Like many Americans, I have generally avoided flying since the terrorist attacks. It's not that I'm worried about becoming another hijack victim; even when you consider September's fatalities, flying is still dramatically safer than driving. No, I've avoided the skies because I simply don't want to deal with the so-called security measures that have been put into place since 9/11 --- measures that are tremendously inconvenient for travelers and the airlines alike, but which do very little to actually decrease the chance of future attacks.

Last month, however, circumstances forced me to take a short flight on Cape Air, the commuter airline that serves Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket and Boston. The trip was even worse than I expected, as if someone had decided to stage some kind of aviation security parody.

I've flown Cape Air for years. It's a small, folksy airline that exclusively flies 9-seater Cessna 404s. The view from the twin-engine prop aircraft is phenomenal, and the first passenger on the aircraft usually gets to sit in the co-pilot's seat. Because of its small size, Cape Air was also fast and efficient: in the many times I've flown with the airline, I had frequently gone from curbside to my seat in less than five minutes.

September 11^th changed everything, we’re told, and one of them was certainly the convenience of air travel. When I arrived at the Martha's Vineyard Regional Airport, a new multi-million dollar facility that has been in operation for less than two years, the first thing I noticed was that the airport’s new parking lot is now closed. The reason for this closure a new FAA security regulation, enacted in the wake of 9/11, which prohibits any parking with 300 feet of a passenger terminal.

The FAA’s limitation of airport parking, presumably designed to protect airport terminals from truck bombs, has disrupted parking at airports throughout the country. At Logan airport in Boston, for instance, more than 2000 parking spots built as part of Logan's billion-dollar expansion are now unusable. And in Augusta, Maine, the Hilltop Family Restaurant at the Augusta State Airport, was forced to close when it lost all of its 23 reserved parking spaces located outside the terminal building.

The friend who dropped me off, looked at the sign closing the parking lot and shook his head. Clearly, the closure was the result of some bureaucratic edict out of Washington that simply made no sense here. It’s hard to conceive how the Martha's Vineyard airport could ever be the target of a truck bomb attack. After all, any truck bomb set off at the airport would have to be brought over on the ferry --- a ferry that itself would probably make a much better target for any would-be terrorist. But the FAA's new security measures don't allow airports any discretion in their enforcement; the airport manager in Augusta had obtained a three-week waiver for the Hilltop Restaurant, rolling back the parking restriction from 300 feet to 220, but that waiver expired on September 27^th and the FAA refused to extend it. (Today the parking has finally been restored, but I'm told that the restaurant is still closed.)

The terminal of the Martha’ Vineyard Regional Airport felt like the set of a low-budget, understaffed movie. The only people I could see were a single clerk behind the Cape Air counter, a baggage checker, and the two soldiers dressed in fatigues. Because I had taken the bus down to the Vineyard the night before, I didn't have any bags to check. This turned out to be a huge problem---because I was carrying two laptop computers, four laptop batteries, a handheld PDA computer, a keyboard for the PDA, and a Swiss Army knife.

Realizing that I couldn’t take the knife onboard the aircraft, I surrendered it when I walked up to the inspection station. The ticket clerk came over to the security area and told me that she could hold it for a few days if I was going to be coming back. “If you want, we can also seal it in an envelope and ask the pilot if he will carry it for you,” she offered.

The electronics were another matter entirely. First I was made to turn on each laptop --- presumably to demonstrate that they were actually consumer electronics and not bombs. Then the laptops were x-rayed. Finally, the baggage inspector scrubbed down each of my laptops and the batteries with a white piece of fabric, then put the swatch into one of those fancy new machines that can somehow sniff out the nitrogen-containing compounds that are indicative of high explosives.

