Punishing the Newark Kiss
Jan 11th, 2010 • Posted in: Commentaryby Rushworth M. Kidder
When Haisong Jiang crossed a security line at Newark Liberty International Airport on January 3, the 28-year-old Rutgers University graduate student thought he was simply kissing his girlfriend goodbye. As it happened, he shut down the terminal for six hours, inconvenienced thousands of passengers, and incurred untold costs in time and treasure.
Mr. Jiang was arrested days later, and his case is still to be adjudicated. But one thing is certain: He’ll be the delight of ethicists for years to come. Why? Because his story raises some of the key moral concerns of our age, including security, terrorism, immigration, and international education. It pits individual freedoms against national interests. And it demands that we reconsider the ways in which the punishment fits the crime.
But what’s the crime?
One interpretation sees it as nothing more than the misplaced ardor of a romantic — a word Jiang’s friends use for him. From Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet to Rodin’s “The Kiss,” the passions of love have trampled caution and wisdom underfoot — generally to the delight of Hollywood and the public. In this interpretation, Jiang is a molecular biologist within months of completing his doctorate who, after years of rational detachment and laboratory precision, finally falls hopelessly in love. Far from family in China and studying under a student visa, he’s in his first real relationship, say his friends. She’s a former Rutgers student now living in California, and with the holidays over, she’s headed back home to her work as a statistician.
After sending her through security, he hovers by the rope separating screened from unscreened passengers, hoping for one last glimpse. Beside him is the stool for the security guard, whose task it is to prevent outsiders from sneaking through the doorway that disgorges arriving passengers. The guard, however, has left his post. So Jiang, bearding the lion of airport security in its den to prove how much he loves her, ducks under the rope and kisses her one last time. Twenty minutes later he leaves the airport.
So what if he was reported to officials by a bystander? So what if the police who swarmed into the secure area couldn’t find him? So what if every passenger had to be herded out and rescreened before the flights could leave? In this interpretation, it was all for love. No doubt he did something wrong, but only to telegraph his devotion.
But there’s another interpretation. A man who looks like a foreign national is reported to have broken through airport security — at a point where, suspiciously, the security camera happens not to be working and the guard happens to have vanished. The breach doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Four days earlier, a well-educated Jordanian doctor slipped through security to kill eight people at a CIA post in Afghanistan. A few days before that, a young Nigerian carried explosives through security and tried to blow up an airplane over Detroit. At Newark, when back-up cameras operated by the airlines finally provide pictures, the man is shown hovering furtively in the area and finally slipping through.
That’s when a woman in a long white coat approaches. On camera, they’re seen to be kissing. But is the man, who turns out to be a well-trained scientist, actually transferring weapons or explosives to her bulky coat? Or is he planning to board a plane and commit mayhem, taking advantage of American ignorance of the gender of Asian names to use her ticket? With all these earmarks of a sophisticated plot, do the police have any alternative but to drain the entire secure area?
What, then, about punishment? Is Jiang a hopeless romantic or a would-be terrorist? The distinction is one of intent: Did he plan to kiss a girlfriend or destroy a plane? Was the former only a cover for the latter? Suppose, after she was herded out of the secure area, she disposed of whatever he gave her before she submitted herself for rescreening. Was this, in fact, the perfect fail-safe plot, which works if you’re not caught but leaves no clues if you are?
Good investigative work will answer the romantic-versus-terrorist question. Let’s assume he’s the former. Should he be punished for what he intended to do (there’s been talk of a $500 fine for “defiant trespassing”), or for what he did do (a million-dollar fine, perhaps, to partially defray the cost of thousands of extra hours of time spent by investigators, police, screeners, flight crews, and the public), or for what he might have done (a prison term for breaching security and endangering the public by exposing loopholes that real terrorists then can exploit)?
Or should he go unpunished? Shocking as that sounds, think of the context. A rope line signals something important but not unbreachable. The same ropes festoon airport check-in counters, and nobody goes to jail for ducking under them when there’s no line. To signal full security, put up glass walls and one-way turnstile doors. Hire guards who don’t leave their posts. Make sure security cameras are working.
You can send a strong signal to the public by hammering Mr. Jiang. But you might send an even stronger signal to airport security by letting the punishment fall on them rather than him. And you could do a bit of both.
What’s right?
©2010 Institute for Global Ethics
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To The Editor–
I’d heard only the lead on this story, not the impassioned circumstances. Mistakes were made. But few critical systems are improved without tests and breaches. Nightclubs became much safer after disastrous fires. Test security has improved after unwanted releases of secure items. There is opportunity here to let the public see a nuanced response, rather than a blunt object thrashing.
