Yes, the searches are useless. Anything short of searching EVERYONE and EVERYTHING leaves gaps that can be exploited - and considering how often airport security misses serious items (shotguns, etc.), even comprehensive search is ineffective. The whole premise is deeply, fundamentally, obviously flawed.
This was my reaction after 9/11 too. I had been carrying a knife with me at all times for almost all of my adult life. Not only are they every day valuable tools (I don't understand anyone who doesn't carry a blade), but if you know how to use one (studied martial arts for many years since a teenager), they are damned effective weapons at close range. ALWAYS carried my knife with me on airplanes until 9/11, and would have used it if need be to deal with blade wielding hijackers. All I did was put it in the little basket when I went through the metal detector, and they gave it back to me on the other side. Only one time did a security guard state that I couldn't have the knife, to which I just quoted her the regulation allowing blades less than three inches long. She took out a ruler, and saw that it was a tenth of an inch under that, and gave it back to me. Then comes 9/11, and now I can't bring a knife on an airplane. Are we the public safer because I am unarmed? Ridiculous! We are much more helpless now that I, and everyone else, am unarmed. Bad guys will find ways around metal detectors, but habitual law abiders, like myself, will just leave our knives at home. Will someone please tell me how this helps?
Yeah, this is amazing. Even people I thought were staunch conservatives, when I express my anger about this, say, "Well, you know it's a different world now after 9/11." They don't seem to see the bigger picture. What are we fighting for if not our liberties under the Constitution? This is nothing less than the very soul of our nation, for Pete's sake. "What does it profit a man [or nation] if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" We are exchanging our nation's soul (the liberties men fought and died for from 1776 onward) for a temporary sense of false security. I would much rather take the slight chance of being a victim of terrorism than lose even one of my precious liberties under our Constitution. How far we have strayed from the words of Patrick Henry, "Give me liberty or give me death."
"Unreasonable," in the context of the Fourth Amendment, means that you do not have probable cause that the individual whose effects you are searching is a criminal. A reasonable search means that, based on the evidence available to you, the individual would be deemed by a reasonable person to be more than fifty percent likely to be carrying a bomb. Has nothing to do with any general concerns. If carrying packages is a general concern, then you are at liberty to lobby your representative to have the carrying of any sort of package outlawed. Good luck.
Baaaah Baaaaaaaaah Baaaah. Line up for your sheering, little lamb.
2nd Amendment. 'nuff said.
) as designated in the BoR. 