I'm, frankly, tired of hearing people say that the only alternative to abusive TSA screening is having airplanes blown up by terrorists. The terrorists who hijacked those planes on 9/11 successfully captured those planes even though they were equipped with only minimal weapons because they assured the passengers that no one would be hurt as long as they cooperated. Some of the passengers were skeptical and, using their cell phones in flight (in violation of safety regulations), got the word out that something was up. By the time the fourth plane was hijacked the word had gotten out and that trick didn't work anymore. We have not seen an attempted hijacking of that nature again for the simple reason that it wouldn't work. It depended on people being ignorant but airline passengers are now very much aware of the danger. In fact, the two attempts that have been made since then, the shoe and the underwear bomber, were both foiled by alert passengers. TSA screening procedures do not protect us from the terrorists. They are intended to reassure us by giving us the impression that air travel is safe. The process is designed to be inconvenient because that deepens the impression, making it more difficult to ignore.