By Reece M. Krantz ’16
THE ROUND UP

National security is an important part of any developed country; the ability of a government to protect its citizens is vital to its legitimacy.

Preventative measures are the first line of defense. The public often sees national security at work when it comes to travel, especially at airports.

The real issue has come up from those who oppose high security in airports.

Recently, there has been an issue with racial profiling. People are claiming unfair treatment under the belief that their ethnicity is impacting their social stance.

Racial profiling exists, there is no doubt about that, and is wrong, but it is relative to sample size. Many people travel on a daily basis, all colors and physiques, but the foreigners seem to be stopped more often.

These claims have warranted action by the government, and some people believe that less security is better for everyone.

This is the wrong course of action to take on this issue. If we want to secure our borders while keeping fair treatment of ethnic groups, we must keep our security as it is.

Since 9/11, airports have been protected by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001, an act which created the TSA within the U.S Department of Transportation and required metal detectors at security checks and potential to x rays.

These counter measures have been vital to the safety of our country.

In 2012 alone, around 33,600 people were either killed or wounded in global terrorist attacks, mostly in undeveloped or insecure countries such as Afghanistan and Nigeria, according to National Consortium of the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.

The groups most responsible for these attacks would be the Taliban, according to the NCSTRT organization, with more than 525 attacks in 2012, accounting for 1,842 total killed.

That’s an average of 3.51 deaths per attack.

This count has only risen in these sorts of countries since.

Without safe travel, those responsible for the deaths could more easily make their way into our own country and the United States fails to uphold its governmental duty to serve the state.

This hurts our global legitimacy as a government and could lead to peaces broken and internal turmoil.

Even if the TSA hasn’t ever truly stopped an act of terrorism, they act as vital detergents to such attacks and have become important, if annoying, guardians of intercontinental travel.

If the future is one without travel security I fear for what could be exploited.

The last line of defense is not always the best line of defense.