Head in the clouds

Now that the chaos of Thanksgiving is over, we’re free to dive back into recent events in the security world, slightly more turkey than man percentage wise.

I had several good topics ready to go this week when Editor Cory Harris approached me and asked if I had seen the new TSA announcement, and readers, I had not. You can read all the sordid details with us online, but the long and short of it is suddenly a lot of things make more sense.

The act to implement REAL ID officially passed in 2005 and was scheduled to go in effect in 2008 but proved to be a political football that everyone was willing to kick down the road for another 20 years due to widespread opposition. Since May 7, it’s officially an inconvenience for everyone boarding airline flights in the U.S.

Also accessing nuclear power plants, if that’s a thing you have to do, I guess.

The supposition for this of course being the safety of travelers in a post 9/11 world. Let’s say I buy into that for the sake of argument and accept that this act has made us all safer through its enforcement. Only it doesn’t - an easy-to-demonstrate fact when apparently the TSA allows you to just buy access using all the methods for boarding a flight you could before (possibly more? It’s a fairly exhaustive list of credentials.

Your public safety is now valued at a premium of $45. This may not rise to the level of extortion, but it feels like theft, and is absolutely a tax by any other name. That it was executed in the name of safety isn’t even a hard pill to swallow. It’s more akin to swallowing a stone and has about the same feeling in the pit of the stomach. Is it still considered security theater if everyone’s in on the joke, even the victims?

You tell me on Feb. 1.