The Security Myth

In response to Mike’s post, why does Mumbai make the threat from asymmetric attacks any greater than it already is? It has always been there and it always will be unless we choose to live in a complete police state.

Take the case of the airports--because of the attack at Glasgow you now can't drive up to a terminal to drop a passenger off or pick someone up. Yet, there's absolutely nothing to stop someone from walking in with a backup containing an explosive and either leaving it in the terminal or detonating it amongst the passengers lined up to go through security. It's a "soft target." Now airports could institute a measure requiring everyone entering the terminal to be searched but then someone could blow themselves up in the parking lot so that would require a perimeter around the airport with every car being searched but then someone could blow them self up at the checkpoint .... and on .... and on. The only real solution would be to shut down air travel. So society wide there is an illusion of security created by the state to encourage people to go about their daily lives but in reality there is little that could be done to stop a determined terrorist. It’s about containment, not elimination, a point I make in the conclusion to my  book (gratuitous plug).

By the way, for an interesting examination of the faults with U.S. airport security see this from the current issue of The Atlantic.