Snow at Helsinki airport. Photo © John Barnabas Leith under a Creative Commons license.

Come Thursday I’m going to have put up with the stressful business of negotiating the “security” checks at Heathrow airport before boarding a flight to foreign parts.

This New York Times op-ed highlights the absurdities and irrelevance of much of the current “security” regime at airports.

Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful and pointless.

The truth is, regardless of how many pointy tools and shampoo bottles we confiscate, there shall remain an unlimited number of ways to smuggle dangerous items onto a plane. The precise shape, form and substance of those items is irrelevant. We are not fighting materials, we are fighting the imagination and cleverness of the would-be saboteur.

So I shall pack the fluids I need to take in 100ml bottles and put them in a clear plastic bag. I shall take my shoes off and extract my laptop from my carry-on bag. And I shall stand in a long early-morning queue, waiting to be patted down. Will I and all my fellow passengers be any the safer for it?

Technorati Tags: travel, airport, security, terrorism

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