Jaunted

That last ban—the one that includes blacking out in-flight GPS maps and proibiting pilots from saying things like "if you look to your left, you'll see..."—is particularly silly. What's the theory? "If terrorists don't know where they are they won't be terrorists—they're notoriously fickle that way!" If that's true let's just ban anyone from having the shades up on the windows. For safety!

This is the same reasoning that got us shoe screenings and liquid bans, both of which turned out to be useless, obnoxious, and obnoxiously useless. You know what the terrorists did when TSA started checking shoes and limiting liquids? They used less liquids and hid them somewhere that's not their shoes. Doh! If only they weren't so devious.

But at least these new restrictions make a lot of sense. It's highly unlikely that future attackers would try a different kind of bomb at the end of a flight. Or even try the exact same bomb earlier in the flight. Right? And TSA has even promised to redouble enforcement of the 3-1-1 rule. Because as long as all future attacks are like the attack three attacks ago, this will maybe kind of slow them down.

There's a separate rant to be written about how TSA not only focuses on specifics, but on dumb specifics. So this guy's dad went to a US embassy and expressed the concern that his son might try to do something crazy like blow up an airliner. But instead of new rules taking away the visas of people whose dads think they might try to blow up airlines, we're restricting blankets. Feel safer yet?

[Photo: djbones / Flickr]

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