Airport Security

Great article in the New York Times on the absurdity of airport security yesterday. I've been ranting about this for a while now, but it is really good to see this issue start to receive mainstream media attention.

Each dollar we spend on security theater that promotes fear and does nothing to make us safer is a dollar that can't be spent on actual security measures.

Via Schneier.

I've been reading his blog for over a year now and think that he gives the most reasoned and sensible advice on both computer and real world security I've ever read. I started reading Beyond Fear on google books last week. I feel I've already read most of it in fragments on his blog, but I'm going to buy it now to have it all in one place and to loan to other people. It should be required reading for every member of congress before they are allowed to waste any more of our money on asinine "security" plans.

On a side note, I use BugMeNot to login to the times. Great program, one of those things that if you're not using you should. I normally don't pay any attention to whatever login the firefox plugin chooses to use. That said, I couldn't help but notice that the login id that came up automatically was "WhitePower1488" Not exactly something that I want to be associated with. I wonder if posting an account to BugMeNot could help obscure tracking of that handle as there would be logins from all over the world increasing the log noise.

In any case, I plan on checking what account BugMeNot gives me before using it in the future.