Spot on. Measures of this kind are indeed for show and indeed designed to make flying intolerable. The purpose of the latter is to make the public cowed into accepting more and more restictions on liberty and invasions of privacy. In the UK and the USA, we are seeing the step-by-step construction of a police state at least as invasive as those run in Eastern Europe during the period of Soviet regional dominance. Having lived in Poland in the early 1990s, none of the fresh tales of Communist times relayed to me by friends included reference to pervasive CCTV, confiscation of cameras for photographing public buildings or anything akin to this madness at airports - and it IS madeness. How else can one account for the inconsisencies. Why do I have to remove my shoes at some UK airports and not others? Why must I take my laptop out of its bag at some UK airports and not others? Shoes and laptops are either a genuine risk to security or they are not. It can't be both. Also fresh in my memory are the charming people at Miami Intl. Airport who insisted that my wife walk through the metal detector WITHOUT our then-year old son, who crawled out of her sight and into the line of waiting passengers. How delightful that in the name of American national security my wife was physically prevented from retrieving our son by passing back through the arch.
This is just yet more privacy invasion in the interests of “security” which is largely there for show, and designed to make flying as intolerable as possible.
Spot on. Measures of this kind are indeed for show and indeed designed to make flying intolerable. The purpose of the latter is to make the public cowed into accepting more and more restictions on liberty and invasions of privacy. In the UK and the USA, we are seeing the step-by-step construction of a police state at least as invasive as those run in Eastern Europe during the period of Soviet regional dominance. Having lived in Poland in the early 1990s, none of the fresh tales of Communist times relayed to me by friends included reference to pervasive CCTV, confiscation of cameras for photographing public buildings or anything akin to this madness at airports - and it IS madeness. How else can one account for the inconsisencies. Why do I have to remove my shoes at some UK airports and not others? Why must I take my laptop out of its bag at some UK airports and not others? Shoes and laptops are either a genuine risk to security or they are not. It can't be both. Also fresh in my memory are the charming people at Miami Intl. Airport who insisted that my wife walk through the metal detector WITHOUT our then-year old son, who crawled out of her sight and into the line of waiting passengers. How delightful that in the name of American national security my wife was physically prevented from retrieving our son by passing back through the arch.
This is just yet more privacy invasion in the interests of “security” which is largely there for show, and designed to make flying as intolerable as possible.