Liberals at Airport

GLOBE EDITORIAL :: Not so sharp - The Boston Globe: "BY ALL means, the Transportation Security Administration should be encouraged to streamline airport screening procedures, but not if it means letting passengers carry ice picks, scissors, throwing stars, razor blades, bows and arrows, and knives with blades up to 5 inches. This proposal, which came to light last week, can only shake the confidence of the flying public in the agency that is supposed to protect it.

The apparent thinking, to use that term loosely, behind letting this arsenal on board is that the TSA is confident it has solved the Sept. 11 problem. Locked cockpit doors, marshals, the presence of guns in many cockpits, and vigilant passengers will prevent any future terrorists from commandeering a plane and using it in a suicidal attack. That calculation might well be valid, but it is a classic case of fighting the last war while inviting future skirmishes. A pressurized aluminum tube carrying jittery, often boozy, people at 30,000 feet is just not a good environment for lethal steel.

This is the message of the Association of Flight Attendants, which blasted the proposal in a letter to the TSA's new chief, Edmund S. Hawley. ''Even a plane that is attacked and results in only a few deaths would seriously jeopardize the progress we have all made in restoring the confidence of the flying public," wrote the union's president, Patricia A. Friend. Most Americans were dismayed to learn that, until Sept. 11, it was legal to carry box cutters and other small knives on board. The TSA should also think twice before exempting pilots from security gate screening, another proposal before it. In the past, such checks have detected crew members who were under the influence of alcohol.

Instead of weakening airline security, the TSA should be bringing on line better screening devices to reduce the amount of secondary inspecting that has to be done. It is also high time that Congress demanded that the TSA close the biggest remaining loophole in airplane safety: the fact that all but a small fraction of the commercial cargo that goes into the holds of many passenger airplanes is uninspected. The airlines now rely on a ''known shipper" system of accepting goods only from past customers, but in 2003 a ''known shipper's" container held a company employee who wanted a no-cost flight from New York to Texas.

If the proposals for relaxing security before the TSA reflect a sense within the agency that it's time to think of the public's convenience more than safety, Hawley should make sure that's not the case. The ''s" in TSA still stands for ''security," which should mean no knives."