As many know, I am not a fan of security theater, a coin adopted by Bruce Schneier to describe the song-and-dance that passes for procedures. The fiction moves into the realm of fantasy in terms of airline security, and I have learned to choke that down for the most part, but this takes the cake.
I have serious doubts that any of the nonsense we endure at airports makes us any safer, and I am convinced that the TSA is a prime example of "scope creep." I don't care if my seatmate is carrying embezzled cash, cocaine or child pornography; as long as he doesn't have something he can use to destroy the plane, he's fine by me. I thought the job of the TSA was to make sure plane destruction was avoided, and not to safeguard husbands against wives who might (or might not) be cleaning out their accounts, but I guess I was wrong. I imagine that pretty soon those airport screeners will be conducting full criminal background checks on the passengers, and flagging those with unpaid speeding tickets or unpaid child support. We can't let those people fly, that's for sure.
Perhaps it's a bad time to say this near mid-September, but on 9/11 those hijackers gave the US an exam on our commitment to civil liberties, and we failed. Big-time.
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