> There has to be more reasonable ways to both ensure flight safety, without resorting to touching genitals.
Maybe there are not. If the plot were executed correctly, the crotch bomber would have blown up the plane, and it doesn't sound like anything in the X-ray / metal detector system was set up to handle that.
The point is, there is no such thing as "ensuring" flight safety. Along with the benefit of increased flight safety, to each added screening procedure is associated a cost of loss of personal freedom and privacy. The traditional debate has vastly overstated the former, and completely ignored the latter.
People who are up in arms about the groping are calling for a fairer accounting. Terrorism is a very concentrated, visual form of evil, so the knee jerk reaction is that it must be stopped at all costs. Loss of freedom is, by contrast, diffuse and widespread, and people are less apt to become emotional over it. It's inherently difficult to balance the two, and yet it must be done.
Maybe there are not. If the plot were executed correctly, the crotch bomber would have blown up the plane, and it doesn't sound like anything in the X-ray / metal detector system was set up to handle that.
The point is, there is no such thing as "ensuring" flight safety. Along with the benefit of increased flight safety, to each added screening procedure is associated a cost of loss of personal freedom and privacy. The traditional debate has vastly overstated the former, and completely ignored the latter.
People who are up in arms about the groping are calling for a fairer accounting. Terrorism is a very concentrated, visual form of evil, so the knee jerk reaction is that it must be stopped at all costs. Loss of freedom is, by contrast, diffuse and widespread, and people are less apt to become emotional over it. It's inherently difficult to balance the two, and yet it must be done.