Despite its relentless assaults on civil liberties, due process and the rule of the law, the Trump administration did one thing this week that’s good for the American people. The Transportation Security Administration is ending its long-standing policy requiring most airport travelers to remove their shoes as part of regular security screening.
It was always security theater — the performative illusion that we’ll be safer if we just do the hokey-pokey and turn ourselves around before we get on a plane.
The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the TSA, announced on its website, “The new policy will increase hospitality for travelers and streamline the TSA security checkpoint process, leading to lower wait times.” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said there’s no reason to worry that eliminating this widely despised piece of security theater will make Americans unsafe, as “our cutting-edge technological advancements and multi-layered security approach” means the department “can implement this change while maintaining the highest security standards.”
The policy came about after the London-born, al Qaeda-trained, hapless terrorist Richard Reid attempted to light explosives hidden in his shoes while on a Miami-bound flight from Paris in December 2001. Reid tried and repeatedly failed to light matches that would set off the fuse in his shoes. The smell of sulfur tipped off flight crew members and passengers, who subdued Reid before he could bring down the plane. Reid pled guilty to terrorism charges and is serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison.
Though Reid was unsuccessful in his attempted mass murder, he did change American life. Federal officials hastily threw together a policy requiring passengers to remove their shoes at airport security checkpoints. That policy was later relaxed, but almost five years after Reid’s last flight, the TSA officially made “no shoes” an official rule in 2006. Five years after that, in 2011, then-Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the no shoes policy would eventually be phased out due to advances in security screening technologies.
It only took 14 more years, but here we are. In the end, there was no grand technological advance that led to the end of the shoe policy. It’s simply going away.
The policy has contributed to longer security lines, higher stress levels for both passengers and TSA employees, and pointless confrontations — like when elderly and disabled people have been compelled to remove their footwear. It wasn’t until 2011 that the TSA officially exempted children under 13, and it took until 2013 for the birth of the TSA PreCheck system, allowing pre-screened travelers to keep their shoes on.
Very few countries adopted their own version of this policy. That’s likely because it was always security theater — the performative illusion, through mass inconvenience and generalized suspicion, that we’ll all be safer if we’d just do the security hokey-pokey and turn ourselves around before we get on a plane.
The TSA’s ineffectiveness at airport security is well-documented. In 2015, ABC News reported on a Homeland Security Inspector General’s report which found undercover agents were able to smuggle mock weapons or explosives past TSA security 95% of the time. (Subsequent tests two years later showed little improvement.)
TSA hasn’t released any data on its failure/success rates since then and the agency didn’t respond to my request for more recent data.
Undercover agents were able to smuggle mock weapons or explosives past TSA security 95% of the time.
Now that Richard Reid’s legacy is officially over, the Trump administration should look next to ending another ill-conceived panic reaction to an attempted terror attack. That would be the “3-1-1 rule” limiting passengers to a one-quart bag of liquids, gels and aerosols of no more than 3.4 ounces per item — itself a response to a thwarted 2006 terror plot.
The TSA had dropped hints that new 3-D scanning technology could eventually lead to the end of this requirement. But in 2024, a TSA spokesperson told Travel and Leisure that because “about 2,000 screening lanes in about 430 airports” need updated equipment, “it may not be until 2040” that the policy is dropped.
I’m setting myself a calendar reminder for 15 years from now, in the hopes that I’ll know the glory of bringing a six ounce bottle of shaving cream in my carry-on bag, and the satisfaction that the terrorists didn’t win.
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