Category Archives: security theater

pick a racket

Heaven give me strength. Airport screeners find sharp things hidden in a young Bulgarian’s luggage — but that’s not all! Robert Johnson, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman . . . said the fact that the man’s one-way ticket was purchased over the … Continue reading

Posted in security theater | Leave a comment

pen and sword

An op-ed advocating militia-based defense — from a professor of aesthetics at Harvard. What is the world coming to?

Posted in humanities, security theater | 1 Comment

asymmetry

Virginia Postrel observes: So here’s the question: What happens when we find ourselves facing militant reactionaries who, for purely pragmatic reasons, are willing to use adaptable, decentralized organization and technologies against us? Unlike our Cold War adversaries, the militants who … Continue reading

Posted in security theater | Leave a comment

central control ≠ safety

Homeland Insecurity by Charles C. Mann in The Atlantic, September 2002: Indeed, Schneier says, Kerckhoffs’s principle applies beyond codes and ciphers to security systems in general: every secret creates a potential failure point. Secrecy, in other words, is a prime … Continue reading

Posted in security theater | Leave a comment

there goes Grandma’s plan for the first Dadaist hijacking

Airport screeners seize GI Joe’s rifle. “We have instructions to confiscate anything that looks like a weapon or a replica.” Fair’s fair. Wouldn’t want our airports to be less secure(d) than our schools.

Posted in security theater | Leave a comment

if it’s Thursday, this must be a blog item

No fair! This list of blogs ranked by number of links (each way) omits me, though I’ve been linked (at least in passing) by about fifteen of those on the list. I must have forgotten to turn off the Romulan … Continue reading

Posted in blogdom, security theater | Leave a comment

you can count on them

bon mot from Juan Gato: Federal authorities said Sunday they have arrested a forest technician with the U.S. Forest Service for starting the Hayman fire, the largest wildfire in Colorado’s history. You know, this kind of stuff wouldn’t happen if … Continue reading

Posted in security theater | Leave a comment