Will we ever have enough security?

If you've taken a jaunt by airplane recently, you've had to put up with using a plastic knife to mangle your ancient slab of overcooked airline beef; you've probably had your holy (sorry, that's "holey") socks revealed while removing your shoes for a tottering security guard who gleefully hoped there would be explosives in them so he could get his pitiful salary raised for staying alert.

Is this enough? Feeling much safer lately?

Well, lotsa folks think current security practices are more like a nightmare scripted by idiots (if they are indeed scripted by anyone). I can't say I disagree. That's because I've just read the results of the Stupid Security Competition.

Imagine, a guy tries to board a plane carrying a bag of tea. A security guard carefully decants the tea into a plastic bag and confiscates the original one. Why? Because (pause for effect, rim shot please, maestro!) the bag was labeled "gunpowder tea" and is therefore prohibited!

Bet you've never been threatened with a bag label before. Me neither.

Here's another: a woman arrives at JFK with her baby and three bottles of warm mother's milk. She's ordered to drink the contents or she won't be allowed to board the plane. Notice I said drink, not sample. They order her to chug down the whole three bottles to prove they're not filled with an explosive.

Is nothing sacred? The questions are: How much of this "security" can we stand? When is the knee-jerk reaction period over? It's time for a group of reasonably intelligent people to sit down and draft meaningful strategies for security in airports. As these examples show, there doesn't seem to be a codified set of procedures in place at all, just a bunch of weird rules imposed by people waiting around for the Next Big Security Thing. If the US gets its way, the Next Big Security Thing will be a huge database that logs every traveler's movement in order to flag people who travel outside the "norms" set by heaven-knows-who.

I am pretty certain I travel outside these norms. I'm attracted to odd places and to people who aren't afraid to speak their minds or to be "different" in the eyes of society. Call me a freak; I can take it. But I don't want to end up in a prison or camp somewhere just because I went to a couple odd places to check out people who collect goat gallstones for a living either.

Will I change my travel plans? Not yet. Will you?

You can read about a plethora of interesting Stupid Security Tricks on the Privacy International web site. Here's a link to the contest. Here are the winners of this year's competition.