it painfully obvious that it is political rather than functional.
I used to take regular Monday morning flights from my local international airport. Like clockwork, every Monday morning they’d temporarily stop about half of the screening procedures to expedite the line. I guess terrorists like to sleep in on Mondays?
Of course, COVID made it crystal clear that the government is more interested in and more incentivized to implement feel-good measures that do not actually solve any problems (and almost always cause more problems) but appease the pearl-clutching “do-something!” masses. I honestly do not believe myself to be above the masses as far as my ability to discern truth, but seeing the large percentage of people who truly seem to believe that the TSA is helpful and that government restrictions during COVID were necessary really makes me question that.
Forget about the brassiere. The worry would have been the government response to a bomb concealed in a body cavity. I’m pretty sure there was chatter about some Chechnyan plots to use women putting a bomb in their hooha back in the ‘aughts.
I’m very critical of just that. I’m a frequent traveler and a member of Global Entry (expedited customs) that includes TSA precheck privileges. What I’ve discovered at seeing such disparate experiences is that what TSA precheck means varies based on the individual TSA manager at any given airport. About the only consistent thing is you can leave your shoes on. Other than that, it varies widely. Especially when you are at a tiny airport without a separate TSA precheck line. At some airports that means you can leave electronics and liquids in the bag, even if they have old school X-ray machines. You’ll get the metal detector instead of the scanner. OTOH, some airports the only difference is you get to leave your shoes on.
In foreign airports security is often armed to the hilt. All trained in spotting suspicious behavior, you know profiling. I was recently at an airport where a person in full burka with a foreign passport was waved past the baggage check machine and the body scanner. I however, presenting a us military ID, using a cane, with TSA precheck and global entry card had to give up my cane, take off my shows and belt and under went not only the wand but a pat down. When i inquired why I had to do all that, I was told it was a random screening protocol.
On another note I went to renew my drivers license at the same DMV i’ve been going to since 1993. My address has not changed. I was told NO becasue:
Note all those forms of ID are accepted in lieu of STAR, at the airport, but were not sufficent to get a STAR.
Then this conversation:
ME: How do I make this appoinment with the desingated employee?
Answer: She makes her own appointments.
ME: Where is her office?
Answer: She is not in today, her grandbaby got sick.
Me: Is there another designated emplyee I could make the appointment with
Answer: No, only her.
Me: When will she be back in the office?
Answer: When her grandbaby gets better!
I’m not convinced that the TSA should exist or that mandatory searches are actually constitutional. Penn and Teller used to sell metal plates with the 4th amendment embossed to make a point. Without probable cause, there is no right for the authorities to search you.
I think anonymous travel should also be legal, but I suspect airlines wouldn’t want to allow it even if the law was more relaxed.
It is, but only when you own the aircraft; or traveling involves Epstein’s Island.
About a dozen years ago, TSA tried to get some of the time-consuming but mostly useless requirements, like confiscating tiny pocket knives, lessened so they could focus on major threats. Flight attendant unions and airlines objected, and killed the effort. https://www.cnn.com/2013/06/05/travel/tsa-knives