Airport Security

This week i want to use my reflection to answer a question. It might seem like a silly question, but it has to do with whether or not US airport security is overbearing. The short and simple answer is yes. I believe that most of the restrictions that are in place are not actually effective. For one, the liquid restriction is ridiculous because chemists have proven that damage can be done with liquids and creams that are under 3 oz. Also the restriction of having to remove your shoes and any jacket or sweatshirt is not that effective either. It seems that if there was anything significant enough in your shoes or jacket that it would do damage to a plane, then the metal detector would pick it up. Then you, the passenger, could be pulled for secondary screening. I think that a lot of the measures that are in place now are to give passengers on US airlines a sense of security. The average passenger probably thinks that he is secure because of all these extensive security measures. I'm not advocating for no security, just not as overbearing as it is right now. Other countries have seemed to find the balance between having security in airports but not having it be overbearing.

Two countries that I want to use as examples of where the right balance has been struck are Germany and Japan. After the 1972 Munich disaster, Germany created an elite anti terror squad, GSG9. When going through a German airport you notice that the members of GSG9 are armed to the teeth. There is still security in Germany but all the passenger has to do is walk through the metal detector and get his or her bag x-rayed. The GSG9 has seemed to serve as a pretty good deterant to any airline hijacking, with the last one being in
1999 when no one was injured(
http://www.emergency-management.net/airterror_hijack.htm). The other country is Japan. This summer I flew from Tokyo to Newark, NJ; obviously quite a long haul flight. When I was at the airport in Japan, of course they had security, but it wasn't heavy-handed. Unlike in the US, passengers there walk through a metal detector and get their bags scanned. Then and only then, if something out of the ordinary pops up is the passenger pulled for secondary screening. The last Japanese plane that was hijacked was in 1999. At that time a pilot was killed but no other passengers were injured and the crew members pulled a post 9/11 move by fighting and subduing the
hijacker.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Nippon_Airways_Flight_61)

In no way in this reflection am I trying to advocate giving up airport security altogether, but other countries have effective ways of dealing with the threat without overburdening the passengers and with getting them through the security in a timely fashion.