Manwell, I am afraid the rest of the world has gone mad...
My theory is that we have become a society of cowards, and will do anything, sacrifice everything, for a perception of safety. Of course we will never achieve real safety, and even if we do we will not recognise it. For example the last year was the safest ever in the US, with no commercial passenger fatalities, but is it encouraging people to fly again? No, and a lot of the reason for it is fear. Of course a lot of the reason is that people will not put up with the invasive and intrusive airport security, but that too is caused by fear.
They catch people with mental problems, or fools, but they will never catch a determined terrorist who knows the system and its weaknesses (and there are many such). Even on Sep 11, the terrorists did not break any rules that would have stopped them from being allowed on board. In the US, the TSA's own inspectors admit that they are getting 25 percent of all guns past security, barely better than pre Sep 11. And fewer flights have Air Marshalls on board. Every real threat has been thwarted (or not, in some cases) by the flight crew and passengers themselves. Airport security is the first wall of protection and it can never be better than a low one. Putting all the effort into that first step is stupid since in order to work it would virtually stop all commercial aviation.
After Sep 11 2001 the authorities should have tightened up security to detect and stop terrorists and criminals, but that was too hard. Instead they have, particularly in the US but also in Australia, chosen to treat the passengers as criminals. It does not work, but it looks effective to the ignorant. It also turns people away and destroys the aviation companies. It is not effective since it wastes resources, and makes it less likely that they will catch or stop a real terrorist. Of all the responses to this act of terror, what is happening is the worst that could happen, and we allow it because we are cowards. Instead of standing up and saying "enough!" we let them tighten up their brand of security, because we are frightened. They might be right, we think to ourselves. Benjamin Franklin said that if we give up our rights to achieve security we will have less of both.
As in government, we get what we deserve.