God, Gothamist loves how our area airports are working with the heightened security alerts. Like having a supervisor wave through a woman and her scissors at Newark airport, even though scissors are items non grata. The incident happened in the wake of the heightened security alert (you know, maybe planes were going to head into Las Vegas), and when a supervisor allowed a female airport security guard to pass through with a wrapped manicure set.
Ada Cortez pleaded with William Arroyo to let her pass, and then Arroyo told her to keep the wrapping on the set to avoid further questioning. A Continental Airlines employee observed this and told Port Authority officials who then shut down that checkpoint until Cortez and her manicure set were found. One source tells the Post, "She was a hot-looking girl, and he told the police it was in his discretion whether or not to let her through." Plus the police found something on Arroyo's record that should have prevented him from working airport security, but that's another matter. This reminds Gothamist of the Mel Brooks spoof of Vertigo, High Anxiety, where he and Madeline Khan get a gun through security by pretending to be a cranky old couple who are more trouble than it was worth to the guards to frisk further.
More airport security news: All visitors to the U.S. who require visas will now be fingerprinted in operation US–VISIT(one think tank consultant says, "The system seems to presume that most terrorists are fools"). British Transport Secretary tells citizens to get used to huge delays with airplanes.
More from the Department of Homeland Security.
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The screening is wasteful, and a blatant erosion of the concept of freedom that should be what America symbolizes.
Terrorists aren't idiots; they would pass through the system undetected, making the system pointless. The reason why the system is a waste is because there is too much raw data for any system to process. A terrorist would simply have to have a "clean" record and he's basically scot-free after being printed.
The fingerprinting is also pissing off other countries (Brazil, anyone?)
Monitoring innocent people is lazy intelligence. The Dept of Homeland Security's money should be spent on gathering *real* intelligence, because terrorists are not going to use obvious methods for attack.
Ahh, terrorism prevention. Here in DC we did even better, though. How about the head of TSA security at Dulles International getting pulled over for drunk driving on New Year's Eve when he's supposed to be on duty? I feel safe now.
http://dcsob.smorgasblog.com/archives/000238.html