Joking at airport security

The thing about common sense is that it's not very common at all. What do you think would happen if they didnt take that "joke" seriously and that plane went down? I for one would not be able to live with myself knowing I was responsible for such travesty,if id only taken that "joke" seriously.It's a federal offence in Canada to make a joke regarding explosives or any other weapon.We complain that security isnt secure,then we whine when they take our nailfile..do you know what a jail prisoner could do with a nail file?

Terrorists won't make jokes about bombs, because it makes them stand-out, and the last thing they want is to be conspicuous. Sure, if they joke about it you shouldn't rule-out the possibility that they are carrying a bomb or a gun (that'd be stupid), but a simple search of their person should reveal the truth. And in the cases I wrote about above, both individuals were more than happy to have the contents of their baggage examined (indeed, in the case of the American, he actually opened the case in question and showed the check-out staff; like I said, the entire incident was recorded by the BBC for all to see).

Also, I might point-out that I was perfectly happy with the level of security before these sorts of things started getting silly. I am also happy with the level of risk posed from meteorites and lightning, yet people make such a fuss about things that have, if anything, lower probabilities of harming us (indeed, lots of people still smoke cigarettes, which have a very high probability of leading to an early death… such people are especially stupid if they think it is worth worrying about being killed by terrorists; even in Israel at the moment, the chances of your life being snuffed-out by terrorists are less than 0.02%, yet we hear about atrocities every day). I'm well aware that in the right hands, a nail file can be a deadly weapon. But the same hands can themselves be a deadly weapon, without the need for nail files, guns or explosives. Perhaps we should adopt a rule that only the weak should fly, because anybody else poses a danger of hijack?

Ahh, but you have to remember that before the World Trade Centre incident, the security in American aiports was lack luster to say the least. Anyone could walk all the way up to the gates. Now they have gone to the other extreme.

And you are right about a terroist would not admit to having a bomb in his case, which makes the fact that they ask the question even more stupid.

It cuts both ways, actually. What I mean by that is that airport security personnel should probably pay no attention whatsoever to anything passengers say. They can claim to have a bomb, claim not to have a bomb, say "yes, I packed this myself and it hasn't been out of my sight", whatever - the only thing that makes sense is actually checking their person and their luggage, with X-rays (backscatter preferably), metal detectors, bomb sniffers, robot nanodogs from the 22nd century, or - most importantly - simple, thorough, good training.

The reason American airport security sucked was that they had begun outsourcing it to the lowest bidder. It seems that hasn't changed, so you have barely-trained minimum-wage staff who haven't got the wherewithal to make a reasonable judgement, and thus have to respond to everything in a knee-jerk fashion.

That said, even when security personnel are well-trained, there is a need for a clear policy they can follow without having to make a self-informed judgement. As the first poster notes, this is largely to spare someone the feeling of responsibility if something awful does happen - a bit like the blank cartridge in a firing squad volley. The problem at present is that politicians and bureaucrats are still running scared and clueless, so the policies make no sense.

In the end each passed passenger obviously does depend on the screener's judgement, so there's a fine line somewhere between fitting their human thought process into a comprehensive yet flexible policy, and relying willy-nilly on an unknown quantity of common sense they may or may not possess. We've only barely begun to try and find that line, because the attitude for the first half-century of commercial aviation was to simply pretend there was no problem and assume no one was nutty enough to exploit the cursory (yet terribly officious) system we had. There's gonna be some growing pains, so if you want to fly in the interim you're just going to have to put up with it. ;)

(And yes, I realise that the "no jokes on pain of death" policy predates 2001 by a long way - it's been true in Canada as long as I can remember. Consider it a relic that will hopefully get dealt with as things get resorted.)