22 Jan Security theatre: an asylum for authoritarian nuttiness

Last Saturday, 57-year-old Jules Paul Bouloute, got off a flight from Haiti to New York. While attempting to find his way out of  Kennedy Airport’s American Airlines Terminal, he accidentally opened an emergency exit door and set off an alarm.

Jules Paul Bouloute

This has happened to most of  us. In confusion, inattention, or an ill-considered attempt to find a shortcut, we open a restricted door and set off an alarm. Sometimes it leads to an embarrassed chat with the on-duty Commissionaire; sometimes there are no consequences at all.

In Bouloute’s case, however, security officials evacuated Terminal 8 for more than two hours. Police scoured the building with dogs and SWAT teams, and required hapless passengers to go through security theatre screening a second time. Arrivals were stuck on the tarmac; departures delayed for hours.

As for Bouloute, he was charged with first-degree criminal tampering and third-degree criminal trespass, and he faces up to seven years in prison.

Salon columnist Patrick Smith, an airline pilot, analyzes the consequences:

[W]hat shocks me the most is that throughout all the coverage of the incident, including numerous interviews with ticked-off passengers and somber-voiced officials, not once has anybody raised the point that maybe — just maybe — we overreacted. Everyone, instead, is eager to blame Bouloute.

“As a result of the defendant’s actions, thousands of people were required to evacuate and to be rescreened by TSA, causing substantial delays in the airlines’ schedules,” District Attorney Richard Browne said in a statement.

No, I’m sorry, Mr. District Attorney, but that’s not it. What caused the delays and what hassled so many travelers was not the defendant’s actions, but our mindless and hysterical response to them.

Smith goes on to recite the interesting history of air terrorism, and details how a country that once took real terrorist attacks in stride became a “nation of scaredy-cats.” He cites other recent examples of ludicrous overreaction, and urges us all to calm down.

Calming down will not make us “less safe,” as security zealots are wont to argue. Quite the opposite, it would free up time and resources, allowing us to focus on more credible and potent problems.

The whole piece is well worth a read.