Recently a couple of fellow journalists taking some needed time away showed up at Denver International Airport well ahead of schedule. After all, we in the media business that lines have stretched to sometimes three hours and more, given staffing problems at the security agency. So the couple was being extra cautious.
To their chagrin, they slipped right through with zero waiting.
I laughed at that wonderful irony when I saw it on Twitter, because the same thing happened to my wife and me only weeks before.
When it did, we managed to shrug it off. Hey, it beat standing in line. We gamely headed off to an airport bar to slog through the wasted time. Why start off a vacation complaining?
It’s made me realize that, like a lot of folks, I’ve been beaten down by our country’s efforts to protect us. I’ve become numb — never a good trait for a journalist — to the endless security lines we’re forced to navigate for work and pleasure. Terrorists find new ways to surprise us and exploit our weaknesses. The Transportation Security Administration reacts by adding more layers of protection. Because the feared consequences are so dire, most of us resign ourselves to putting up with the extra checks, even if it means posing naked for cameras and being groped in public.
Or standing in line for three hours.
But we do it, and then we learn of critical reviews of the TSA that find the screening process misses all kinds of weapons, or Thursday’s finding that employee misconduct is rampant, or, to believe the official excuse, at least lackluster.
Yet the truth is that long security lines create target-rich environments.
We should stop being complacent about this and start rethinking our security practices. We should be vigilant.
Just look at last month’s deadly attack at the Istanbul Ataturk Airport. A trio of gunmen with suicide belts perfectly illustrated the point that terrorists intent on killing and maiming don’t have to sneak through security. In that attack, the terrorists focused on crowds waiting outside the checkpoints and killed 45 people and wounded more than 230.
Itap not just at the airport, of course. On a smaller scale, security checks clog up entrances to many public places. At your state capitol. At your city hall. At the courthouse.
After Ataturk, reporters at showcased how airport security at some of the world’s hot spots has expanded to start the process miles from the terminal. At the Baghdad International Airport, travelers must park 4 miles away and take designated taxis from there. Even those taxis are searched before they actually arrive. The process gets even more complicated from there.
The problem of long lines tends to go away with such an involved process, but such measures carry tremendous extra costs, both in terms of tax dollars, airline fees and wasted time and energy that could have been spent on the next new idea, an important piece of business or simply enjoying the vacation you planned for.
The current state of the social contract dictates that to be good citizens we must submit to such hassles.
But imagine how angry and depressed and bereft we will be if an Ataturk happens here.
E-mail editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett at cplunkett@denverpost.com. Follow him on Twitter: @cplunkett
To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit or check out our for how to submit by e-mail or mail.
