Security Stupidity

I can't take credit for this. Bruce Schneier published it in his latest Cryptogram e-newsletter. But this is a perfect example of how inflexible policies often don't make sense. Soldiers flying a charter to Kuwait can take assault weapons on the plane, but not pocket knives, fingernail clippers, nose hair scissors or cigarette lighters.

http://www.ajc.com/news/content/custom/blogs/guard/entries/2005/05/19/drop_those_nose_hair_clippers_soldier.html

This is living proof we are fighting the war against terror the wrong way. The statistics the airport security people publish of all the "dangerous items" they have prevented from being taken on board planes are not a success, but rather a failure because they prevented people who had no intention of using those items in a dangerous manner from taking them on.

We are focusing security spending on items the terrorists have already hit, or on "high profile" potential targets. Sorry, but this means the terrorists are winning. The terrorists can see where we are focusing our efforts...they will just attack somewhere else where the security is softer (or non-existent). The London Subway bombings are proof of this. The terrorists are winning because we are spending huge amounts of money protecting assets that will never be attacked rather than spending it on root cause of the problem, finding and stopping the terrorists. The terrorists are winning...they are increasing our taxes and decreasing our standard of living and forcing us to change the way we live.

Sorry for the rant.
Rick