Seriously. Considering a tiny plastic toy gun of a GI Joe figure a real threat, it seriously makes me wonder who’s the bigger threat – actually dangerous people (see Moscow suicide bomber) or the zeal of these security personnel who think they can do whatever they want just because they are airport security personnel.
Following the tweets of ioerror, Boing Boing and Cory Doctorow gives me plenty of such stories every day, though usually it’s nothing so obviously hilarious. I mean, anyone with just a bit of common sense could see that a plastic toy poses no threat. And the airport people X-rayed the package to see if they had bullets for it. Come on.
It’s again different (though not better in any way, on the contrary), when airport security are messing around with people just for the heck of it. Most of the people don’t know their rights, so they rather comply than go through a long and troublesome procedure. Also it’s a problem that usually it’s not even simple to get to know your rights. For US people, having websites as the one i linked above it might be, but i really have no patience to look up what rights i have as a hungarian in Japan. I know i should have.