Editor's Note: The Show's Over

As professionals working in the security industry, no matter your role or who you work for, we tend to look at “public displays of security” a little differently than most. How many of us gaze to the ceilings in public places, wondering what kind of camera is hanging in the corner? Face it, it’s all of us!  

I began covering this industry in 2001, just months before 9/11. And when it comes to public displays of security, nothing comes close to the displays that have been happening in our nation’s airports since that awful day. Many of us in the industry immediately took to calling it “security theater.”

I would argue that thanks to many technology advances – namely, millimeter wave scanning and screening – the days of pure security theater are largely behind us. Today’s TSA checkpoints do far more than appease the sensibilities of previously-afraid passengers. 

Thankfully, the Department of Homeland Security has also figured that out. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced on July 8 that the policy requiring most passengers to remove their shoes at TSA checkpoints is no longer in effect – a rule that was instituted nearly 20 years ago because certified nutjob Richard Reid tried to detonate a homemade shoe bomb during a 2001 flight from Paris to Miami.

I’m just wondering why it took 19 years to announce this. The cynic in me says it’s because TSA was making a pretty penny – $78 every five years – on passengers who opted into TSA PreCheck. The optimist in me says TSA realized how much removing shoes was “security theater.” And the comedian in me says the TSA is repenting for how many times they’ve given short-sighted barefooted travelers athlete’s foot.

But I’m supposed to have a takeaway for integrator executives in this thing, so here it is: Are there any technologies and procedures that your customers still deploy that also reek of “security theater?”

Look at the poll we took above...26% of people (and this was sent to the general security industry via social media), still tend to feel safer if TSA continues its shoe screening! 
This is where you all come in. Security doesn’t have to be about theater; security can and should be about taking honest-to-goodness genuine measures to keep people safer – you know, the stuff good integrators and consultants do every day.

Why doesn’t the general public know that millimeter wave scans can check someone’s shoes? Because TSA needs to do so much better in its communication to customers. It is something you have (or should have been) doing from day one, but at least for them, we can hope the show is over.