ONCE upon a time, the rules were simple. No gun? No bomb? Welcome aboard Flight 101, sir.
Then we learned not to carry a nail file or Swiss Army knife.
And to take off our shoes before boarding.
And to keep liquids out of our carry-on bags — a disaster for those planning to shower during the flight.
Now, it seems, even boy wizards are on the “Do Not Fly” list. Or at least their chronicles are.
J.K Rowling found that out in New York, as she prepared to fly home to Britain after a reading in America. With her was the unfinished manuscript for the seventh and final “Harry Potter” book, held together with rubber bands.
A security officer took a look at it and asked Rowling to check it with her luggage instead. Now at this point, I can only think of two scenarios that would require Rowling to leave her manuscript behind, neither very credible:
SCENARIO 1: “Egad, look at the size of those rubber bands! A few shots from those and she could force her way into the cockpit without even trying!”
SCENARIO 2: “Hello, it’s the Harry Potter manuscript! Hmm, I wonder how much a few pages from this would fetch on eBay?”
Rowling, who only had the one copy, refused to part with her work. After a short discussion, the manuscript was allowed on and U.S. transportation authorities later said the rules clearly allowed the carry-on, especially since the flight started in the U.S.
So, a happy ending, appropriately enough. But one that makes me wonder if we’ve gotten a little too zealous in all the wrong places.
There’s nothing wrong with keeping airplanes safe. Before Sept. 11, jokes used to be made about how lax American airport security could be, such as Dave Barry’s suggestion in the mid-1980s on how to get an ax aboard a flight:
“Excuse me, sir, but there’s an extremely sharp ax in your briefcase.”
“Yes, I need it for my business. I’m an ax murderer.”
“Oh, OK. Sorry to inconvenience you, but we have to be on the lookout for hijackers.”
So I don’t mind the airports taking a few extra steps to keep me safe. But I do think we’ve started to reach a point of diminishing returns. Every new rule seems to add about a teaspoonful of security in exchange for a shovelful of irritation. I fully expect the security guards themselves to hold up a plane any day now, just to stop the complaints.
Maybe we need a new angle.
I’ve started reading murder mysteries again, and it occurs to me that the logic isn’t too far off here. As with any good mystery, a terror attack relies on three things: Opportunity (does somebody have the chance to do it?), means (does somebody have the ability to do it?) and motive (does somebody WANT to do it?).
There’s only so much you can do to reduce opportunity. Anybody who gets on a plane has a chance to interfere with it, even if they enter naked.
Our security has been working a lot on means, finding a way to deprive would-be terrorists of useful weapons. That’s good. But it’s not easy to think of everything, and very easy to get overzealous with innocent passengers in the meantime.
Maybe it’s time we started looking at motive. What can we do to make fewer people want to attack us?
Some always will. I’m aware of that. But we can reduce their effectiveness if we make others less willing to cooperate with them. That can work from two directions. Diplomatically, we can hopefully make it more attractive for governments to work with us than with al-Qaida. Militarily, we can make it more dangerous, if we’re sure of our targets.
Either way, the real solution lies in international politics, not confiscated makeup bottles.
And if that’s all we do, then the situation has really gone to Potter.
Scott Rochat’s e-mail address is rochat@emporiagazette.com.