I was talking with a friend at work yesterday. He grew up in Lebanon and his mother is still there. Nearly every day when I see him I ask about his mother (she evacuated safely and is doing fine so far). He told me the extremists are about 1000 years behind the times. They are brain washed and the entire world has a problem. I agreed.

If you don’t agree then take a look at the evidence Michelle Malkin presents:

…a 16-year-old girl hanged in a public square in the Iranian city of Neka. Her death sentence was imposed by Islamic mullahs for “crimes against chastity.”

That is just a hint of what we are fighting against. As long as we tolerate “crimes against chastity” and other affronts to the Islamic extremists we will be attacked. It will not stop until we capture or kill them. Yes, there are innocents die as we, and now Israel, fight this evil but the number of innocents killed will be greater if we do nothing. It is better to fight them now before they obtain atomic weapons rather than after. I just hope enough people of the world realize the seriousness of this war such that we have the resources and the will to finish it.

It’s bad enough that cops enforcing speed limits have quotas. But think about the implications if Federal Air Marshals have quotas. And there’s evidence that some of them do have quotas to meet. It’s time to consider some alternatives and scrape the TSA efforts.

The criticism is right on but the proposals are only a step in the right direction. The optimal won’t currently pass political muster so one has to go with the baby step:

This approach would begin with the fundamentally different assumption that the function of aviation security is to identify and isolate dangerous persons, not dangerous objects per se. The challenge is to keep bad people from causing harm, either in the terminal area or to the planes themselves. The TSA currently devotes the lion’s share of its airport resources to only one of these threats: preventing would-be hijackers from boarding planes with weapons. Far less money and effort is spent on securing airport terminal lobbies and the ramp areas where planes park and on keeping airline tickets out of the hands of known and suspected terrorists.

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.