I’m a frequent flyer, between traveling for work, flying home to Minnesota to visit family and sneaking off for weekend excursions with my wife, but as I write this on Tuesday, I’m nervous about flying this weekend for New Year’s.

I’m not nervous about the actual flying aspect – after hundreds of thousands of miles in planes big, small and tiny (read: two-seaters), that part shouldn’t bother anyone – and I’m not even nervous about possible acts of terrorism.

No, what I’m nervous about is how my wife will put up with me if our security line takes an inordinate amount of time. I’m not what you would call a patient person, especially in lines.

Usually we use the “expert traveler” lane at Chicago Midway, which on any given day will speed up the security process for someone who knows what they’re doing 40 to 50 percent.

But after the failed bombing of a Detroit-bound plane last week, all signs point to long security delays in every lane.

I’m all for airport security, but most of what we as travelers go through is a show of force rather than actual safety procedures.

The X-ray machines that our shoes go through after an idiot tried to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb after 9/11? They can’t detect explosives.

The restrictions that mean not even The Pope can bring toe-nail clippers through security? Would it bother you to know that you can still bring syringes through? And the biggest security short-coming is that most of the cargo in the belly of commercial airliners is not screened at all.

These trivial restrictions that make travel a hassle for those of us who do it a lot (especially if you have to check your luggage because your wife can’t bring a weekend’s supply of shampoo on board) aren’t meant to keep us safe, they’re to make infrequent travelers feel safe in the air.

After 9/11, Americans were so outraged that it would have been impossible for hijackers to take over another plane.

Passengers would spring into action, just like the Dutch passenger who tackled last week’s failed bomber and kept him from harming anyone other than himself.

A former co-worker after 9/11 began traveling with a hockey puck in his bag, intending to throw it at anyone who tried to take over his flight. Silly? Yes, but it’s the sentiment that’s important.

But the airline industry was devastated financially after 9/11, and knowing that thoughts of terrorism were keeping infrequent travelers grounded, the government stepped in and kicked out the old private screening companies and installed a massive federal bureaucracy.

The point was to reassure people that they were safe in the skies.

But if we are any safer, it’s because a plane full of people will no longer allow themselves to be pawns in a game of “shock the world.”

It’s certainly not because of the Transportation Safety Administration.

Covert tests of TSA checkpoints at three of the nation’s busiest airports – Chicago O’Hare, Los Angeles International and San Francisco International – revealed some disturbing statistics.

In the 1990s, screeners on average missed about 40 percent of fake bombs and guns sent through checkpoints under that old, “unsafe” privatized system.

In 2007, the same test found that in Chicago, screeners missed 60 percent of hidden bomb materials, and about 75 percent of hidden bomb materials in Los Angeles.

But in San Francisco, one of the only airports in the United States to retain its private screeners, they missed only 20 percent of the same materials.

The reason for this is simple: If a private screening firm fails too many tests, the TSA finds a different company who can do it right. When it’s a government-run system, though, the department can’t really fire itself. They can only demand more funding and place more restrictions on travelers.

For those of you who still think government can be as efficient and effective as the private sector, read on: $800 million worth of new screening technology ordered by the TSA since 2002 hasn’t even been deployed yet.

That’s like buying a mortgage on layaway – after 30 years of making payments you can move in (which reminds me of another government program called Social Security, but I digress).

To borrow a term from Bruce Schneier, it’s all “security theater,” just like the old “duck and cover” drills of the Cold War era.

Did anyone think that ducking and covering under a plywood school desk would save you from an atomic bomb?

No, but it made us feel that we had some modicum of control over something which we had none.

I can’t blame the federal government for wanting a huge display of change and force following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but I think that creating a huge new bureaucracy is never the right solution.

Why not simply enact new guidelines for the private screeners and improve the required standard of screening efficiency?

If the federal government was to say to the private companies that they must find 15 percent of all bomb parts in federal tests and must get all passengers through security in less than 20 minutes while keeping costs the same, a smartly run company would find a way to do that.

They’d load up on new technology and possibly develop new procedures we haven’t even thought of yet, because their future revenue depends on it.

Want a smaller computer? A private company will figure out how to do it if there’s a market for it. Want a more fuel-efficient car? If there’s a market for it, a private company will find a way to do it.

But because there’s very little chance of dissolving the TSA, there’s no reason for that agency to improve and become more efficient with any great haste. Even if a great public outcry were to be heard, government’s answer is always to grow, to add, to spend more.
And that rarely works.

Bryan Clapper is Leader Publications publisher.
E-mail him at bryan.clapper@leaderpub.com.