Even this loses context. The suggestion here is that intrusive airport security was a knee-jerk reaction to 9/11. But that's not true at all; we've had intrusive airport security, supported Constitutionally by the framework of "administrative search", for dozens of years.
What happened after 9/11 is that the government (rightly) acknowledged that airport security was run by a decentralized and largely ineffective hodgepodge of private and local security organizations. The TSA was a "reform" of airport security intended to centralize the practice and make it more consistent.
The TSA is obviously terrible and much of airport security is a farce. But this isn't simply a result of people begging for farcical centralized security theater; it's a consequence of centralizing airport security in the federal government and thus making it far simpler for airport security to be "responsive" to "new threats".
The TSA's incompetence and intrusiveness is largely an emergent phenomenon. It isn't a policy goal.
What happened after 9/11 is that the government (rightly) acknowledged that airport security was run by a decentralized and largely ineffective hodgepodge of private and local security organizations. The TSA was a "reform" of airport security intended to centralize the practice and make it more consistent.
The TSA is obviously terrible and much of airport security is a farce. But this isn't simply a result of people begging for farcical centralized security theater; it's a consequence of centralizing airport security in the federal government and thus making it far simpler for airport security to be "responsive" to "new threats".
The TSA's incompetence and intrusiveness is largely an emergent phenomenon. It isn't a policy goal.