I just heard a story on CNN about the advisability of banning carry-on luggage altogether. And it said Canada, for now, has already done so! Banning underwear makes more sense than banning carry-on luggage. If you haven’t heard, the Christmas day bomber’s explosive was “anatomically correct” and concealed in his jockey shorts — so would it have been detectable even by the “virtual strip search” scanners? Probably not. Stay tuned.
Frank@OBOW
“Flailing panic”
Those responsible for these omissions (security failures leading to the Christmas day “bombing”) should be located and disciplined, and the gaps plugged. But I fail to see why airline passengers should be punished, as planned, for the failings of the authorities. A ban on more than one piece of hand luggage seems to me to be wholly unrelated to this event, and mere opportunism. I am not quite sure why security is being stepped up at British airports, which were not even involved in this incident (unless it is security for passengers arriving from Lagos, in which case we need to ask why this needs to be stepped up). A ban on in-flight maps (and in some cases in-flight movies) seems to me to be verging on the insane. Are we also to be stripped of our watches, so we can’t work out roughly where we are anyway? I take it that matey flight-deck announcements about speed and weather will also be banned, so as not to give terrorists help in working out the plane’s position. Why not black the windows out, in case we recognise a lake, a river, a coastline or a mountain range?
And then there’s the plan to strap bursting passengers, bloated with the water they’ve drunk to try to stop dehydration, and unsettled by pressurisation, into their seats for a whole hour before landing, with the lavatories locked. Pursue this unhinged logic a little further, and all passengers should be issued with giant nappies, blindfolded, shackled and tranquillised, Guantanamo-style - and not told where the plane is going, either. This is presumably the securocrats’ dream, a wholly safe world where only officials can travel.
Airline security seems to me to have reached a point where it resembles collective punishment, and punishment of the wrong people. It wasn’t the flying public that caused this mess. On the contrary, it was a passenger (as did those aboard United 93) who bravely tackled Mr Abdulmutallab. And I’m still anxious to know if this bomb was a real threat. The culprit, as I’ve said, presumably thought it was and so deserves everything he gets, if found guilty. - Peter Hitchens, dailymail.co.uk (underlining mine - ed.)