On terrorism, security, and freedom
(Background: On December 25, 2009, a man was caught attempting to ignite an explosive device aboard an airliner as it was about to land at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Nobody was hurt, and the plane landed safely.)
This foiled attack was accompanied, as have been each of the ones before it, by a “temporary” increase in security posturing by the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration. I say “posturing” because I refuse to call it actual security, because it isn’t. It’s security theater, as Bruce Schneier is so fond of saying. He’s written an article for CNN denouncing the latest round of measures being taken “for our security”. It says pretty much everything I want to say on the subject, better than I could ever say it. Go read it. Then come back here and see if you had the same question I did.
Schneier is a very intelligent man saying exactly what needs to be said at this point in time. Why isn’t anyone listening to him? He’s been saying this stuff for about a decade now, and our “security” practices have just gotten worse and worse, while we continue to see attacks get stopped at the last second or, worse, succeed. I suppose it’s a good start that CNN is publishing an article from Schneier, but, frankly, he’s a single voice of reason shouting into a hurricane of idiocy and fear. So I want you to pass his article on to your friends, and your families, and I want you to tell them to do the same. If enough people start reading and thinking like him, we might have a chance of stopping ourselves before we turn this country into Orwell’s 1984. (An excellent book, but, as some snarky anonymous person on the Internet once put it, “it’s not an instruction manual.”)