Where I have a swift and painless check-in.
I decide to take the early bath and pass through to the departure lounge even though I am ridiculously miles ahead of schedule.
The security people go through my hand-luggage and relieve me of my Body Shop shower gel, Lush shampoo, Gilette shaving foam, and Right Guard antiperspirant because, obviously, these things are far too risky to inflict on the rest of Europe.
Slightly pissed off I accept the never-to-be-seen-again confiscation and move through to the departure lounge where there is a Superdrug.
Within five minutes I have replaced the shaving foam and antiperspirant with exactly the same products in the same sized containers.
Duh.
Sadly there is neither a Lush nor a Body Shop so inferior products will have to suffice.
The reason I’m mentioning this is that none of the electronic items I’m carrying (laptop, laptop charger, digital voice recorder, mobile phone, iPod – and USB connector – and digital camera) were given any degree of inspection.
This, surely, is security for the sake of lip service?
I hate to break it to you boys and girls, but with the innards of this pile of trinkets any competent electronics fiend could construct a decent explosive device.
Bonkers.
B.
I completely agree – Bonkers!
Have a great time in Rome, I’m looking forward to reading all about it since I couldn’t make the trip myself. I hope it helps you with TMA03 🙂
Two guys from my lab (including my advisor) where at a conference in Brazil when they started implementing these new security measure (ie. preventing people from taking large bottles of liquid on board, because everybody knows that to do a bomb with liquid chemicals you absolutely need large amounts of them, preferably hidden in a shower gel bottle. Duh.)
So when they left for 3 days, with none of these constraints yet there, they had only carry-on luggage. And on their way back, they had to get rid of all their shaving cream / deodorant / toothpaste items. According to this other student, it is very disturbing to have your advisor witnessing the process and discovering the brand of your perfume and deodorants…