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If the rules themselves aren't crazy enough, the physical setup of the screening stations is atrocious. After all this time, they remain a jury-rigged assemblage of noise, clutter and disorganization. A couple of particulars: Why are the X-ray platforms at waist level, requiring people to lift their heavy bags on and off? How difficult would it be to have an incline on the front end, and a carousel of sorts on the back end, allowing passengers to collect their belongings in an orderly fashion. The typical pickup point -- a cluster of flailing arms and the dangerous slinging of heavy bags -- reminds me of the mosh pits of the early 1980s (we called it "slam dancing" in those days, but you get the idea).

At this point, the whole apparatus of concourse security is little more than a stage presentation, a theater of the absurd, choreographed to the cowardly notion that confiscating shampoo bottles and forcing airline captains to remove their footwear actually makes us safer. How we got here is an interesting study in reactionary politics, fear-mongering, and a disconcerting willingness of the American public to accept almost anything in the name of "security." We have come to equate intrusiveness and inconvenience with safety.

Many people won't want to hear it, but in fact we do not live in a time of imminent risk and peril at the airport. Air crimes, including numerous terror attacks against jetliners, have been with us for many decades, and the threats we face today aren't a whole lot different from those we've always faced. Meanwhile, the true nuts and bolts of keeping terrorists away from airplanes takes place off-screen, as it were -- the duty of intelligence professionals and law enforcement. It was not a failure of airport security that facilitated the attacks of Sept. 11. It was a failure of intelligence and foresight at the highest levels of government. Unable to accept this, and desperate for a way to respond, we grew fixated on the tools the perpetrators used -- box cutters, knives and, in the case of Reid, shoe bombs -- no matter that such devices can be fashioned from virtually anything, contraband or not. Then, along came the liquid bomb farce of 2006, further expanding the canon of useless prohibitions. We can only imagine what's next.

Especially worrisome is how the system shows no signs of improving. The hysteria hasn't passed, it has become codified. We know that sharp objects can be fashioned from almost anything, yet we continue to fish through bags for hobby knives and screwdrivers. The London liquid bombers weren't close to pulling off an attack, and experts contend there is little practical purpose in restricting liquids and gels, yet we continue seizing toothpaste and bottled water. Caterers and cargo loaders are exempt from screening, yet pilots are subject to shoe inspections. And so on. Rather than rethink these useless protocols, the best we've come up with is a way to skirt them -- for a fee, naturally -- via schemes like Registered Traveler.

Who are the winners in all of this? The contractors and vendors of the security-industrial complex, from purveyors of high-tech surveillance equipment to S.C. Johnson, the maker of Ziploc bags. Travelers, obviously, are the biggest losers, but airlines too are victimized. If delays and sloppy service are No. 1 on passengers' list of complaints, security hassles are a close second. Unfortunately, the industry is stuck in a Catch-22. On one hand, we'd expect it to be outraged over customers' and employees' being forced to endure long lines and humiliate themselves for no good reason. On the other hand, imagine the outrage among security zealots should airlines be caught lobbying for what is perceived to be a dangerous abrogation of security and responsibility -- even if it's not. Carriers caught plenty of flak, almost all of it unfair, in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Understandably, they no longer want that liability.

According to various lawyers and politicians, the private screening companies that manned the checkpoints at the time of the 2001 attacks were incompetent and unprofessional. The airlines knew this, but either didn't care or weren't paying attention. In response, the TSA was created. It's a quaint notion, is it not, in this era when seemingly every facet of the nation's defense is being sold to subcontractors, that a government bureaucracy be devised to take the place of free-market enterprise? I'm not normally in league with the current outsourcing trends, but when it comes to airport security, count me among those nostalgic for the old days.

Do you have questions for Salon's aviation expert? Send them to AskThePilot and look for answers in a future column.

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