Originally Posted by GradGirl
Wrong! Trading liberty (which Bart dishonestly trivializes by calling it convenience) for security is a false dichotomy. We need to be safe and free. If the best security measure we can come up with for fifty billion dollars is harassment of the elderly and the rest of the flying public, then the DHS is in the grips of a truly mind-boggling "failure of the imagination".
Real security measures start way, way before the boarding gate. Once a plot gets to that point, any terrorist coalition could have waged much more extensive destruction while avoiding checkpoints altogether.
Screening is just one component of a multi-layered defense which does include intelligence from multiple sources. Using aircraft is still high on the terrorist wish list. To remove the screening for the sake of your convenience (which is exactly what the people on this forum are complaining about) is naive and dangerous. The sleeper cells do not need to contact a terrorist coalition thus making them harder to detect.
Let's come out and say what you really want. You want to walk through without anyone dare look at you, talk to you, stop you. Do you want them to bow or kneel? Since you came on this forum you have adopted the same exact rhetoric as other to the point I have to double check who is posting because it all written the same. Every post on this forum becomes a merry-go-round where it starts on subject, some of the usual suspects derail the subject to their own uses, someone tries to return the thread to the subject but it gets derailed again. Instead of having multiple threads there should be just one since every thread since they all wind up saying the same thing.
There hasn't been a clear passage in airports for decades nor will there ever be.