Tag Archives: Security

Response to Rep. Moran (R-KS)

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Trying to be an active participant in our American democracy, I subscribe to newsletter updates from my Senators and Congressional Representative.  All three of them are very conservative, more so than I am on most issues, so their newsletters often provide an opportunity for me to write them with an opposing viewpoint.

I do have to give credit to Representative Jerry Moran, though, who has started posting video responses to questions from his constituents.  At least he gives clear statements about his position on issues.  Representative Moran recently posted the above video, ostensibly in response to a question from a constituent, “What do we need to do to get President Obama to let us drill for oil and natural gas here in the U.S.?  It would certainly decrease our dependence on foreign oil.”

I shared my thoughts with Representative Moran through the following email:

Dear Representative Moran:

Just finished watching your video about drilling for oil. I appreciate you providing this kind of clarity on your positions; please continue doing so. Regarding your answer, though, I have two concerns as a constituent and pragmatic American:

First, you describe this as a “battle we must win” against the Environmental Protection Agency and the Obama administration. I disagree that it is a “battle”. The EPA continues to play an important role in protecting our fresh air, our clean water, and our natural environment. Perhaps you noticed the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year? Perhaps you have read the considerable scientific concern about fracking? Fossil fuels are dirty forms of energy and their extraction comes with costs to our environment. The EPA plays an important role in us considering the bigger-picture and longer-term costs, not just reacting to the price of gas at the pump.

My second concern is that you seem to be giving short shrift to non-fossil forms of energy. Sure, you mention them twice in your video but both mentions seem to be an afterthought. Any way you cut it, fossil fuels are a finite resource. We can’t drill, mine, or frack our way to national security and energy independence. We need to be encouraging more investment and research in renewable energies because that is ultimately going to be a necessity in the future. China is already surpassing us in green energy technologies. Surely you want the US to remain competitive?

More drilling off the coasts or up in Alaska, more digging up of the northern plains, more fracking of the rocks beneath Pennsylvania and Ohio – all of these are very short-term, costly, and dirty fixes to our problems. It is time for a smarter, longer-term, more sustainable approach to our energy needs.

 

I’m curious, what are your thoughts about the U.S. energy policy?  What should we be doing differently in order to ensure energy security?

 

Screen Smarter, Not Harder

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In the wake of the Christmas Day attempt at blowing up a Northwest Airlines flight heading from Amsterdam to Detroit, security officials have stepped up screening and other activities in an effort to increase safety and security.  Well, that’s ostensibly the reason.  One could be forgiven, though, for mistaking the increased activity as mere busyness for the sake of looking busy, rather than as rational steps that actually increase security.

tsa-flaws-web Thankfully, in the days immediately following the tightening of security measures, several of the dumber ones (requiring passengers to remain seated for the last hour of the flight, not allowing any carry-on items including blankets or pillows to be in their laps, and turning off the inflight entertainment systems so as to disable the flight tracking feature which shows where the plane is on a map) were quickly rescinded or pilots were given authority to relax the measures at their discretion.

It seems to me that if we are serious about increasing our security while flying, there are several things we need to do.  There are also things we need to stop doing as they are wasteful and do nothing to increase security.

We need to implement more thorough inspection of people and bags.  This should include the purchase and use of more full-body imaging devices, which can detect nonmetallic as well as metallic items hidden beneath clothing.  There are ways to work around privacy concerns but this is one of the most effective ways to find potentially dangerous devices that can all too easily be concealed during current screening procedures. 

The flip side of this is that we need to get smarter about whom we screen.  We spend too much energy putting grandma and grandpa through secondary screenings when they don’t seem to be a likely security threat.  Past affronts like making a mother drink her breastmilk from a bottle she was carrying on in order to prove it wasn’t harmful make a mockery of our security procedures and the freedoms we give up in order to be more secure.  Essentially, events like these and the thousands of indignities we suffer at airport security checkpoints across the nation are a sure sign the terrorists have won.

We need to start screening cargo.  While checked baggage now goes through security screening, almost all of the cargo shipped on planes (as well as all of it sent by container ship) does not undergo any inspection, relying instead on the government’s “trusted shipper” program.  Without a doubt, this is a serious gap in our security and could easily be something for a terrorist to exploit.

We need to get our intelligence services working together.  Time and again we learn (Monday morning quarterbacking, of course) that we had heaps of information about people who attempted or succeeded in hijacking or bringing down aircraft.  The relevant agencies need a better process for taking the information they have and acting on it.  The Nigerian man involved in the Christmas Day bombing attempt should never have been allowed to board the flight based on information we already had.

We need more accountability at the Transportation Security Administration about the effectiveness of security measures put into place.  Reports obtained by news sources have indicated that TSA screeners miss intentionally concealed weapons on passengers and in baggage at about the same rate screeners did prior to September 11, 2001.  This means that the massive investment and inconvenience we suffer is largely ineffective in increasing security.  The results of those tests need to be public and if improvements aren’t made, people need to lose their job.  While I can understand the security reasons for not disclosing which airports have the worst screeners, the composite scores should be available for all of us to see.

People in many countries around the world have to put up with intrusive and time-consuming security measures.  (In some countries that is because we invaded them and made the situation worse!)  That’s the price we pay for increased security.  At the same time, the price we pay should be commiserate with the security we are provided.  Right now, I don’t see that we’re getting a good return on that investment.