It's not often that old Dead Kennedys albums rattle around inside my head these days. But late on a Sunday night at the start of a book tour, stuck in security theatre hell at Brisbane airport, lined up with thousands of other punters waiting to be rescreened because some poor doofus had wandered through the wrong sliding door, I just couldn't help it. I just had to find Jello and the boys on the ol' iPod and fire up Give Me Convenience Or Give Me Death. You put me and half a dozen random selected airline travelers in a room with Osama bin Laden and that's the track list I'll sing from as we happily kick him to death.

I caught the flight that night, much to my surprise, and no thanks to bin Liner or his allies in airport security. By which I don't mean sleeper cells or hidden agents. I just mean airport security, everywhere. Because that whole exploding underpants plot which was foiled in the US over Christmas brought home again just how much of the faffing about we endure when we fly these days is really not related to security at all, but to the theatre of security, to putting on a show which in the end does very little to secure anything. None of humungous creaking security apparatus which surrounds flying in the US had anything to do with foiling that plot. It was left one to one passenger channeling Woody Harrelson in Zombieland: time to nut up or shut up.

Christopher Hitchens penned some great thoughts on this at Slate.com recently and I can't hope to do any better than him so I'll link to his article here for you to read.

I think, however, the thing that really came through the story of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was that in the end we are responsible for our own security. That doesn't mean turning into a bunch of narcs and throwing the switch to paranoid dementia just because you end up sitting next to some guy called Abdul on a flight.

But it does mean that if Abdul tries to blow up his underpants, and your airplane with it, that the reaction of Dutch filmmaker Jasper Schuringa who wrestled the would be mass murderer into submission recommends itself over the passivity of his fellow passengers. They owe him their lives and we owe him the example he has given us of the only kind of security that matters in the end: that which we fashion ourselves.

It is all but impossible to get a gun onto an aircraft today, or even a butter knife from the airport lounge. Hijackers rely on passengers sitting still and doing as they're told, and traditionally that was the preference of security professionals too. As long as the sheep stayed penned, the pros could work it out between themselves.

Are those days over? Is it time for the cabin staff to ask a new question of passengers at the start of the flight? Not just are you willing to operate the emergency exits should the need arise, but are you willing to fight for control of this plane should anyone try to seize it?

Well, are you?