Security theater

By Michael Fraase

Sunday, 19 October 2008 11:39AM CST

Section: Privacy

Fake boarding passI confess. Research for Information Eclipse got me all wound up about government and corporate surveillance in the United States. It only got worse when George W. Bush was installed in the White House and systematically expanded the unchecked power of the executive branch.

Last night my wife and I watched the first installment of The Last Enemy (no spoilers, please; we’re behind in our Tivo watching). It’s simultaneously fascinating and disturbing in a way that only our limey friends across the pond can do. Watching it didn’t help my internal spring one little bit.

But then I read something like Jeffrey Goldberg’s “The Things He Carried” and I breathe easier. Wait. What? Shouldn’t the fact that Goldberg got through Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints at various US airports with “al-Qaeda t-shirts, Islamic Jihad flags, Hezbollah videotapes, and inflatable Yasir Arafat dolls” not to mention “pocketknives, matches from hotels in Beirut and Peshawar, dust masks, lengths of rope, cigarette lighters, nail clippers, eight-ounce tubes of toothpaste… bottles of Fiji water, and box cutters” (box cutters!) be at least upsetting? Or how about the Beerbelly, designed to sneak of to 80 ounces of liquid into concerts and athletic events?

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