When one listens to the evening news or reads the paper about airport security “events”, you can’t be sure whether to duck for cover -- or just switch channels. A recent Fox News report, repeated on its national website, blared out, “Security breach at [a major] airport”. The local major national newspaper chimed in with “Security Breach Hits [Airport]”.

However, the Associated Press led with a much saner approach: “Articles of clothing belonging to TSA officers found at [airport]”. The essence of the story is that articles of TSA uniform clothing were left in an unsecured area – apparently in the sterile area beyond the screening checkpoint -- and were thus “susceptible” to being stolen to allow unauthorized persons into secured areas.

Possible? Sure. Should it ever have happened? Probably not. Should it be looked into? Of course. But let’s get a grip, folks.

We far too often blame the politicians and the government for going over the edge with notions of imminent disaster, but there seems to be an almost constant game of “gotcha” with the media and so-called security “experts” to justify their existence. We’ve all seen the trumpeting of the slightest perception of possible vulnerability, but that’s what airport professionals deal with every day – evaluate and prioritize, what’s real, what possible, what’s likely, and then put measures in place to deal with it. Among other things, access is not gained by a uniform; it is typically by an electronic access control system and/or ID system that verifies one’s true identity, not one’s clothing. For all we (don’t) know from the media hype, this could just as easily have been clothing on the way to/from the dry cleaners.

I return to the classic reference that there’s no silver bullet, and never will be. The cost-effectiveness curve of added security measures steepens almost exponentially. The first dollars spent on a fence are probably well worthwhile, and as one adds access controls, CCTV surveillance, police patrols, night lighting, and a range of other items, it significantly raises the security posture of any facility, including airports. But as the curve moves more steeply to the right, moving from 80 percent secure (whatever that means) to 85 percent; or from 89 to 91 percent, and so on, it becomes incrementally far more expensive for far less incremental unit of improvement.

Many like me would prefer to see more attention paid to upgrading the intelligence community so that the bad guys can be stopped three weeks before they head to the airport, rather than try to catch them at the front door from moment to moment. A true vulnerability and risk assessment must first ask the question, “vulnerable to what?” I seriously doubt it is ill-fitting trousers.