Inappropriate Security?

We live in a post-911 world and certain precautions must be taken to ensure the safety of Americans. However, the measures often taken are reactionary and inappropriate. For instance, the latest efforts by TSA are a clear example of a breakdown of common sense. The deployment of intensive scanners and new guidelines for pat-downs are supposed to prevent attacks like that used by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Underwear Bomber. Umar, though, boarded a plane in Amsterdam headed to Detroit. European airports are not using the more rigorous equipment or guidelines. The actual threat remains the same and efforts in American airports are nearly useless. There have not been any similar attacks anywhere in the US, the only place where these standards are employed. SO, the citizens of the US are humiliated and inconvenienced with little or no effect on our actual safety.

To make matters worse, anyone who complains or objects to the methods run the risk of no-fly lists, fines and jail time.

Land of the free? Home of the Brave?

The US possessed intelligence information prior to Umar's attack that he was a viable threat. Acting on intelligence information and connecting the dots will do far more to ensure our safety than feeling up children and the elderly.

Threats to our security are not going away. Linear, reactionary responses will do little to protect us. Our security forces need to identify and eliminate threats before they even get close to an airport. Terrorists may use biological weapons that would be undetectable - an operative infected with a hemorrhagic disease would not be detected by scanners and a pat-down would only help to spread the contagion. We need to be more imaginative than the terrorists.

We should not have to trade our freedoms in order to be safe to fly in our own nation.