Punishment need not be the first option. Restitution has a higher payoff for the offender and for the society. Three fixes come to mind:
–Rework camera coverage to provide redundant scans and rethink maintenance schedules to keep cameras on line. Examine the supervisory chain to see where the oversight went dim. Engage those involved to provide input to solutions.
–Determine why an employee at a critical station had to or chose to leave his post. Were they understaffed, under supervised, over-worked, under-trained…? While dismissal may be appropriate, even called for, perhaps there are ways to make right the error.
–The love-struck doc student clearly knew better or he would not have waited until the post was abandoned. It is hard to believe he intended to paralyze travel for hours. Grad students are notoriously penurious but certainly capable of providing some service that would be meaningful and appropriate to their talents.
If there are examples to be set, let them be on the side of making right what has been damaged. Extraordinary damages assessed for foolish acts lacking harmful intent are hallmark of a fearful nation, not a more cautions and creative society. Yes, I travel frequently to Newark.
//Peter Hendrickson//
I think that an important security boundary had better be protected by more than a rope and a guard if we’re serious about security. The temptation was great and the deterrent was small, with the inevitable result following.
More than that, we are approaching airport security in the wrong way. Israel has a much better system that focuses on examining all passengers rather than depending on physical barriers and technology. There is a lot of training involved in this, but it works.
I vote for a minor fine and slap on the wrist for our over-eager lover.
Mr. Hendrickson makes a logical case for excusing the doctoral student’s childish actions. But for me,it only works if we accept a popular axiom: “if I can get away with it, I can do whatever I decide is right for me”—often defined as self-justification.
The rub is that self-justification can lead to self destruction—as well as destruction of the lives of loved ones and beyond. And obviously people can justify most any action at any particular moment from Impulsive buying to gambling to drug addiction to suicide bombing.
I would hope those in charge would find ways to send a strong message that in today’s global, seemingly vulnerable, world, irresponsible acts of leaving a security post unattended or dismiss and repudiate an American airport security post are unacceptable.
Haisong Jiang must be giving some thought of what would be happening to him if he did this at an airport in China. Is he so unappreciative of the freedoms enjoyed in America or unaware of the responsibility each of us has to upholding values in our lives that protect these freedoms?
Finally, this is can be a beneficial wake-up call for the rest of us to examine our values and actions to make sure we are thinking of the good of others—of the whole— rather than our own momentary self-gratification.
Sadly, we’re making an ethical dilemma out of a simple case of someone of better-than-average intelligence (a graduate student at Rutgers) who chose to break the rules. Period. And even more sadly, the consequences of his actions were substantial. (For the record, that area has not only rope barriers, but also signs warning people not to enter. No reasonable person could misunderstand: Do Not Enter.)
Although we may disagree with the current generation of airport security procedures, that doesn’t negate the fact that we are rightly expected to abide by reasonable rules about access to secured areas. To “look the other way” by excusing his actions would undermine the most reasonable efforts to maintain some degree of airport security. This is not an ethical question, nor can we excuse his actions. Even in the name of love.
FWIW, this case revealed some glaring gaps in PANYNJ’s security operations (i.e., non-working cameras/recorders, only one guard in a critical area, the guard violating rules by leaving his post). Hopefully, those flaws have now been corrected. But that, too, is not an ethical issue. Nor is the need for security personnel to make instantaneous decisions about how to proceed if security protocols are breached. (Remember, Jiang didn’t stick around to explain himself, which might have quickly resolved the matter.)
The real question must be this: If we choose to violate a law — any law — shouldn’t the consequences of our actions influence the punishment? For example, if we are arrested for speeding, shouldn’t the punishment be much more severe if that act results in property damage or personal injury (or death)? And if we question the validity of the law, don’t we have an obligation to address it constructively, not destructively?
It’s called responsibility.
In this case, Jiang’s deliberate disregard for the law cost Continental (and other airlines) millions of dollars — not to mention the passengers, many of whom also lost money as well as that most precious commodity, time. It’s difficult to ignore these very real losses that directly resulted from his actions.
We can have a spirited discussion of the ethics of airport security procedures and rules, but the question here is painfully simple: if someone chooses to break the rules, shouldn’t he be expected to endure the consequences?
Yes, love is a many-splendored thing (been there, done that), but it’s not an excuse for breaking the law.