Interesting Security Article

Found this today by Peter King, writer for Sport's Illustrated

Enjoyable/Aggravating Travel Note of the Week

I am all for rules, airline and otherwise, that protect our safety. But last Wednesday, after walking through a security line at LaGuardia, I saw the total fruitlessness of this you-can't-take-gels-or-liquids-on-airplanes rule, designed to protect us from those who would take explosive liquids or gels on planes. A 40ish man, traveling in business togs, put his briefcase, laptop and shoes on the security belt and walked through the X-ray machine. No beep. He collected his stuff, walked a few steps down the line, and put his laptop back in his case, and then took a tube of toothpaste out of one pocket and a bottle of contact-lens solution out of another, then put both in his briefcase. That sort of defeats the purpose of the anti-liquid rule and pretty much makes a mockery of it all.

As amply demonstrated on CC forums, there will always be people who delight in gaming the system and in breaking the rules. Equally inevitably, they're the people who cause those who run the systems to clamp down ever more tightly to catch those who are cheating. There will always be idiots like that who make life even more difficult for the rest of us.

It also shows how incompetent the screeners were, if they couldn't detect that he had toothpaste and contact lens solution in his pockets, and if they failed to see him taking these things out and putting them away. A pat-down search would have found both, but for some strange reason US searchers seem to be allergic to doing them.

I wasn't gaming the system, but sure walked through security at MCI Saturday with a BIC lighter and small bottle of hand cleaner in my pocket.

I had been in and out of the Admiral's Club (inside security) for three hours . The last trip outside, I had the stuff in my pocket after going to the bathroom. No one said a word.