"I don't know why we've had so much resistance to this," Lowey says. "TSA doesn't say much, but my impression is that they feel the bill might prove too inconvenient for airports."

My own queries to TSA were unsuccessful, so it's hard to say, but the agency seems to believe that airports themselves, rather than any overarching government regulation, are best able to protect themselves. Certain airports have, on their own initiative, enacted requirements for equal screening of all on-site staff.

This touching bit of local regulatory leeway seems a bit weird coming from a federal administration so adherent to draconian micromanagement that it refuses to let the public bring scissors onto airplanes. And the notion that TSA is worried about convenience at airports is, to many, laughable on the face of it.

At the same time, however, TSA's attitude is oddly refreshing. The purpose of highlighting this loophole should not be to scare or sensationalize. Overall, the system does work and the skies are astonishingly safe. Perhaps it would be overly taxing for airports, or else completely impractical, to add another million daily screenings into the mix. And do we now demand that an airline mechanic hand over his screwdriver before proceeding to repair a cockpit gauge?

If nothing else, there's an opportunity here to finally get past our obsession with metal objects -- that nagging, self-defeating vestige of Sept. 11. We have, I think, evolved to a higher state of awareness, and good luck to any evildoer stupid enough to put faith in the modus operandi, successful as it was in a fleeting moment of opportunity, of Mohammed Atta and his 18 helpers. Yet why do our security methods cling to this unworkable terrorist template?

Meanwhile, for crewmembers, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), the world's largest pilots union, is a leading proponent of an idea known as the Transportation Workers' Identity Card (TWIC). A universal TWIC, embedded with a chip containing biometric data and other information, would permit crews to bypass much or most of the current metal-detector rigmarole. "The process is backward," says Dennis Dolan, an ALPA vice president. "Pilots, who have been background-checked and scrutinized to a much higher standard than ground staff, are still carefully screened while other workers are not. The scanning of bags is one thing, as theoretically crew luggage could be subject to tampering, but the TWIC card should eliminate the demeaning pat-downs and wanding that now take place."

ALPA began calling for a universal I.D. card not long after the PSA incident 18 years ago. A few keystrokes into the database back at corporate headquarters, and David Burke might have been prevented from ever boarding the doomed flight. The TWIC is the same concept, but unlike a magnetic or optical stripe, the microchip allows much more information to be stored.

I'm not a fan of ever-increasing levels of technology as an antidote to terrorism, which has always been a hands-dirty, low-tech theater, but anything that keeps on-duty crews from needing to take off their shoes off and having their crotches grabbed can't be all bad.

So, in the end, we find something of a conflict. There are those who view the situation as a ringing call to arms, with any number of doomsday scenarios at their disposal: cabin cleaners with unbeknownst al-Qaida connections, caterers sneaking in explosives with their sandwiches and soda cans, baggage handlers smuggling bombs into the belly.

On the other hand, those more pragmatic and less emotionally coiled on matters of security might contend the answer isn't to aim for some impossible zero tolerance, but to accept a level of risk while ratcheting down the overzealous screening of pilots and flight attendants. "Why are we wasting precious resources on people we have virtually assured ourselves are not threats?" asks Dolan. "At some point we have to admit we'll never have perfect security and must get the best bang for the buck where we perceive the highest threat."

The most effective solution will, as these things go, be somewhere in between. In the meantime, there's a cautionary element to reckon with for sure, but at heart this is an issue of consistency more than a harbinger of catastrophe. If we're going to screen at all -- and virtually every one of us will acquiesce that some level of scrutiny needs to be there -- let's do so fairly and sensibly.

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