War on Terror Ends: Bin Laden Victorious

I'm declaring the War on Terror over today and it looks like underdog Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaeda are victorious. I'd send him a poisoned cake to congratulate him but it seems the US doesn't know where he is.

The Western world has finally reached the point where protection against terrorism has broken constitutional law for the average citizen. Airport security will now be allowed to break Section 8 of the constitution by conducting body scans and pat downs without probable cause to make sure you're not going to blow up a plane. This truly sickens me. It is placing a major limits on our rights to be secure from unreasonable search and freedom of movement. Perhaps what sickens me even more is how apathetic the Canadian and American public feel towards their constitutional rights being violated. If there's any questions about how dictators rise to power with wide public support, this answers it. People won't resist as long as the changes happen slowly enough.

I have decided that I will not fly period if I am to be subjected to this kind of treatment. I'd rather take a train or a ship. Sure it takes longer but consider the advantages of sailing to Europe on a luxury liner. It costs the same but you get world class food and entertainment, and the ability to stretch your legs. Plus, you're only subject to your bags being scanned by an x-ray when you board. The trip is a vacation in itself, compared to flying which is more often than not a nightmare. Believe me, I went through my own airport hell just days before this "attempted attack" happened, though it had nothing to do with security. Still, the way things are being dealt with bothers me a lot.

Airport security has been largely a joke in the years following 9/11. Statistics show that you are no more or less likely to be in a terror attack today than you were 20 years ago. The folks at technology site Gizmodo estimate the odds of being a victim in an airborne terror attack are 1 in 10.4 million. You are 20 times more likely to be struck and killed by lightning. Not including the people in the WTC, only 647 people have died worldwide in such incidents from 1999 to 2009. The airline industry averages 7 billion passengers a year. They colourfully state that the you could flytwo round trips from Earth to Neptune before being in an attack. Wikipedia (not a reliable source but good enough for quick info) states that there were 13 major hijackings in the 1990s compared to 12 in the 2000s.

So with these statistics, it would seem that terrorism is not a major issue at all. We have poured billions of dollars into security and we are now forfeiting basic human rights and dignity to secure our airliners. It has gotten increasingly difficult to support anti-terror measures when all the hard facts are considered.

It leads one to question whether the measures put in place since 9/11 are doing anything at all. We are no longer allowed to bring bottled water, we must walk through security barefoot, we used to joke about being susceptible to patdowns. Yet somehow, someone managed to elude dutch security and smuggle a firecracker onto an airplane. Yes, the "bomb" was probably no more than an M-80 or something similar. Unless he was lucky enough to get this thing near a fuel line, it probably wouldn't have brought down a plane, or killed anyone but himself. No one has ever heard of these measures stopping an attack. It would seem like that would be something the government would brag about.

One security expert cited in a recent news article noted that the only realistic improvements to security in the last eight years have been reinforced cockpit doors and passengers knowledge that they must resist attackers. Reading between the lines, this translates to the other stuff just being fluff. It's designed to make civil servants look like they're actually doing something when they're not doing anything. Indeed, the only reason this man, a known threat, got on the plane with the firecracker is because some Dutch civil servant failed to do their job. I could go further and say 9/11 was caused by the exact same thing. How on earth could a group of men get on a plane with box cutters? It's not like they didn't use metal detectors or x-ray bags at the time. It's not exactly an object anyone would conceivably need on a plane.

Obviously the problem doesn't lie in more stringent security measures but rather better training for security guards. There was nothing wrong with the measures in place before 9/11, just in how they were being executed. It is well known that Canada Customs uses students during the summer to man land border crossings. With such little training, how can these people be effective or trusted? I believe that to be an airport security guard, or any border agent, one should have the exact same training that a police officer does. They should be subjected to the same privileges and legal limitations that they are as well. Further intensive training should be given to teach guards how to spot suspicious behaviour. Beyond the baggage x-rays and metal detectors, they should have no right to search you without reasonable cause. You should also have the right to refuse if they don't give cause. If explosives are an issue, begin using trained dogs. Finally, get rid of those full body scanners. I don't want some stranger looking at my private areas. I don't care what the privacy commissioner says, these are illegal.

These changes I'm recommending would relax security to the point where it doesn't affect law abiding passengers, and only singles out those who may be up to something. Airports would be more efficient, we'd still be secure if not more so, and we wouldn't be subjected to the violation of our rights and dignity.

I don't blame the Harper government for enacting these ineffective and undignified measures. They were forced into it. I do blame them for folding so easily to pressure from Homeland Security and the Obama administration instead of resisting it. The US cannot be allowed to dictate to us like this. 9/11 was terrible but not terrible enough for us to abandon the principles that our two great nations were built on. For any doubts, I leave you with a quotation from one of America's own founding fathers. Written in 1775, Benjamin Franklin said this. "Those who give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety".