In general I don’t agree that security theater is not useful. A big part of security is about deterring random wannabee criminal from causing harm—showing off security mesures can be quite efficient against them, first as a deterrent and secondly as a low level filter against basic threats. This can be true even if those measures are useless against more competent and dangerous criminals. And if those dangerous criminals think the regulations are useful, they may not act anyway.
For example your house alarm will be useless against a hardened criminal but will deter your neighbour to try his hand at stealing. A good bike lock is useless against an electric saw but is enough to seriously slow down a crowbar, and will completely stop a drunk passer-by from taking your bike by mistake… Is it then just for show because a prepared criminal will be able to by-pass your lock ?
Now in the case of airplane security most of the current regulations could certainly be scrapped without any negative effect, but I expect some of them to be useful nonetheless (screening for knifes seems useful to me for example).
I don’t think these examples are quite security theater. A good bike lock makes your bike harder to steal; a “theatrical” bike lock would mostly just make it look harder to steal. Even a skinny cable lock, the sort you can cut with fingernail clippers, keeps it from being stolen by passers-by who don’t have fingernail clippers.
(Of course, the same argument applies to the TSA, so maybe I’m just wrong about what “security theater” means.)
I think part of the “security theater” argument with the TSA is that their own testing has shown that they don’t do a very good job at actually preventing weapons from getting onto planes.
That’s my point though : they don’t really need to stop intelligent dedicated people from getting weapons into planes. They need to stop mentally unstable teenagers and lone wolf terrorists imitators, who are much easier to stop and may in fact just not try if the TSA project an image of security.
Not in theory but in practice I’m not impressed by those we saw in France recently. Most of them were recruited through propaganda videos on internet and sorely lacked in competence. The Bataclan attacks were deadly but they also failed badly on their only protected target at the Stade de France. The general pattern seems to be a high profile relatively competent group followed by not very competent imitators.
In general I don’t agree that security theater is not useful. A big part of security is about deterring random wannabee criminal from causing harm—showing off security mesures can be quite efficient against them, first as a deterrent and secondly as a low level filter against basic threats. This can be true even if those measures are useless against more competent and dangerous criminals. And if those dangerous criminals think the regulations are useful, they may not act anyway.
For example your house alarm will be useless against a hardened criminal but will deter your neighbour to try his hand at stealing. A good bike lock is useless against an electric saw but is enough to seriously slow down a crowbar, and will completely stop a drunk passer-by from taking your bike by mistake… Is it then just for show because a prepared criminal will be able to by-pass your lock ?
Now in the case of airplane security most of the current regulations could certainly be scrapped without any negative effect, but I expect some of them to be useful nonetheless (screening for knifes seems useful to me for example).
I don’t think these examples are quite security theater. A good bike lock makes your bike harder to steal; a “theatrical” bike lock would mostly just make it look harder to steal. Even a skinny cable lock, the sort you can cut with fingernail clippers, keeps it from being stolen by passers-by who don’t have fingernail clippers.
(Of course, the same argument applies to the TSA, so maybe I’m just wrong about what “security theater” means.)
I think part of the “security theater” argument with the TSA is that their own testing has shown that they don’t do a very good job at actually preventing weapons from getting onto planes.
That’s my point though : they don’t really need to stop intelligent dedicated people from getting weapons into planes. They need to stop mentally unstable teenagers and lone wolf terrorists imitators, who are much easier to stop and may in fact just not try if the TSA project an image of security.
Is there something that keeps terrorists from being intelligent, dedicated people?
Not in theory but in practice I’m not impressed by those we saw in France recently. Most of them were recruited through propaganda videos on internet and sorely lacked in competence. The Bataclan attacks were deadly but they also failed badly on their only protected target at the Stade de France. The general pattern seems to be a high profile relatively competent group followed by not very competent imitators.