Alert! Alert! DHS Warns Airports of Potential Shoe Bombs

Get ready to take off your flip flops at the airport (not that we already don’t) here in America: the Department of Homeland Security has issued a “shoe bomb advisory” for all inbound flights reports NBC News New York:

Several officials familiar with the advisory say “very recent intelligence” considered credible warns of possible attempts to attack passenger jets using explosives concealed in shoes. As a result, officials say, airlines will be playing extra attention to passenger shoes on flights to the US from overseas. Those passengers may also experience increased scrutiny in pat downs and full-body screening.

The bulletin to airlines urges screeners to use the explosive trace detection swabs to check shoes that are worn and in carry-on bags. [emphasis added]

The irony of our air travel safety illusion is always highlighted by these random warnings. In 2007, a rule was passed that the Transportation Security Administration would be required to screen 100% of cargo; that rule was set to go into effect by 2011, but TSA put it off until December 2012. Even then, 100% screening of incoming international cargo — you know, cargo incoming from other countries a.k.a. the places that the DHS tells us the terrorists who hate our freedom come from — well, 100% screening of that cargo is not possible:

Many foreign security regimes reject the 100 percent security philosophy and favor the risk-based approaches TSA now promotes. Because the U.S. screening approach is becoming better aligned with some of America’s largest trade partners, TSA has been able to sign agreements with Canada, Switzerland and the European Union stating those countries’ respective air cargo security programs are commensurate with those of the United States. Thus, all cargo leaving their airspace must be as safe as any cargo in U.S. airspace.

Et voilà … 100 percent screening.

Well, sort of. The recent agreements cover numerous major airports serving U.S. destinations, but they only account for a handful of countries. Are there agreements with China or Brazil or the UAE? If there are, they haven’t been reported to the public. (source)

Not to state the obvious here, but just using a little armchair detective common sense, where would a criminal be more likely to stash a bomb? In his shoes, which stand a high probability of being searched, or in the vast amount of completely unchecked cargo tucked under the plane?

So while the TSA is subjecting Americans to increased scrutiny patdowns and forcing us to take off their shoes, all shoes right down to less than 1″ thick flip flops which barely conceal our feet let alone anything dangerous, whole vast swaths of cargo were not — and still are not — being physically checked.

In addition, back in October 2013 the International Air CargoAssociation (TIACA) has asked the TSA, “to certify that its 100% cargo screening level on passenger aircraft has been achieved and to use its authority to immediately remove the ongoing requirement to report cargo screening data.” TSA has not officially announced anything in this regard.

And again for the 100th time, the TSA has failed to ever stop a terrorist. The TSA did not even stop a guy with a gun from shooting one of its own agents at LAX last year. In fact, according to the Government Accounting Office, the TSA has spent $900 million taxpayer dollars on the Screening of Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT) program, which uses so-called “behavior detection officers” to supposedly identify high-risk passengers based on behaviors that gives clues someone might intend to cause harm. That program has helped catch, well, nobody.

Add that to the slap in the face that was a former TSA agent coming forward to the media to say that many agents laugh at the images produced by the radiating nude body scanners people go through at our airports these days (it’s that, or being felt up)…despite the fact that these scanners don’t even really work.

And all this dazzling (or not-so-dazzling really) security theater, ladies and gentlemen, is just one more way on the laundry list of ways our post-9/11 American system pretends to keep us all safe from the big, bad terrorist boogeymen while sucking away our freedom like the totalitarian vampire it is.

But hey, we better keep taking off our shoes at the airport. The terrorists hate our freedom. The freedom to “experience increased scrutiny in pat downs and full-body screening” and be treated like total criminals every time we set a shoe-covered foot inside an airport.