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Saturday, August 13, 2005
Batuhan: Who’s the suspect?
By Allan S. B. Batuhan
Foreign Exchange
FLYING. It was a long flight to finally get me to my holidays. More specifically, it was a long series of flights I took before I could finally get some long awaited R and R.
Over three days and spanning three continents to be exact—commencing in Kuala Lumpur, on to Bangkok, then to Amster-dam, and momentarily ending in Manchester, to enable me to check in at the office for about eight working hours. And then it was time to fly again—this time starting from Manchester, flying over to London Heathrow, and then across the ocean to Chicago, and finally to my long-awaited holiday in Nashville.
Nothing really out of the ordinary for many people these days. After all, moving goods and transferring services across continents and between national borders requires people thinking and strategizing about the most effective means of shuffling them about. I happen to be just one of those people.
When one travels frequently enough, it is not easy to take notice of the many changes that take place with the various major airports, unless the changes are obvious enough to not require a great deal of attention to note. It is like reading one’s own written piece of work, I suppose. As one attempts to scan the pages for corrections, all that happens is that he or she glosses over the obvious errors, with eyes that have already become too accustomed to them to spot the mistakes.
Occasionally, however, some spelling or grammatical slip is just too big to ignore, and eventually even the most sensitized pair of eyes will eventually pick up the flaw.
Well, even the most frequent traveler these days will notice the changes taking place at the various major airports around the world.
No matter how well trodden one’s route is, it is not difficult to spot the unusually heightened state of alert, the strict screening questions at immigration and the increased number of CCTV (closed-circuit TV) that appear to be the norm at our airports these days. I suppose this is now part of the new business traveler’s experience—entering airports as if trying to get into the very gates of Langley, Virginia.
For all the extra screening measures in place, I have to say that some security services are still missing the point. And because of this, all the frenetic searching and fussing over handbags, shoes and laptop computers don’t really seem to be contributing too much to making us feel at ease with traveling once again.
At Heathrow’s Terminal 4, for example, one obviously naïve-looking teenage girl in shorts and sleeveless top was being searched over and over again by one female security officer, while all the rest of the other passengers were allowed to walk past unchallenged. In Chicago’s O’Hare, in spite of the unruly and exceedingly long waiting lines to get through the numerous security checks in place, one gets the feeling that they do not really know what and who it is they are looking for.
TERRORISTS? The attacks on innocent civilians and commuters in London, Madrid and New York should by now have given us some clue about the types of people we should be watching out for during security checks.
It does not take a great deal of brainpower to figure this out.
Yet, security officers and those in charge of safeguarding the safety of air travelers insist on treating everyone with equal distrust, asking equally tough security questions to obviously giggling teenagers, as they would from others less innocent-looking.
Some of these procedures baffle me. Either we still have not figured out by now just what and who it is we are on the lookout for, or we are just too politically correct to admit that we have, and in so doing pretend to subject everyone else to the same level of scrutiny, in order not to seem to be singling out a particular group of people as being more dangerous than all the rest of us.
If it is the latter, then at least I can relax better in my subsequent flights. But if it is the former, I would really start to be seriously worried about my safety and security.
(allan.batuhan@pzcussons.com)
(August 13, 2005 issue)
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