Those who will give up liberty to obtain security deserve neither

Quick update on the pointy-haired boss:  He saw the Dilbert cartoon on my desk that exactly depicted the situation.  I mentioned that it had been on the calendar the day before we had our little talk.  He laughed and said "oh yes, I used that for inspiration."  We both had a good laugh over it, and the tension is released, if the problem is not actually solved.

Next time I get that irate at something he says, I think I'll just let fly right there.  What's the worst that can happen?  I was tense about this all weekend, and added to that was the fact that we missed the train and I was an entire day late.  I can't internalize all this job stress or I will die of a heart attack at age 45.  So, my solution is going to be my usual solution -- an over abundance of honesty and directness, painful and unprofessional though it may be.

Maybe the situation will never occur.  I hope.

The weekend was quite an adventure.  Tino will be writing it up complete with pictures, so I'm not going to talk about the car and the various reasons why the entire weekend was spent in service of it.  It's here, it's cute and it needs attention.  Details forthcoming on his site.

Instead of that, I'm going to complain about the FAA.  I know that most people are happy to see more security at airports, no matter what kind of security it is.  I, apparently, am a dissenting opinion on this subject.

First of all, why suspend curbside check in?  So we can have a bunch of out of work skycaps?  This is merely less convenient.  People are still checking luggage, only now the lines to do so are unreal.

When we arrived at BWI, the line for Southwest was perhaps 120 people long.  Shortly after we got in that line, we were told that all Florida flights had a different line.  It was much shorter, so at first, I was thrilled.  Then our number came up for a random search of checked baggage.  We stood there for 25 minutes while we waited for the people searching to catch up, and on top of that, they jumped someone ahead of us for no apparent reason.

Why hand search checked baggage?  They can X-Ray it (and I hope they do) and they can have bomb-sniffing dogs examine it (which I also hope they do).  Both of these methods are fast and effective.  If it's been decided that checked baggage will be hand searched, then get enough employees to do all of it, because this random shit is just dumb.[1]  Furthermore, the employees doing it are abysmally slow and need more training, perhaps from the customs folks who are quite quick at it.

The security to get to the plane and for carry-ons is no better as far as I can see.  You have to purchase a ticket to get past the check point, but that's not really a deterrent.  I saw no real improvement in the procedure, and we were, in fact, allowed to enter a terminal we had no business being in.  We went through two check points, ultimately, and neither seemed any more likely to be effective than they were before September 11.  In the past, I had been asked to boot my computer.  This time, I was not.  I'm convinced that this is the way to get a bomb on a plane -- by disguising it as a laptop.  That doesn't seem to hard to do, frankly.  I have had my luggage swabbed for explosive residue, but not this time.  

I know some people will find my statements disturbing, but look at it this way:  No one did this before September 11 because they didn't want to.  The tools used were permitted on planes!  It won't work twice, because now the passengers will group tackle anyone who tries to hijack a plane because they know they have no chance of surviving and may in fact prevent the deaths of thousands of people by doing so.

I think we need to be looking elsewhere for the next attacks.  Many people are paranoid about a bioattack.  I'm thinking infrastructure like water or electricity (the Net is far to decentralized).  You can create an incredible amount of mayhem by cutting off a city from either of those things.  People may even turn on each other with looting and rioting, and I think that's exactly what these folks want.

Really, I didn't feel unsafe flying before I saw the new security measures, and I don't now either.  Statistically, the chances of that happenning again are infintesimal, and I can't possibly imagine what they'll do next.  It doesn't pay to worry about it, but it does pay to be a bit more aware of what's going on around you.

I did learn one thing:  Take the train.  It took longer to check in than to fly to Palm Beach.  This makes other options look far more enticing.