Hacking the no-fly list is only bad if you like no-fly lists

Yesterday, Xeni blogged about Andy Bowers's Slate Magazine article on the ease of forging print-at-home boarding cards and the concommitant risk that someone on a no-fly list could photoshop their way onto a plane.

My cow-orker Seth points out rightly that this is only a crisis if you think "no-fly lists" are a good idea: but if you think that no-fly lists are unenforceable, useless "security theater," then this is no biggie, except as an example of how rotten and stupid the security response to 9/11 has been.

For example, when I was at Oakland with Cory Doctorow (in his previous incarnation as a cigarette smoker) and he had to empty his cigarette lighter before carrying it on the plane, he tried to show the security screener the futility of this gesture by walking to a convenience store immediately inside the security checkpoint, buying a new lighter there, and bringing it back to the checkpoint. He had just purchased an item inside security comparable to what the screener had made him give up.

Now, a journalist could write a story about how awful it is that the convenience stores in airports are selling cigarette lighters. Or the journalist could write about how silly it is that screeners are taking them away from people. (Hint: TSA still expressly permits matches, and every airport seems to have stores selling enormous glass bottles of vodka.)

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