Teachers, prison guards and drill sergeants know that the best way to truly break the spirit of one of their charges is to enforce an innumerable number of petty rules: eyes forward at all times, stand behind this line, hands folded in just such a manner. If those untrustworthy humans being kept in check are constantly monitoring each and every aspect of their behavior they are less likely to do anything out of line. It is a crude and cruel system, but it is effective at the only thing for which it is striving: authoritarian order.
The restrictions being imposed upon airline passengers are inching ever closer to those kinds of brutal, draconian methods. Yesterday came word that in response to the attempted incendiary incident in Detroit on Friday more pointless and restrictive rules are being implemented for air travel. The full extent of the new rules is not yet clear (it is a holiday weekend, after all). However the stupidest of them has to be a new restriction on personal items during the flight:
But several airlines released detailed information about the restrictions, saying that passengers on international flights coming to the United States will apparently have to remain in their seats for the last hour of a flight without any personal items on their laps. It was not clear how often the rule would affect domestic flights.
Now if someone manages to bring an explosive on board they will be forced to attempt to detonate it more than an hour away from the airport. I feel safer already, don’t you?
It’s one thing for new travel punishments to be irrational and illogical, but this takes the cake for being utterly and completely pointless. It does nothing to prevent someone getting a weapon on board; it does nothing to prevent someone attempting to use a weapon on board. I’m going to repeat that because it’s at the very heart of this matter: It does nothing to prevent someone getting a weapon on board; it does nothing to prevent someone attempting to use a weapon on board. It just means that it’ll be harder to do so within an hour of landing. Even by the remarkably dense standards of security theater, this one takes the cake.
It also bears more than a passing resemblance to the kinds of petty torments used to restrain everything from fourth graders to hardened criminals. Am I still allowed to gesture with my hands while I speak with the person next to me, or must they be at my sides at all times? How long until talking itself is banned? And what does “personal effects” mean here? Are magazines and books so terrifying that they must be stowed?
I’ve long said that the only way to truly secure an airliner would be to strip search everyone and make us all fly naked. Thanks to technology we’ve already gotten most of the way to naked, but now even that isn’t harsh enough. Now we’re going to restrict what you can do inside the pipe to pass those long and stressful hours.
What’s so interesting about this new nothing-on-your-lap-for-one-hour knuckle-rap is that it so starkly demonstrates what the real motivations are. Security is always pushing for more and more ways to restrain the people it is purportedly protecting. But at least in the past the restrictions were in some tiny way tethered to a potential physical threat (however ludicrous or improbable). Now even that fiber of reason has been snapped in favor of something that is exclusively about punishment and intimidation.
There are only two questions remaining. First, is this the rule so insane (and detrimental to wealthy trans-continental passengers) that it finally causes a real public pushback? Second, if the answer to the first question is no, what’s the next rule going to be? Because so long as the kabuki rules are allowed to keep tightening without serious objection from the public (and their bought out representatives), there will be new, ever more restrictive rules.
