The alarm goes off at six o'clock Monday morning. Half asleep, you stumble into the bathroom for your morning shower. You enjoy the quite time in the shower because it's one of the few times at home where you can be alone with your thoughts, one of which you don't like thinking about. You realize for certain that before you will be allowed to board your ten A.M. flight to New York you may be subjected to extreme invasion of privacy at the least, and possibly a little humiliation for good measure. You know you are not a terrorist, your family knows this as well. However, that argument will not prove useful standing in front of the security person at the terminal. You have suspicions about this person and ask yourself silently "who checked them out?". In the past you have wondered about the "port of origin" of the person you have to get through who is gruffly telling you to take off your shoes, and who is now going to put their hands on you to insure that you are not carrying a concealed tube of explosive toothpaste. You have wondered, as you look at all the security people that are also looking at you, whether or not they have been properly trained. What qualifications do they have that gives them the right to check you out and make a quick guess as to whether or not you could possibly be planning to blow up the plane. You remember a quote from someone on CNN about the Israeli airline security team, who we know has never had an airline hijacked, how that "in America we look for nail clippers, but the Israeli's look for terrorist". Hmm, maybe they are on to something, or maybe they are concentrating on the main thing, which of course is catching terrorist before they terrorize. |
