Where will the security mania stop?
T
he bureaucratic and highly risk adverse mindset of the government department running airport security is leading to insanity.
They refuse to accept that perfect safety is impossible. There is no way to remove all risk from life… and travel. So at some point, security bureaucrats have to narrow the pursuit and focus on high risk individuals or decide that if mass inspections are non-negotiable then how far are they prepared to go in pursuit of the mirage of a safe world.
Witness the knee-jerk reactions to the 9/11 bombers who had ‘box cutters’ (no nail clippers), the shoe-bomber (take off your shoes), the liquids bombers (small toiletries, no liquids through the checkpoint) and the underwear bomber (body scans and intimate pat-downs).
What will happen the first time a would-be suicide bomber is caught with explosives hidden in a body cavity? Will bend-over searches become routine for all of us?
