This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, December 26, 2011. I'm Caleb Brown.

As millions around the United States travel during the holidays it's worth taking stock of what

all these invasive security measures actually get us in terms of actual security.

Julian Sanchez, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, offers his thoughts on the value of our current regime of security theater.

Everybody hates intrusive security screenings when they're flying home for the holidays, but the most disturbing

thing about it, I think, maybe that it seems as though TSA really is devoting more resources

and more manpower dollars to screening passengers in these

sort of intrusive and often humiliating ways when the real threats to security our air system are elsewhere.

It's not just that these are burdensome measures, but that they're probably unnecessary

and probably actually leaving other vulnerabilities

open while you know grandmothers are being padded down and groped.

There's actually an excellent article in West Point's counterterrorism newsletter

written by a former risk analyst for a major airline pointing out that while we've put all this money into fancy

screening devices and nude scanners that it's not very clear are going to be particularly effective at spotting

explosives and not into things like background checks for the people who get to

work on the planes and in the baggage carasels who people who don't have to go through those screenings,

who don't have to go through those screenings.

Securing against other threats like bombs in cargo,

like bombs carried by passengers on inbound planes.

You know, and if you look at the history here, I don't think there's been as far as I know a bomb exploded on a

US originating flight detonated by a passenger in 50 years almost. The

attempts we've actually seen in the US, there's of course the 9-11 hijackers, that

...