The security at airports now being engaged in borders on the ludicrous. It reflects an over-reaction to the obvious threat caused by the recent so-called underpants bomber. MPS can testify to having recently undergone an absurd pat-down and security check at Calgary Airport en-route to the USA. It took minutes.....but did they pick up a wallet in a security pouch hanging from MPSs' belt? No!
Spiegel OnLine International addresses the issue of airport security in the light of an alarm at Munich Airport the other day. The general consensus seems to conclude that one can never have compete air travel security.
The piece quotes from the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung:
"What has been happening in international airports for years is nothing but window-dressing. Pure symbolism. The misrepresentation of false security. People take off their shoes and reveal the holes in their socks. They give up their nail files and present the see-through plastic bag with the potion against hair loss that they smear on their heads. They are already baring themselves, even without body scanners."
"And members of the security staff become tired in the face of thousands of harmless business people who grumblingly open their laptops. They are worn down by the hundredth soda bottle that they have to take off some child. And they are irritated by having to reject an almost empty toothpaste tube just because it is bigger than 100ml. The actual security is getting lost in the tangled mass of harmlessness, and the airport security staff lose their sense of urgency. It is worn down by the routine. Checking passengers has become a mass business. Every day hundreds of thousands of them have to be funnelled through airports. Even if the security staff were extremely well trained and paid, at some stage they would lose their concentration."
"It is not possible to keep increasing security checks -- in the end the airports would just paralyze themselves. However, the checks have to become more intelligent. This is not, after all, about potentially dangerous objects -- there are enough of those behind the security barriers. It is about dangerous people, such as the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused of attempting to blow up an aircraft over Detroit on Christmas Day. The man was a known terrorism sympathizer, his own father had warned the US Embassy about his son -- and still the man was allowed to board a plane heading for America."
"Clever security checks means identifying these people before the flight. That means switching from quantity to quality. Yet no one will dare to do that, because it requires the courage to think outside the box. If there were another attack, then that courage would be construed as irresponsibility."
Spiegel OnLine International addresses the issue of airport security in the light of an alarm at Munich Airport the other day. The general consensus seems to conclude that one can never have compete air travel security.
The piece quotes from the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung:
"What has been happening in international airports for years is nothing but window-dressing. Pure symbolism. The misrepresentation of false security. People take off their shoes and reveal the holes in their socks. They give up their nail files and present the see-through plastic bag with the potion against hair loss that they smear on their heads. They are already baring themselves, even without body scanners."
"And members of the security staff become tired in the face of thousands of harmless business people who grumblingly open their laptops. They are worn down by the hundredth soda bottle that they have to take off some child. And they are irritated by having to reject an almost empty toothpaste tube just because it is bigger than 100ml. The actual security is getting lost in the tangled mass of harmlessness, and the airport security staff lose their sense of urgency. It is worn down by the routine. Checking passengers has become a mass business. Every day hundreds of thousands of them have to be funnelled through airports. Even if the security staff were extremely well trained and paid, at some stage they would lose their concentration."
"It is not possible to keep increasing security checks -- in the end the airports would just paralyze themselves. However, the checks have to become more intelligent. This is not, after all, about potentially dangerous objects -- there are enough of those behind the security barriers. It is about dangerous people, such as the Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused of attempting to blow up an aircraft over Detroit on Christmas Day. The man was a known terrorism sympathizer, his own father had warned the US Embassy about his son -- and still the man was allowed to board a plane heading for America."
"Clever security checks means identifying these people before the flight. That means switching from quantity to quality. Yet no one will dare to do that, because it requires the courage to think outside the box. If there were another attack, then that courage would be construed as irresponsibility."
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