Bad touch.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob
• Position: Transportation Security Administration and lighter ban in airports - Brief article

Six YEARS after Richard Reid tried to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami by igniting plastic explosives in his sneakers, American travelers are still removing their shoes before walking through the metal detector at the airport. But as of last August, they are free from another rule inspired by Reid: the ban on lighters in airplane cabins. The "shoe bomber" reaction reflects the general pattern of airline security changes since 9/II: two barefoot steps forward, one back.

Congress did not impose the lighter ban until three years after Reid's failed sabotage, and it neglected to cover matches, the ignition source he actually used. Soon the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was complaining that confiscating some 22,000 lighters a day was distracting its screeners from the more urgent job of stopping guns and bombs. Still, it took the TSA nearly a year to lift the lighter ban after Congress gave it permission to do so in October 2006.

Similar concerns about overburdened screeners led the TSA to rethink its blanket ban on "gels and liquids," imposed in August 2006 after a British report of a thwarted scheme to blow up airplanes with liquid explosives. A month later, the TSA introduced its current "3-1-1" rule, which allows liquids and gels in containers holding three ounces or less, gathered together in a single one-quart plastic bag that is...