Letters to the editor
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In Wednesday's Post-Gazette, letter writer Dan Wyse put forth an entirely laughable case for the latest in airport security: body scanners ("Stop Complaining and Do Your Part in This War Effort," Nov. 24). If the body scanners were an effective means of preventing terrorism, I too would support them. But they are not.
The device manufacturer itself admitted it probably would not have detected the famed "underwear bomber." The technology is costly and useless, so as a taxpayer and as a traveler, why should I support it?
Look at the history of airline security: We screened for handguns, so terrorists used box-cutting knives. We screened for box knives and they used a shoe bomb. We took off our shoes and they tried liquids. Now that my shampoo is contraband, they used underwear bombs. Do you see a trend here? We guess what the terrorists might do, then they find a hole in our defenses.
Today, thousands of airport employees walk onto the tarmac with minimal screening and unscreened packages are routinely transported. And Dan Wyse thinks that having 100 percent of the flying public step into these silly body scanners makes us safe. All it does is cost us money and time.
What does work? Intelligence and investigation that stop the terrorists before they reach the airport. That is an effective use of our resources. Everything else is just security theater.
KEVIN ELSKEN
Upper St. Clair
A useless circus
Wake up, Dan Wyse. In your Nov 24 letter, you chided us for objecting to the Transportation Security Administration's new screening procedures. Your justification for this debacle is that we are at war and that "it beats identifying body parts from a debris field."
Unfortunately, the TSA is little more than security theater -- even the people who created the scanners have admitted that they probably would not have caught the "underwear bomber."
No, this is just another useless act in the circus the TSA has become. And what an expensive circus -- both in funding for the TSA as well as in lost time and in lost dignity.
Only two things have actually stopped terrorist incidents: intelligence work prior to the incident and passengers reacting during the incident. I'd rather they spent the money building up a better intelligence network and stop these incidents before they make it to the boarding area.
First Published November 30, 2010 12:00 am
