Judge caught trying to sneak knife on aircraft

Wed, 16 Mar 2005 12:13:54 +1100

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
From Bruce Schneier's March Crypto-Gram newsletter:

A Pennsylvania judge is caught trying to sneak a knife aboard an aircraft:
<http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2005-03-09-pa-judge_x.htm>
There are two points worth making here.  One: ridiculous rules have a
way of turning people into criminals.  And two: this is an example of a
security failure, not a security success.  Security systems fail in one
of two ways.  They can fail to stop the bad guy, and they can
mistakenly stop the good guy.  The TSA likes to measure its success by
looking at the forbidden items they have prevented from being carried
onto aircraft, but that's wrong.  Every time the TSA takes a
pocketknife from an innocent person, that's a security failure.  It's a
false alarm. The system has prevented access where no prevention was
required.  This, coupled with the widespread belief that the bad guys
will find a way around the system, demonstrates what a colossal waste
of money it is.

http://lwn.net/Articles/127667/

Share and enjoy,
                *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net                         Andrew Pam
http://www.xanadu.com.au/                       Chief Scientist, Xanadu
http://www.glasswings.com.au/                   Partner, Glass Wings
http://www.sericyb.com.au/                      Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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