{"id":26800,"date":"2014-07-13T10:59:38","date_gmt":"2014-07-13T15:59:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=26800"},"modified":"2014-07-13T10:59:38","modified_gmt":"2014-07-13T15:59:38","slug":"security-theatre-still-running-at-peak-farcicality-no-end-in-sight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2014\/07\/13\/security-theatre-still-running-at-peak-farcicality-no-end-in-sight\/","title":{"rendered":"Security theatre still running at peak farcicality – no end in sight"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Daily Mail<\/em>, Peter Hitchins<\/a> sums up all the individual losses to personal liberty, actual<\/em> security, and civil discourse bound up in the never-ending security theatre performances at airports and other travel centres:<\/p>\n

We have become a nation of suspects. The last wisps of British liberty are being stripped away and, as usual, this is happening with the keen support of millions.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Then there are the comical new ordeals travellers must face if they are foolish enough to want to go anywhere by plane. <\/p>\n

At least they would be comical if we were allowed to laugh at them, but even to joke about \u2018security\u2019 in the hearing of some grim-jawed official is to risk detention and a flight ban.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an odd thing about this. We are constantly told that our vast, sour-faced and costly \u2018security\u2019 services, and various \u2018British FBIs\u2019 and \u2018British KGBs\u2019 are fully on top of the terror threat, and ceaselessly halting plots.<\/p>\n

How is it then that they claim not to know if harmless aunties from Cleethorpes or Worthing are planning to manufacture an airborne bomb with the ingredients of a make-up bag?<\/p>\n

Just in case such a person is a jihadi<\/em> sleeper agent, she, and thousands of other innocents, must be treated as criminal suspects. <\/p>\n

Like newly registered convicts, they must stand in humble queues, meek before arbitrary power.<\/p>\n

They must remove clothing, allow strangers to peer at their nakedness in scanning machines, permit inspections of their private possessions and answer stupid questions with a straight face. <\/p>\n

They must be compelled to accept this treatment without protest or complaint. <\/p>\n

In fact, when we enter an airport these days, we enter a prototype totalitarian state, a glimpse of how it will eventually be everywhere if we do not find a way of resisting this horrible change.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Daily Mail, Peter Hitchins sums up all the individual losses to personal liberty, actual security, and civil discourse bound up in the never-ending security theatre performances at airports and other travel centres: We have become a nation of suspects. The last wisps of British liberty are being stripped away and, as usual, this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,84,10],"tags":[123,186,201,257,202],"class_list":["post-26800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-bureaucracy","category-government","category-liberty","tag-aircraft","tag-freedomofspeech","tag-securitytheatre","tag-terrorism","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-6Yg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26801,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26800\/revisions\/26801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}