Security schmecurity

On my recent trip to the Bahamas, I was screened 3 separate times at the Nassau airport for my flight back to the States. At the first checkpoint, they checked ID, required passengers to remove shoes as they walked through metal detectors, and also hand screened every piece of carry on baggage, seemingly regardless of whether the screeners saw any odd objects on the x-ray. Immediately after this screening was the second point where checked baggage was sent through a conveyor x-ray and metal detectors again employed for passengers. Finally, once your checked luggage successfully passed the process and was dropped off, there was a final set of metal detectors and screening for carry on bags again before you arrived at the gates. At least at the final point, there wasn't the necessity to recheck every piece of carry on baggage.

If I had been in a rush, I would have been more than a bit annoyed at the multiple checks but since there was time before the flight boarded, it was just a minor nuisance - albeit an inefficient nuisance.

However, I came across an article today which discussed various passengers that had purposefully circumvented the banned object rules or mistakenly carried on banned objects which were missed during the screening process. It's more than a bit irritating when passengers are forced to go through a long security process just to realize that there are various flaws and loopholes in the process. For example, several passengers simply put their gels or liquid objects in their pockets as they go through the metal detectors. Since the containers are non-metal, they are never picked up.

I understand the government's desire to show due care in responding to terrorism threats by raising the level of security procedures, but the process obviously needs to be more thoroughly executed. It's laughable that there are ways to get around the system and people have done it successfully. Not only that, but even though screeners are aware of the necessity to check in lotions, gels, toothpaste, etc., these objects seem to slip through the cracks more often than not. It's almost as if as long as there are no wires attached, it's ok to let these "threatening" objects through.

As much as I dislike the idea of spending more time at the security checkpoints, it seems like in order to get the job accomplished, more needs to be done. I'm just counting down the days until passengers are forced to empty all their pockets and turn them inside out for proof... or the govt needs to realize that it's impossible to check for everything that could occur and restrict their policy to what makes sense.