While there’s probably no known reason to worry about the PM of New Zealand being a terrorist (though one never can quite tell about NZ types), I really don’t see the issue in this story about how PM Helen Clark was scanned for explosives at Sydney Airport.
Helen Clark was on her way to the Middle East to visit troops when her Emirates flight landed in Australia.
She was searched while being escorted by an Australian official and despite security staff being told who she was. The Prime Minister was “picked randomly” from a queue for a body scan with a new explosives detection device.
See, you can search one of two ways. You can do it randomly — which, it appears, the Aussies did — or you can have criteria as to who you search. If you do it randomly, then that’s the end of the discussion. If you decide to use criteria for your search, you run both the risk of terrorists learning what those criteria are and exploiting them, and the risk of, well, deciding to scan all Arab-appearing males, which would obviously not go over well.
Australian Tourism Minister Joe Hockey said the search had been an embarrassing error and he hoped it would not happen again. But a spokesman for Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister John Anderson told the New Zealand Herald there was no embarrassment at security staff’s actions.
There are arguments one can make for and against either approach, but unless your scanning regime is going to say, “We do it all randomly, except for prime ministers and other government officials of rank X and above,” you’re going to end up offending someone.
(via Cronaca)
Public officials can’t be extempt from the rules that the rest of us have to follow.
Anybody recall what happened at the NYC City Council meeting several months ago? Council members were extempt from going through the metal detectors. The practice got extended to their guests. One council member brought a guest through the bypass. The guest was carrying a gun. Guess what happened at the council meeting?
Any questions, Madam Prime Minister?