iPod in toilet over-reaction

Bruce Schneier links to the behind-the-scenes details of a "terror scare" on board a plane flying to Canada when a passenger accidently dropped his iPod into the toilet.

An iPod in a toilet. Easy fix, right? You just pull it out, no big deal, right? Not in the Kafkaesque world of "security", where the more Sturm und Drang you can generate, the more secure your job is. Just because the guy who dropped the iPod told the stewardesses what he'd done, that's no reason not to interrogate everybody on the plane, and ask them frighteningly personal questions about their sex lives.

Of course, once you realise the passengers were left waiting on the plane for forty minutes before being taken off for questioning, it becomes obvious that there was never any genuine fear amongst officials that there was a real threat. If they actually thought there was a bomb on the plane, they would have got the passengers off immediately it touched down, not kept them in their seats for forty minutes.

It's all security theatre, to keep the voters and tax payers frightened so that the money will keep flowing to the security organisations.