A new grassroots campaign has started the website FlyWithDignity.org to continue to raise awareness on the issue of airport security.
They are collecting “signatures” in their online petition. Now, I’m not naive. I don’t expect the online petition to be used for anything particularly meaningful. However, they do verify email addresses and it at least represents a set of unique email addresses that have at least cared enough to voice their opinion on the matter. At a minimum it stands to contradict the news sources that claim very few people actually care about this problem.
In other news, the TSA head, John Pistole, was in front of a Senate Oversight committee today. From the Consumerist website:
He used the analogy that if passengers had the option of getting on two planes to the same destination — one which had been fully screened but which took a little longer and required scanners or pat-downs, and the other with no screening — “I think everyone will want to opt for the screening with the assurance that everything is safe and secure.”
I’d like to point out how he carefully constructs a false dichotomy and uses that to defend the invasive screening procedures. In reality our choices are not limited to invasive screening or no security. I’d be perfectly happy to invoke choice C, returning to the level of security we had 9 months ago. Total number of successful terrorist attacks involving planes from October 2001 to 2010 before the new procedures: 0.