I suppose that I'm glad that US airlines are now analyzing laptop batteries, which after all are a pretty easy place to hide C4 and other plastic explosives. On the other hand, the explosive devices that Ramzi Yousef had planed to use for his attacks against a dozen US airliners over the Pacific were to have been made without any nitrogen at all: according to reports, Yousef planned to use flashbulbs as the detonators, digital watches for timers, and a can of pressurized solvent vapor mixed with air for the explosive charge. There are also reports that the Semtex has been reformulated so that it is "odorless" to these mechanical sniffers --- and Czechoslovakia now admits that its Communist government sold 1,000 tons of Semtex to Libya's Col. Moammar Gadhafi, enough to bring down 5 million aircraft. All of these thoughts went through my mind; I nevertheless wisely decided to say nothing about the futility of sniffing for explosives.

The laptop, batteries and my PDA made it through the inspections okay, but the guard was really nervous about the fold-up keyboard for my Palm. You see, the guard had orders that every piece of electronics had to be turned on; the keyboard has no switch or display. "I'm not sure that I can let you take this," the guard said. But after conferring with the ticket clerk and the two soldiers, he decided that it would be sufficient to x-ray the keyboard twice and test it several times with that fancy nitrogen-sniffing machine.

The whole search took 30 minutes. When it was done, I joined the other two passengers out on the tarmac. We boarded the plane, and one of the other passengers sat in the co-pilot's seat. Had that passenger wanted, he could easily have crashed the Cessna 404 into a Boston office building on the approach to Logan. I've sat in the co-pilot's seat myself many times: the seat is so cramped that it's an effort not to touch the control yoke with your hands or knees! Presumably, the only thing that prevented the terrorists from hijacking the Cape Air flights is that there isn’t a whole lot of damage you can do with a Cessna 404: they don’t weigh that much and they don’t carry a lot of fuel.

* * *

In the time that’s passed since the September 11^th attacks on New York and Washington, government and business leaders alike have been under tremendous pressure to improve security. Yet most of the security professionals that I have spoken with since the attacks have complained that the majority of these new measures --- while being tremendously inconvenient --- actually do little to improve security. What makes these measures all the more frustrating is the near universal unwillingness to discuss their appropriateness or the reasoning behind them.

For example, shortly after the attacks Amtrak adopted a new policy requiring passengers to present a photo ID before purchasing a ticket or checking baggage. The policy seems better suited to combating credit-card fraud than finding actual terrorists. After all, Amtrak is only demanding to see photo IDs when tickets are purchased --- not when a rider actually gets on the train. Amtrak says that it has been provided by the FBI with a “watch list” of terrorist suspects, but nothing prevents a person who is not under surveillance from purchasing a dozen tickets and then giving these tickets to her terrorist friends. An Amtrak spokesperson said that the railroad is aware of the “loophole,” but refused to comment any further.

Government agencies are not the only organizations that are putting forth security rules that on their face seem impressive, but which actually do little to protect the nation.

Some office buildings, for instance, have locked their unattended entrances and now require visitors to sign in --- some buildings even require visitors to show photo IDs. While these measures probably cut down on office theft, they won’t deter terrorists, who are more likely to park truck bombs in basement garages or send biowarfare agents through the ventilation.

And then there is the little matter of the guards themselves. "Guards never used to ask you to open your bag. Now they ask you to open your bag," says Howard Frank, an international security consultant based in Boca Raton, Florida. "The only thing is this --- I don't believe that they know what they are looking for."

The typical security guard could spot a gun or a large knife --- assuming that the weapon was in plain view. But Frank, who oversaw the security planning at the Miami Dolphins' Pro Player's Stadium, says that the majority of security guards have no training in anti-terrorism. They wouldn't know how to recognize a concealed weapon, let alone a plastic explosive like Semtex. "I never call them guards; I call them gate openers. The true security guard is really hard to find."

The inability to find the “true security guard” might be behind the closing of one of the most popular tourist destinations in Boston: the John Hancock Observatory, on the 60^th floor of the John Hancock Tower in Boston’s Back Bay. John Hancock Financial Services closed the facility on September 14^th. “"Every year, more than 400,000 people, virtually all of them unknown to us, visit the Observatory," said John Heavey, Hancock General Director of Security. “Unfortunately, once they are inside, it is very difficult to control or limit their access to other parts of the building. That creates a significant security concern for our employees, tenants, and the public-at-large. Since there is no feasible way to fix this problem, the prudent thing to do is to close the Observatory.”

