I recently posted my thoughts about the highly effecient process for screening all those toothpaste-bombers that are roaming US airports these days.
A few random followup points:
1) Another good post about this by Tom Evslin, fellow blogger on the MyWay network. From it:
They didn’t even glance at the rat’s nest of wires and strange devices that always lives in my nerd bag, much better potential there for an explosive device but profiling made it clear that I’m not a likely mascara carrier.
2) Scott Adams (the Dilbert guy) confesses to becoming a toothpaste smuggler:
So, like millions of other travelers (I assume) I plan to become a
smuggler. I figure I can take one small tube of travel-sized toothpaste
in my pants pocket and make it through security without being busted. I
rationalize that there is no danger to the public in doing this because
I use a brand of toothpaste that rarely explodes.
(BTW – good opportunity to recommend the excellent Dilbert Blog).
3) It just occured to me that the FAA airport screening policies might be one of the biggest marketing opportunities of all time. I can just assume that the toothpaste and nail-cutter industries, for example, have shot through the roof overnight, courtesy of the US government.
How long will it be before a creative product marketing manager for say, Ray-Ban, pays some dude to get on the plane and make a small show out of concentrating sun light through his glasses and directing them to the plane’s fuel tank?
For less than $200 you get a marketing campaign that immediately moves more merchandise than being the exclusive sponsor for the superbowl for the next 10 years….
4) Reading the comments on my post and on Tom’s, it seems like the word ‘profiling’ might be a bad choice of word. It’s not about setting up a government database for tracking the religion of each passenger and screening accordingly. It’s about a simple thing – empowering the piles of security staff to actually use their brain when seeking out potential problems. The ‘god-forbid-should-we-ever-insult-anybody’ mentality that’s driving today’s brainless screening is bad for the 99.999% innocent passengers and good for the bad guys.