Airport Security
The following comment just burst out of me while I was reading a question over on Askville about airport security at Heathrow (in the UK, as I assume everybody knows).
I went through Heathrow about fifteen years ago, so I don't have an up-to-date story to relate. But they did pull me out of line and search me extensively.
Years later, I had an employee who had also had bad experiences at Heathrow. He was a short little red-headed guy from Ireland (I'm a red-head too, but not at all Irish - although everyone who sees me assumes that I'm either Irish or Scottish).
Anyway, he told me that one time he was pulled out of line, taken to a separate room, and strip-searched. They took his clothes and left him alone in the room. After about forty-five minutes, he got tired of waiting and went strolling around the corridors naked, looking for his clothes.
I'm still not sure if I believe him. :D
I did go through Customs as well as airport security in the US last week. I have to say, it's like living under some third-world junta. Some of the Homeland Security people are decent enough, but a surprising number of them are rude, arrogant, and apparently drunk with power.
The rules themselves are ridiculous. My wife had a small tube of hand lotion; it was confiscated, very rudely, because it was an ounce or two over their limit. My son, that so-suspicious seven-year-old terrorist in training, had a sealed bottle of water in his backpack (we'd forgotten about it); confiscated. Yet I was able to bring a large tube of ointment through in my medical bag, despite the fact that it was obviously half-used and did not have my prescription information on it.
Most of these idiotic new precautions do NOTHING to hinder terrorists; all they do is inconvenience innocent travelers, and give a large number of jerks a license to dress up in a Nazi-like black uniform, carry a gun, and threaten people. As I said at the time, it's good to know that we're protected from the terrible hand-lotion menace. It's too bad that the government didn't use one-thousandth as much vigilance in monitoring Wall Street!
Sorry, I seem to have gotten off the point.
I went through Heathrow about fifteen years ago, so I don't have an up-to-date story to relate. But they did pull me out of line and search me extensively.
Years later, I had an employee who had also had bad experiences at Heathrow. He was a short little red-headed guy from Ireland (I'm a red-head too, but not at all Irish - although everyone who sees me assumes that I'm either Irish or Scottish).
Anyway, he told me that one time he was pulled out of line, taken to a separate room, and strip-searched. They took his clothes and left him alone in the room. After about forty-five minutes, he got tired of waiting and went strolling around the corridors naked, looking for his clothes.
I'm still not sure if I believe him. :D
I did go through Customs as well as airport security in the US last week. I have to say, it's like living under some third-world junta. Some of the Homeland Security people are decent enough, but a surprising number of them are rude, arrogant, and apparently drunk with power.
The rules themselves are ridiculous. My wife had a small tube of hand lotion; it was confiscated, very rudely, because it was an ounce or two over their limit. My son, that so-suspicious seven-year-old terrorist in training, had a sealed bottle of water in his backpack (we'd forgotten about it); confiscated. Yet I was able to bring a large tube of ointment through in my medical bag, despite the fact that it was obviously half-used and did not have my prescription information on it.
Most of these idiotic new precautions do NOTHING to hinder terrorists; all they do is inconvenience innocent travelers, and give a large number of jerks a license to dress up in a Nazi-like black uniform, carry a gun, and threaten people. As I said at the time, it's good to know that we're protected from the terrible hand-lotion menace. It's too bad that the government didn't use one-thousandth as much vigilance in monitoring Wall Street!
Sorry, I seem to have gotten off the point.