Ladies and Gentlemen, I am dangerously close to declaring that the terrorists have won.
New flight restrictions, updated just this morning, prohibit pretty much anything liquid or gel. Such restrictions promise to be enforced for the forseeable future with only minor tweaks. People are reporting that the TSA is taking away books, asthma inhalers, not letting people with certain kinds of shoe insoles fly, and generally making life difficult. Thankfully the restrictions are not as bad as in London, where electronics are also prohibited. Can you imagine taking a Trans-Atlantic flight with no reading matter and no electronics? For that matter, it makes business travel impossible. There are many people who cannot allow their computers to be checked as baggage. Period.
Nor can you bring a beverage on the plane purchased at the post-security-checkpoint convenience store. This means — to me anyway — that the authorities do not believe they have secured the post-checkpoint area. I’ll repeat that: authorities to not believe they have secured the post-checkpoint area. If that area were secure, we could assume everything and everyone in it was secure. What about cleaning supplies, you say? Those should be either in a locked storage area or in the control of the background-checked cleaning crew.
If we must assume that someone behind the security checkpoint could be a Bad Guy capable of getting banned items to other Bad Guys to take on airplanes, we must ask ourselves why these Bad Guys wouldn’t just put a bomb directly on the plane. Follow up: “Several handguns have been stolen from bags checked by police officers, military personnel and others on United Airlines flights departing O’Hare International Airport, sparking concern that the weapons are loose in what is supposed to be a secure part of the airport.”
Even with the increased scrutiny, “suspicious items” are still turning up on airplanes. And the nice folks over at BoingBoing ask whether these security measures apply to high level officials.
For that matter, am I the only person who has noticed that the last time we heard from Bin Laden and Zawahiri, Zawahiri was standing in what looked very much like a standard newscast set? For that matter, if Bin Laden is sending his tapes from a remote cave by yak courier, shouldn’t there be a great deal of reverb on those tapes? Now, since I don’t really want to go out on a limb saying such crazy talk as “those tapes aren’t real, just a government plot to keep you scared,” I am forced to assume that we haven’t really got them on the run as much as we’d like.
Bruce Schneier reminds us that “The goal of a terrorist is to cause terror…. And if you want to know what you can do to help? Don’t be terrorized.” That’s hard to do when CNN is running Terror Target Monday. Maybe it will help to put it in cartoon form.
In closing: a second helping of Chertoff. Some Star Trek Motivational Posters! A plan to reduce the costs of drug testing that would warm Dr. Mengele’s heart. Speaking of World War II atrocities, 39% of recently polled Americans think Muslims should have to carry a “special” ID. How about sewing a red crescent to their jackets? Please forgive my bigotry; I hate bigots. And when research keeps saying teens brains aren’t up at 7:30, why do school administrators still insist on having classes then? Are they trying to fail?