Author: Ruth Dudley Edwards
Publication: Irish Independent
Date: January 10, 2010
URL: http://www.independent.ie/opinion/columnists/ruth-dudley-edwards/ruth-dudley-edwards-political-correctness-impairs-airport-security-2007146.html
We have to ignore all the hand-wringing liberals
and political interference, writes Ruth Dudley Edwards
I bought an ulu in Alaska a couple of years
ago. It's a sharp pocket knife with which Sarah Palin could efficiently skin
a caribou or a terrorist cut the throat of a recalcitrant air steward. On
return from a recent trip to Dublin, I found it nestling forgotten at the
bottom of my handbag, having been undetected by both Heathrow or Dublin X-ray
machines.
The people who watch the screens have a boring,
repetitive job, and even if potentially dangerous items show up, they often
get through. Security in airports is a con. Except in Israel, of which more
later.
In the past 18 months or so I've been on 70
or more planes and been checked by security in around a dozen airports in
Europe and the US. Mostly, what goes on is a complete waste of time. The explosive
powder concealed in the underpants of the Nigerian wannabe bomber was undetectable
by X-ray, as would have been the syringe with the nasty liquid. (No one has
ever spotted the adrenaline syringe I carry to ward off anaphylactic shock
from wasp-stings.)
The body-scanners that are now about to be
brought in at enormous expense will be useless against the latest cutting-edge
Islamist initiative -- what Americans are delicately calling the butt-bomb.
It's a winner, this. While there's the disadvantage that if you trigger it
in situ, your body will take the main force of the blast, all you have to
do is pop into the loo, extract the PTN (Pentaerythritol tetranitrate) from
your rectum and set it off when you get back to your seat more efficiently
than did young Mr Abdulmutallab. Then, hey presto, plenty of dead people will
be raining down on the city of your choice.
We have to get real. And that means for a
start accepting dogs, profiling, behavioural identification and -- crucially
-- operational independence.
As the Slovakian security people have demonstrated
dramatically, dogs are as good at sniffing out plastic explosives as they
are at spotting drugs. The unfortunate Stefan Gonda, arrested by gardai for
unwittingly carrying the RDX (Research Department Explosives -- as used successfully
in August 2004 by two female Chechens on
two Russian aircraft) planted on several passengers
by Slovak police testing out their sniffer dogs, did not actually surmount
the canine barrier. The dogs had 100 per cent success, but the handler who
had put two samples of an explosive into Gonda's bag forgot to take out the
second when the dog found the first. So let's have the dogs checking people
and baggage as they arrive at the airport so no-one can saunter into security
with his knapsack, blow up hundreds of queueing passengers and wreck the airport.
Now, profiling. The civil liberties people
scream about the wickedness of paying special attention to particular ethnic,
religious or age groups. Rubbish. These days, apart from the odd Tamil Tiger,
suicide bombers are Muslim, the vast majority are of Asian background, almost
all are under 30 and most are still male. Keep security minimal for the rest
of us and focus on the core group. Women won't put too much strain on the
system: so far, their bombers wear enveloping Islamic dress.
Knife crime is going down in London because
police have finally decided to ignore hand-wringing liberals and search black
kids, who are the main perpetrators and victims. Very few parents complain:
they don't want their kids to murder or die. Similarly, it was only the malcontents
and republican activists who whinged when, during the heyday of the Provos,
the Irish were singled out for security checks.
I'm not suggesting that everyone within the
core group should be subjected to specially intimate security checks. This
is where behavioural identification comes in. The Israelis, who need and have
the best security system in the world, are adept at interpreting body language:
suicide bombers are mostly tyros and their nervousness shows. If the sweaty
ones have to be strip-searched or go home - tough.
Above all, while airport police should be
subject to the law, they should be free of political interference. Politically
correct politicians from the UK to Canada have caved in to pressure from Muslims
and agreed that the devout should not have an unclean animal near their sacred
person. They have rejected profiling as racist and discriminatory and therefore
have subjected us all to hours of pointless misery. (I've had the experience
in America of being taken out of a queue boarding the aircraft to be re-searched
so as to be a middle-aged, white, female counterpoint to the searching of
a dodgy-looking young man in full Islamic gear.) Behavioural identification
techniques will be swamped if its practitioners are expected to view every
passenger as an equal threat.
Lay off, politicians. Stop wasting our money
and let the cops do their job.