the major airports in New York and Los Angeles have enough money for these expensive machines. Just one scanner can cost up to $1.3 million. Also, these scanners can take up a huge amount of space to install them, and manufacturers are straining to meet the high demand. After the events of September 11, to say that the lack of strict airline security is significant is an understatement. The attack on the World Trade Center towers alone killed thousands upon thousands of people. Add to that the many victims in Pennsylvania, the Pentagon and the many other terrorist attacks in the past. The shear loss of life due to problems in airline security makes the need for stricter security even greater. But the threat of more terrorists is still out there. Just a few weeks ago, yet another alert was put out, stemming from another terrorist threat. The new security precautions from Congress do not remove these threats like they are meant to. The law as a whole could quite possibly deter many attacks, but the law as a whole is not being used. As I said before, the law calls for bags to be screened with explosive-detection equipment, with explosive-sniffing dogs, with hand searches and by matching passengers to bags. Because of the extremely high cost of many of these precautions, airports are only mainly using bag matching. But matching luggage to passengers aboard flights to prevent terrorist from checking bags and not boarding the planes does not go far enough. Bags are only matched on flights originating in the United States. It does not include flights originating elsewhere in the world or connecting flights within the U.S. This practice appears to leave a gaping hole in airport baggage security, especially considering the fact that bag-matching doesnt protect from suicide bombings, like those on September 11. It would not be difficult for a suicide mission to carry a device of destruction, either in checked luggage or on his or her person. Thes...
