About 3.30pm yesterday one of the security scanners at Sydney’s Domestic Terminal lost power resulting in 16 passengers passing through security without being correctly screened. Out of the many thousands of passengers who pass through Sydney Domestic every day this is a very minor problem.
However, the paranoia that has strangled the airline industry since the September 11 attacks saw what was a minor security machine malfunction turn into a farce that affected flights and travellers across Australia. All passengers in the terminal, and on flights that were still boarding at Sydney Domestic were forced to leave the air-side area of the terminal and planes landing at the airport were made to queue for hours on the tarmac until every passenger was re-screened.
In other words the failure to correctly screen 16 passengers resulted in thousands of people being stuffed about by overbearing and unnecessary security regulations which see public freedom curtailed in the name of fighting an invisible and mostly physiological enemy.
This paranoia and curtailing of public freedom has sees us live in a society where you are many times more likely to be killed in a plane accident than a terrorist attack. Yet in the United States $8.1 billion is spent on the TSA to enforce compulsory child molestation air-line security while only $77 million is spent on investigating airline accidents.
It is all a bit ridiculous isn’t it? Which reminds me of this infographic:
My hope is one day we will wake to the realisation that the biggest threat to our safety and freedom is not a few men who live in dusty caves in the middle-east but instead our own governments curtailing our freedoms in a manner akin to that of Orwell’s 1984.
