One could argue that the “government stupidity” is redundant, but please don’t bring up that argument this time. The following example provides more material for illustrating your point today:

The U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security said while in Edmonton on Tuesday that certain types of travel will be exempt from new regulations on border crossings between Canada and the U.S.

While speaking to legislators and business leaders from both sides of the border at the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region’s annual summit, Michael Chertoff said a “practical approach” is necessary.

“In particular, we will not be, for example, including in this set of regulations a requirement for passports for ferries or private watercraft, recognizing that this is a particular form of transportation that we don’t want to interfere with,” said Chertoff.

Security, defensive security in particular, is only as good as it’s weakest link. If a passport requirement for travel between the U.S. and Canada provides some sort of security advantage (I question that it does, but that is why the requirement was put in place) then having an exemption for ferries and private watercraft is of dubious wisdom. Does this mean that terrorists don’t know how to board boats? Does Mr. Chertoff think they are all scared of the water?

I suppose it’s possible that the water routes have some sort of different security mechanism that provides as good as or better security than checking your passport as you drive across the border. But I doubt it. Most likely they don’t have the facilities and resources to deal with all the crossings.

Take a look as places like Detroit, which is actually directly north of parts of Canada. End to end Lake St. Clair is only 25 miles long and provides direct access into Detroit from Canada. Personal watercraft can easily cross that gap in 45 minutes. It’s just not possible to interdict all the water skiers, fishermen, and people just crossing the lake to eat dinner in the city and ask them for their passports without pissing everyone off. Similar claims could be made about Lake Erie, and in the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

And what’s the point with passports anyway? Does someone think having “good ID” somehow makes everyone safer? Here is a case where fake ID is saving lives.

The bottom line is that passports cannot improve security. The reason our government is requiring passports, in some cases, is to make some people feel more secure. Real security depends on hunting down those that try inflict violence upon us and capturing or killing them. Exactly the solution Israel is implementing now.

Thanks to Bruce Schneier for his no passports needed for water traffic and the fake ID saving lives posts.

Ry and I have talked about this type of thing until the wee hours of the morning many times. It always came down to destroying their culture or engaging in some really nasty stuff. It turns out we weren’t the only ones that came up with those conclusions. This is from 2003:

A Pew poll finds 40% of Americans worry that an US city will be destroyed by a terrorist nuclear attack. James Lileks thinks the annihilation of a city is a dead certainty and will only mark the start of a long, wearying struggle against Islamists armed with nuclear car bombs.

…

In stark contrast, the nuclear threshold against a terrorism may be crossed once they get the capability to attack with weapons of mass destruction. Unlike the old early warning systems, designed to gauge Soviet intent, the intelligence systems of the War on Terror are meant to measure capability. The relevant Cold War question was ‘do they intend to use the Bomb?’.  In the War on Terror, the relevant question is simply ‘do they have the Bomb?’ This puts the nuclear threshold very low.

…

This fixity of malice was recognized in President Bush’s West Point address in the summer of 2002, when he concluded that “deterrence — the promise of massive retaliation against nations — means nothing against shadowy terrorist networks with no nation or citizens to defend.”

…

Because capability is the sole variable of interest in the war against terrorism, the greater the Islamic strike capability becomes, the stronger the response will be. An unrepeatable attack with a stolen WMD weapon would elicit a different response from one arising from a capability to strike on a sustained and repetitive basis. The riposte to an unrepeatable attack would be limited. However, suppose Pakistan or North Korea engineered a reliable plutonium weapon that could be built to one-point safety in any machine shop with a minimum of skill, giving Islamic terrorists the means to repeatedly attack America indefinitely. Under these circumstances, there would no incentive to retaliate proportionately. The WMD exchange would escalate uncontrollably until Islam was destroyed.

…

The so-called strengths of Islamic terrorism: fanatical intent; lack of a centralized leadership; absence of a final authority and cellular structure guarantee uncontrollable escalation once the nuclear threshold is crossed. Therefore the ‘rational’ American response to the initiation of terrorist WMD attack would be all out retaliation from the outset.

…

It is supremely ironic that the survival of the Islamic world should hinge on an American victory in the War on Terror, the last chance to prevent that terrible day in which all the decisions will have already been made for us. That effort really consists of two separate aspects: a campaign to destroy the locus of militant Islam and prevent their acquisition of WMDs; and an attempt to awaken the world to the urgency of the threat.

I wish Israel well in their efforts to exterminate radical Muslims from their neighborhood. It’s a start down the appropriate path. The alternate paths are far too uncomfortable for me.