Does anyone feel safer with the installation of new body scanners at airports? I don't. And I feel even less safe when I read in Roger Cohen's New York Times column, "The Real Threat to America," that Michael Chertoff--our former director of Homeland Security--runs a security advice business whose clients include the company making these new scanners.
Surprise, surprise. Former government officials profiting from fear.
Meanwhile, conservative Republicans are touting Israeli security, which I was curious about as well. But as Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post, we can't begin to afford the sophisticated techniques used in Israel, and the use of profiling and invasion of privacy well exceed American norms.
No, what makes me feel safer is this weekend's story of the foiled teen-aged bomber in Portland who thought he was going to obliterate a crowd of Christmas revelers and instead found himself arrested. Good for the FBI. They'd been on his case for months and led him to a point where he couldn't succeed. This is the the kind of detective work that I call security. The more of it, the better.
Removing my shoes and watching TSA employees wand children at the airport don't strike me as powerful terrorist deterrents. Good old gumshoe work does.
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