In a jeremiad against the TSA, Will Wilkinson puts them in perspective:
I have found the submissiveness and docility of the American people in the face of the state's pointless molestation incredibly discouraging. I think this is one of those subjects that demands we step back, take a deep breath, and consider with a clear mind just how phenomenally idiotic the government's policy of increasingly invasive degradation really is. Law-abiding travellers, who pose approximately zero risk of terrorism, and offer no ground for reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing, must run this gauntlet of abasement because airplanes were once made the instrument of mass death. The odds of being a victim of terrorism on a flight are approximately 1 in 10,408,947rather less than the 1 in 500,000 odds of getting killed by lightning.
But nope. Who cares? Doesn't matter! Instead the government ramps up their time-consuming campaign of harassment. Is the idea that if we are not made to feel ashamed, we will not be made to feel safe? I can't figure it out. The TSA is like my dog. Once he spied a rabbit by a tree in our yard as we came in the back gate. Now, whenever we come through that gate, he freezes and stares bullets at the spot by the birch where a bunny once sat. To a first approximation, there is never a rabbit there, and any special effort devoted to detecting one there is wasted. I have tried to explain this to Winston. But the poor dog, a genius of premature inductive inference, just won't believe me. I find this a little annoying, but he's a dog, it only takes a second, and he doesn't fondle my upper thigh.