Is Inconvenience a Measure of Security?  Email Print   Does
inconvenience equal security? It apparently must, if I'm to take
my recent trip to Germany as any indication. I had the
misfortune of being across the Atlantic on a trip during the
most recent scare — the one involving the alleged plot to target
transatlantic flights with Gatorade and iPods. The plot details
themselves are irrelevant. They'll end up shifting sufficiently
as the story evolves so that nobody, even professional
commentators, will have a clear grasp of what exactly happened,
just like the group in Canada and the Miami Seven.  These are
living details, in other words, open to change and
interpretation, much like the modern statists' collective
perspective on the Constitution.  My only observable evidence of
how safe they're trying to make me is the sizable hassle I have
to endure if I go anywhere. It was stringent enough right after
9/11, and yet it plainly isn't effective — is never going to be
effective — so they continuously ratchet it