Frank says that many of the new security policies stem from officials’ desire to present themselves as being in control of the situation and taking affirmative steps to protect the public --- even though the steps themselves are probably ineffectual.

Consider again the FAA's ban on parking near terminals. After the flight from Martha’s Vineyard to Boston, I called the FAA and asked spokesperson Paul Takemoto about the parking ban. Is the ban permanent? "Hard to say," said Takemoto. "I would say [that it would be in force] for the foreseeable future."

I asked Takemoto why the FAA had chosen 300 feet for its security radius, rather than 200 feet or 500 feet. Was 300 feet the standard in Europe? But Takemoto refused to comment on the rationale. "There is a lot about security that we can't discuss," he said. "The more people know about these measures, the more they can take steps to get around them."

The FAA’s parking ban affects literally millions of travelers. And the FAA’s assertion that that an informed public discussion on its security practices will weaken them is itself uninformed and possibly disingenuous. For more than a decade the US government made similar arguments over the need for secrecy in establishing policy of cryptographic technology, wiretaps, and other security-related matters. Yet every academic panel, policy making body and court that has examined these issues has concluded that an informed discussion can take place without jeopardizing national security --- indeed, our democratic system demands that such discussions occur.

Clearly, the FAA is attempting to clamp down on airport security because airplanes were the instrumentality of the September 11^th attacks. But it’s important to remember that the 9/11 terrorists weren't trying to shut down the nation's aviation system --- that was merely a byproduct of their decision to use commercial airliners are flying bombs. The real targets were office buildings.

"An airport terminal wouldn't be the highest priority target" of a terrorist with a truck bomb, says Christopher T. Marquet, a senior managing director with Kroll, one of the world's leading security companies. Instead, terrorists with truck bombs would probably take their weapons to more vulnerable targets --- like the basement garages of high-rises, as was done in the previous attack against the World Trade Center. And let’s face it: if a terrorist really wants to set off a truck bomb at an airport terminal, the FAA’s parking ban isn’t going to make much of a difference. A terrorist bent on using a truck bomb to destroy an airline terminal can simply drive up their vehicle and detonate it, even though it means parking in a “no parking” zone.

Likewise, the soldiers in the airport terminal look impressive, but what good do they really do? The September 11^th hijackings took place onboard aircraft, not at security checkpoints or waiting lounges. Had those soldiers been present in the airports on September 11^th, they would have allowed the terrorists to board their planes: after all, the terrorists were paying passengers.

So what security measures should people be taking? Security consultant Frank recently planned the security for an international exposition for the Miami World Trade Center: he hired a pair of certified bomb-sniffing dogs to check out the banquet halls before the guests were seated. He also arranged for the conference organizers to park their own cars next to the conference center, rather than leaving the spaces open to the public.

Neil Drawas, a managing director of security at Kroll, says that many companies are locking the doors to their roofs, "shutting off ground level intakes and redirecting duct work up to the rooftops," he says. Such measures prevent a terrorist from throwing an open cylinder of chlorine gas into the air ducts, forcing the evacuation of the building (but probably not killing everybody inside).

Most important, Drawas says, is employee training. "In the old days, the alarm would go off and people would say 'that's just a fire drill, I'm going to stay here and work.' “These days in New York there isn't a day that goes by when there aren't 30 or 40 fire drills. People are being evacuated and assembling at off-site locations and nobody is complaining about it."

Before I left Martha’s Vineyard, I asked the soldiers who were stationed at the airport how they liked their assignment. Overall, they said, it was okay. The government had rented them an apartment on the island. They didn’t expect to see much action.

Personally, I wish they were guarding the ferry.