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

[yendi]

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.

Comments

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

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.

[yendi]

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

[cheshyre]

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.

[yendi]

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

[cheshyre]

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.

[yendi]

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