Maybe your security agency shouldn't exist as a Dave Barry punchline

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12:54 pm July 7th, 2014

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			Maybe your security agency shouldn't exist as a Dave Barry punchline - Si, and I like potatoes.

yendi


	Maybe your security agency shouldn't exist as a Dave Barry punchline
	Back in Dave Barry's first novel, Big Trouble, terrorists bring a bomb through security in an airport, and when security looks at it, they treat it like a computer, and simply ask that it be turned on. Once they turn it on (revealing a digital countdown clock), security waves them through. Cue the TSA, fifteen years later. Me, I feel real safe.

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From: siliconshaman	Date: July 7th, 2014 08:48 pm (UTC)		(Link)

There was a video on youtube [since pulled] that showed how to build a powerful I.E.D using stuff your buy once you've cleared security, based around a lithium polymer battery, bottled water and a steel coffee mug... [plus a few other bits].

and they're worried about some terrorist smuggling in a bomb inside a laptop.

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	From: yendi	Date: July 7th, 2014 09:19 pm (UTC)		(Link)

As best I can tell, the TSA looks at the Keystone Kops as role models.

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	From: cheshyre	Date: July 8th, 2014 11:59 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I couldn't find the clip online, but have you seen the airport security scene in Mel Brooks' "High Anxiety"?

Meanwhile, I recently finished reading "The Skies Belong to Us" - a NONfiction look at the airplane hijackings of the 1960s & 1970s. Fascinating and recommended.

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	From: yendi	Date: July 9th, 2014 01:02 pm (UTC)		(Link)

I adore that movie! And I'll check out that book (literally, having just requested it at MinuteMan), as well. Thanks!

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	From: cheshyre	Date: July 8th, 2014 01:36 am (UTC)		(Link)

Nothing new.
Back when I was in college (tail end of the 1980s), I had a "luggable" computer - about the size of a toaster oven, weighing 25 lbs or so. And every time I went thru airport security, I'd have to take it out of its case, plug it in (battery powered? pfft!), and turn it on.

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	From: yendi	Date: July 8th, 2014 12:59 pm (UTC)		(Link)

*nod* Barry was making fun of real practices, but they were stupid practices then, too.

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