I’ve four times crossed the Pacific this Fall. Air travel is horrible in 2011.

Departing Philippines, here are the line-ups I suffered.

1. Car entering the Airport was stopped. (1min)
2. Line-up and luggage x-ray entering building (15min)
3. Check-in and collecting boarding pass (20min)
4. Immigration (10min)
5. Security check-in (15min) … removing shoes
6. Boarding pass checked before entering the gangway (4min)

At each step it was clear to me that no real security inspection was underway. It was all theatre. Laughable.

The best article I’ve read yet on Security Theatre has been getting wide circulation online.

Charles C. Mann:

… To walk through an airport with Bruce Schneier is to see how much change a trillion dollars can wreak. So much inconvenience for so little benefit at such a staggering cost. …

Terrorists will try to hit the United States again, Schneier says. One has to assume this. Terrorists can so easily switch from target to target and weapon to weapon that focusing on preventing any one type of attack is foolish. Even if the T.S.A. were somehow to make airports impregnable, this would simply divert terrorists to other, less heavily defended targets—shopping malls, movie theaters, churches, stadiums, museums. The terrorist’s goal isn’t to attack an airplane specifically; it’s to sow terror generally. “You spend billions of dollars on the airports and force the terrorists to spend an extra $30 on gas to drive to a hotel or casino and attack it,” Schneier says.

… “We’re spending billions upon billions of dollars doing this—and it is almost entirely pointless. Not only is it not done right, but even if it was done right it would be the wrong thing to do.”

read more – Smoke Screening

What can airlines do?

Distract me with circus acts like this one from Cebu Pacific in the Philippines. 🙂

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

(via Kottke)

____ Airport Security

In Narita, Tokyo I was twice questioned by serious, skilled security officers. Both times outside the normal procedures. That was impressive — and scary.

In Vancouver, Canada I was selected for extra inspection, along with suspicious Russians and Iranians. That screening was very skilled and professional, too.

… Yet instances like that are rare, rare, rare.

(via Boing Boing)