Why don’t we screen travellers a planeful at a time?

One guy on a plane with a utility knife isn’t a threat.

Four or five discount cialis clinic _2001_attacks”>are.

Letting individual travellers carry on a small bottle of liquid explosives disguised as “prescription medicine” isn’t particularly dangerous.

When 10 people on the same plane get together and mix their individual bottles it will be.

Because we screen everyone as they enter a concourse there is no way to pick up patterns like eight Pakistanis with prescription medicine on the same plane. (I know, I know “profiling” is bad. You know what I have to say to that? Screw you.)

But if we did the security screenings right at the gate, patterns like these would be much easier to detect.

I understand that it’s a matter of cost. But what’s more expensive than letting the bad guys blow up a plane in mid-air?

6 comments August 14th, 2006