This cartoon by Mike Keefe in the Denver Post says it all. Whether it's nail clippers, a bottle of baby formula, or a sewing kit, airport security agents have diligently and repeatedly located and confiscated harmless items from 80 year-old women and 4 year-old children.
Maybe you feel safer in the presence of this arbitrary and mindless knee-jerk approach to security, but I am just plain annoyed. I have no objection to taking my shoes off and putting them on the conveyor belt. Based on recent history, that's a perfectly reasonable request. But it took them far too long to drop the nail clipper thing. The only folks who resent the intrusion of mindless security more than the bad guys do are the good guys!
Effective security concentrates on persons and items that, as a result of a preliminary screening, are determined to be most likely to cause severe damage. That's called profiling. Profiling can be done in a positive sense (to quickly pass low-risk passengers) as well as the more recognized sense (to single out high-risk passengers for closer scrutiny). But the criteria must be kept strictly confidential in order to retain their validity. With this approach, a few innocents who fail the initial screening will be inconvenienced, but that's better than spoiling travel for all the rest of us. If you are absolutely compelled to look like a duck and quack like a duck, then expect to be treated like a duck. That's the breaks; grin and bear it. Eventually your record of good behavior will put you in the low risk category.
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There is no room for "political correctness" in the area of security.
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