I join the not-flying list
<p>Count me with those who will not be flying until the TSA procedures requiring either a full-body X-ray scan or a grope are rescinded.  This is meaningless security theater taken to a Kafkaesque extreme, and I won&#8217;t consent to it even passively.  When the airlines feel enough pain from refuseniks, they&#8217;ll push back faster than we can.</p>
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<p>The whole gallimaufry of escalating &#8220;security&#8221; restrictions since 9/11 has been a bad joke out of Monty Python parody, achieving nothing; tiger-team tests reveal that the ridiculous ease with which weapons and bombs can be slipped through has changed <em>not one bit</em>.  </p>
<p>The Israelis, targeted by terrorists more ferociously than any country on earth, have never had a single hijacking or bombing and rightly laugh at our &#8220;security&#8221;. It&#8217;s all Kabuki theater, a ritual intended to pantomime seriousness in the absence of any actual seriousness.  If we actually cared about security we&#8217;d arm the air crew, and if we <em>really</em> cared we&#8217;d <a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=11">arm the passengers</a>.  </p>
<p>It was always bound to come to this.  Once &#8220;security&#8221; was based on the premise that only planes full of disarmed sheep are safe, the full-body scanners and genital-groping were as inevitable as night following day &#8211; and, in the future, so will be body-cavity searches.  But perhaps scanning and groping will prove to have been the reductio ad absurdum of that strategy; there are signs that the revolt against it might become serious enough to inflict damage on revenue that the airlines can&#8217;t tolerate.</p>
<p>Causing enough pain to the airlines that the TSA buckles is only the first step, though.  It&#8217;s not just the regulations that are broken, it&#8217;s the pervasive sick-think behind them.  I will know <em>that</em> illness has been cured only when I am not only permitted but encouraged to wear my personal weapons onto an airplane.</p>
