Our Baggage, Ourselves -- Traveling in the TSA's USA

If you have done any plane travel lately, you've probably noticed that TSA practices have gotten considerably more elaborate than they were just after the September 11, 2001 attacks. I had more than a few minutes to contemplate the issue yesterday in Washington D.C.'s Reagan National Airport, following my selection for extra screening, which now means a light pat-down for you, followed by a search of your luggage.

It has been a couple of years since I have been tapped for extra attention, so I watched what had changed in the interim with interest. In my rough recollection of 2001 and 2002, passengers were pulled out of line randomly at pre-decided intervals (every ten or so) and they only checked our baggage.

The snagging of "shoe bomber" Richard Reid in December 2001 heralded in the shoe removal rule, and the upset of a 2006 plot to combine various liquids into a lethal explosive in Great Britain led to the ban on all but a few 3 ounce bottles of liquid in carry-on luggage (a ban whose necessity is vigorously defended by the TSA). Somewhere along they way, they threw in the belt removal, too.

Extra-screening is no longer random and now it includes a pat-down. When I asked how I had been targeted for extra screening, I was told that the airline made the selection based on one of several factors. I was probably selected because the ticket had been purchased the day before the flight (ironically, the late-ish purchase was by NATO's travel agency, not mine, so that I could present a paper at a bioterrorism workshop). I wasn't sure what to expect when a female TSA employee sent to conduct my pat-down asked me whether there were any areas I was sore that shouldn't be touched. She hardly touched me though; her hands floated along my sleeves and pant legs in a way more reminiscent of aura-fluffing than weapons-checking.

My carry-on bags also got an extra look-over. My boots (a really fabulous short black suede pair) were checked with a handheld explosives detector, put through the x-ray machine a second time, then checked a third time with the handheld detector. Three different employees handled and discussed the boots. I told the third that I'd worn the boots many times on planes and that I'm not great even at getting sparklers to light. "I know you are," he said. He gestured in the direction of a TSA official in a booth about fifteen feet away. "Because if there was really something on these boots, it would be that guy over there, not me, talking to you."

It is hard not to conclude, following ten minutes of scrutiny that appear to mean little, that TSA security is more spectacle than substance. Security expert Bruce Schneier has concluded as much based on serious, stringent vetting that airline security has not improved since 2001; it is porous and circumventable if you're smart enough to get around it.

What then, does all of the patting and poking and wand-waving do? If security screening is theater, what is the play about? Schneier's view is that the shows of strong security help make the public feel safer. Others have argued that reminders of a security threat increases our fear, possibly to negative psychological and physical effect.

I know that for myself, going through security these days reminds me of the presence of the state in my life, in a way I find more rattling than reassuring. Walking through a metal detector barefoot while holding up my pants (on skinny days) signals to me that my body isn't fully mine. If the government wants to check it out on behalf of collective security, it will. And my clothes too, and my toiletries. I don't believe for a second that humiliation is the goal of any of the many well-intentioned men and women seeking to make us safer, but I also don't know how else to characterize standing at the government's behest in a plastic see-through cage with my arms and legs spread.

Ironically, in an effort to appear less intrusive, homeland security officialdom is en route to creating ever more subtle forms of invasion. Now, we are the ones who take off items of clothing. In the not-so-far future, backscatter technology might take it off for us, without us having to unbuckle even a bit.

_{photo Joe Raedle/ Getty Images}