On Tuesday, the TSA, a federal agency not known for its generosity, gave a gift to American travelers: they will no longer have to take off their shoes when they go through the safety of the airport. “I think most Americans will be very excited to see that they can keep their shoes on,” said National Security Secretary Kristi Call. The statement was, something unusually for the name, absolutely true.
The shoes elimination ritual has been a standard practice for so long that it is easy to forget why it began. The British recruit of Al-Qaeda The almost successful effort of Richard Reid to tear down an American Airlines flight in the air in 2001 with hidden explosives inside his sneakers presented an apparent hole in airport safety. In a few years, almost all, except the young and old passengers of American air, had to get used to the uncomfortable habit of holding their jugs while crawling through the detection line. (Unless, or of course, they were disbursed for the precheck Tsas system).
Policy change is an implicit marker or a little applied progress. The threat of devastating terrorist attacks in the United States, an obsession between officials and the public, has retired greatly. According to the global terrorism index, the United States suffered only three terrorist attacks in 2024, which resulted in just one death, the lowest number since 2010, while the European Union only experienced 34 attacks, which led to only five deaths. Few would have predicted that the decrease in dark days at the end of 2001 or even 2005, when 20 years ago, 52 people died in a devastating attack against the London transport system.
It can be difficult to believe, since you have cloudy eyes through a safety line of the Newark airport at 6 am, but the TSA has the real Goths better in the detection of threats.
From the end of the 2010, the TSA Begen Rolling Automated Singing Lines (ASLS) that were equipped with multiple calculated topography scanners (CT). These machines generate 3D images of handbags, which allows reliable detection of the same type of explosives that Reid tried to use in 2001. Studies have shown that CT scanners, which are being implemented in all the main American air centers, coincide with the old X -ray system, but also offer physical inspection for the detection of threats, which helped pave to remove the “shoes from” shoes “. Rule”.
Beyond the detection of the airport, the massive holes in the security of the United States that existed before September 11 have been largely closed. Each traveler that crosses the terrestrial and air borders of the United States suffers biographical investigation against the terrorist detection database. Compare that with the period prior to September 11, when the identities of the passengers were only verified against the surveillance lists if they are specifically marked previously, which means that there was no collection of data of real systematic traveler of the travelers’ data. The United States has worked with other countries to maintain and share data on possible threats; Better cross -border surveillance has helped interrupt multiple terror suddenly before they can be completed.
Perhaps above all, the nature of the terrorist threat has changed significantly. In the era after September 11, the United States faced highly organized international terrorist cells that were established in attacking the West. Today, after more than two decades of operations contrary to terrorism, these cells have destroyed a large extent bone. The Al-Qaeda nucleus has a bone splinter, while ISIS lost its last territorial control in 2019. Although solitary wolf attacks can still occur, what remains are disorganized combatants to a large extent that they fight to put together an organized plot.
We are not in the clear
More than most of the subjects I write for good news, the decrease in terrorism requires a disaster of warnings.
First, even at its peak, terrorist attacks in the West were strange, it is more difficult to be sure that we are really seeing a significant long -term decrease. It is completely possible that the day after this is published, an attack could take place somewhere in the United States.
That is exactly what happened on January 1 of this year, when Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a Houston resident born in the United States who had promised Isis loyalty, killed 14 people in a lone wolf attack in New Orleans. And there are greater threats from right -wing extremists, such as the sea in the horrible murder of the Minnesota state representative. Melissa Hortman and her husband, and very little evidence that the government is taking those threats serious.
The same tools that helped close the safety gaps at the airport and border crossings bring true civil liberties, concerns that will only be intense as the Trump administration is needed to exploit detection measures for naked political reasons. Just as the terrorism number has lessons in the United States, it has intensified in much of Africa, where a powerful affiliate from Al Qaeda killed thousands of civilians. And here at home, there are many reasons to fear that the acute budget cuts the Trump administration budget, including the maintenance of billions in anti-terrorist grants to the states, according to the New York Times-Could a waste wasted all the progress that has been achieved.
What we are experiencing is, in the best case, a partial victory, one that has come with costs and that could be reversed at any time. But anyone remembers the Shefear who permeated the US. In the months and years after September 11, the “orange horror alerts” and anxiety that accompanied something as simple as boarding a subway car, knows that the highway is more hafd.
A version of this story originally appeared in the Good News Bulletin. Register here!