Recently in Security Category

Courtesy of my former colleague Mary Kirby, comes this overview of what the TSA gets up to in order to solve the mystery of how come the document that they sent to a few hundred people got leaked. You really wonder if they inhabit the same planet as the rest of us. And if they really have any idea of what they are actually employed to do. I don't know Chris Elliot but I like him already for his nicely crafted account of his visit from the TSA goons. 

That's the record of Al Qaeda so far and we should all be taking a rare piece of comfort from the attempted attack on Northwest 253 at Detroit yesterday.

The fact is that in eight years we have moved from Al Qaeda successfully launching an attack of considerable complexity conducted in the heart of the USA with massive effect, to their being reduced to a flaky one-man attack originating in the Third World and ending in fiasco.

This is a symptom of success on our part. Only partial success - because the question remains as to how what seems to have been a known person of interest was travelling without obstruction - but success nevertheless.

And US Congressman Peter King, who is quoted all over the place as calling this attack "the real deal" is way wrong. Actually this does now appear to be the 'real deal' and it's not very frightening - but it's not the real deal in the sense he means.

You can expect quite a lot of nonsense to be 'revealed' by the US authorities about the perpetrator Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab - the US judicial system clearly relies quite heavily on talking up the supposed threat posed by those facing trial. But step back and make your own judgement. We're winning.

You know 911 was quite a long time ago, and what were excusable knee-jerk responses to it at the time are really not so forgivable now. I've been thinking on and off this morning about how a tennis racquet can be considered an unacceptable piece of carry-on luggage.

That's absurd I thought. But then it occurred to me that you could take out the strings and garrotte somebody with them. But of course tennis racquet string is not in fact a banned item (although who knows?!)  So it would be less hassle to put your garrotte in your pocket.

So actually I've concluded that this regulation is as spectacularly stupid as I first thought.

(I play quite a lot of tennis - I'll ask round my club if anyone can think of how to hijack an aircraft with a racquet. Feel free to post suggestions below. Unless you've got a really good idea, in which case don't post it below.)