Great news! You can go on holiday and take liquids with you. Medicines, baby milk, drinks bought away from the airport at considerable less than ludicrous prices, all will
soon be allowed through the ring-piece of steel at international airports in Australia, and no doubt other nations.
International travellers will no longer have water bottles, perfumes and other liquids confiscated as they board planes under a radical overhaul of airport security.
Radical overhaul. Sounds good, sounds like it could be what's been needed for a while now.
The easing of restrictions will begin next year as Australia's international airports begin rolling out new explosive detection equipment.
Ah. Now it just sounds like another machine to queue up for.
The shake-up, to be announced by the federal government today, also promises to cut waiting times for passengers by easing bottlenecks at security gates.
Er, but if we've got one more machine to queue up for how's that going to cut times?
The new technology, which has been trialled at Sydney airport, would enable authorities to detect the smallest trace of explosives in liquids.
Okay, and what happens if someone decides to take a pint of the stuff into the queue for the machine and detonate it before they get there? In the queue. You know, attacking the people
in the fucking queue instead of screwing around with the impossible task of getting it on a plane. Well,
sort of impossible.
- January 7th 2011, undercover French journalists are reported to have smuggled a dismantled 9mm pistol through security at two French airports and were able to assemble the gun in the toilets on the plane.
- February 21st 2011, in the US a female undercover TSA agent is reported to have carried a handgun through Dallas/Fort Worth airport body scanners in multiple tests by hiding it in her knickers.
[...]
- June 13th 2011, it is reported that 30 staff at Honolulu International Airport are fired for not having screened luggage properly.
Still, long as somebody has got a nice big market for their feel good bomb sniffing machines and governments can carry on acting as if they're doing something, eh?
"It will make air travel easier and less stressful for passengers as well as free airport security staff to better focus on their core screening responsibilities without the distraction of having to confiscate items from people's bags," [Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese] said.
"While preventing acts of terrorism remains our number one priority, we're also determined to minimise the disruption and inconvenience experienced by passengers as they transit throughout major airports, including by deploying the latest technologies."
Sorry, Tony, but if you're really serious about that I still think you should be looking at
how the Israelis do things. In the meantime one more bloody thing to queue up for having already queued for check-in, the X-ray, the metal detector and the bollock baking body scanner and/or professional groper does not tempt me back into flying anywhere except as a last resort.