Are we really any safer?

Time for a little ranting I guess....

I was reading Ross Mayfield's blog and saw a post regarding air travel.

In it he says, "There is no such thing as a closed system and all we have is illusions of a secure homeland."

From someone who travels EVERY week and has flown both before and from the Friday after 9/11, I would have to agree.

The government consistently has a knee jerk reaction to the stupidest of things. Now, we can't have matches or lighters on board. We can't even check them in our luggage. Not that it makes a difference to me. Save the occasional cigar, I don't smoke. But we have been flying 50+ years now and I can't think of one time that a book of matches has spontaneously ignited to cause a plane disaster.

Now, get one joker/idiot to try and light his shoes on fire and the government can now see the "danger".

I have to tell you, that if you think the skies are safer because of all of the new security, you are sadly mistaken. Security is still a hit and miss at the airports. Some airports require you to take off your shoes, some don't. Some require any piece of metal to be removed. Some don't.

If you ask why the inconsistencies, screeners hide behind the statement, "that's so the terrorists won't know". That is just so wrong. If you mixed it up where sometimes, you had to remove shoes and sometimes you didn't, I might buy into that.

Prior to 9/11, the take was that screeners at $5.00 an hour are not competent enough for the job. So, let's make it a federal job, charge $20 more a ticket to cover it and we won't have to worry. Now, they have laid off many of the TSA folks and some airports are going private again. Did we really accomplish anything here?

Whether we had the new or old screeners, federal or not, for over 2 years, I had a screwdriver in my laptop bag that went unnoticed. Oh, they did get my round nose 1 1/2 inch scissors from my portable sewing kit and they also got my nail file on my finger nail clippers. Chances are, the screwdriver was alot more dangerous.

Now, I will be the first to tell you that I was in agreement with the cross checking of bags to persons actually flying. So, if you checked your bags and didn't board the flight, your luggage didn't get on the plane.

But either that is no longer in force or just isn't followed. There have been countless incidents where if you missed the flight, your luggage was already on the plane and went anyhow.

See what I mean??? Mine is not an uncommon incident. If you feel better about flying because you have to wait longer in lines, good for you. I am happy for you. On the other hand, I don't feel any better about flying these days. Yes, I endure whatever I have to to fly. I just don't feel any safer.

I await your comments. I know there will be some.