bombs

Regulation of the Day 139: Mailing Fake Grenades

by Ryan Young on June 3, 2010

in Personal Liberty, Regulation, Regulation of the Day

According to a new United States Postal Service regulation, all fake grenades and other “replica or inert explosive devices,” must be sent via Registered Mail.

You must also write ‘‘REPLICA EXPLOSIVE’’ on the package “using at least 20 point type or letters at least 1?4-inch high.”

Unlike most Regulations of the Day, this makes some sense. Many a post office has shut down because of false bomb scares. An uncle sending his nephew a birthday present could theoretically grind a major city’s mail service to a halt.

That isn’t the uncle’s fault; it’s the hyper-sensitive post-9/11 security mindset’s fault. Sadly, that mindset won’t be going away any time soon. This rule will hopefully prevent some false positives . Labeling the package lets postal workers know that they need not freak out. The Registered Mail requirement allows postal workers to verify that the grenades are, indeed, harmless.

Of course, the new rule treats the symptom, not the disease. It should hopefully reduce the amount of unnecessary bomb scares. But the real problem is the ingrained human habit of over-reacting to terrorism.

Terrorist attacks are extraordinarily rare, and need to be treated that way. Until common sense awakens from its post-9/11 slumber, this regulation may actually do some good.

Or the terrorists could start shipping grenades via UPS.

TSA Praises Itself After Year of Security Lapses; Obama Administration Backs TSA Unionization at Public Expense

by Hans Bader on December 31, 2009 · 1 comment

in Employment, International, Labor, Mobility, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk

In a year-end message to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) staff, the agency praised itself for a “very good year” in airline security, despite repeated security failures.  But, as ABC News notes,

The message made no mention of TSA snafus during 2009, including several highly critical reports by the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security and the inadvertent posting on the Internet of confidential documents revealing airport security procedures.

Recently, a Nigerian terrorist nearly managed to blow up an airliner, after being allowed on the plane despite being on a terror watch list.  He set fire to explosives, but was thwarted at the last minute when vigilant passengers put out the fire. Amazingly, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano claimed that the episode showed that “the system worked.”

The Obama administration is now trying to unionize the TSA., which will make it even more cumbersome, slow-moving, and bureaucratic.  The Washington Examiner explains why that is a very bad idea that would undermine travelers’ safety.  Union-mandated “collective bargaining would cripple the TSA,” stripping the TSA of “its flexibility to move people . . . and change protocols when it believes there is a terrorist threat,” requiring “TSA managers to share sensitive intelligence information with union negotiators . . . increasing the possibility of damaging leaks,” and restricting managers from rewarding ”high-performing screeners or fire those unable or unwilling to perform their duties in an efficient manner.”

The TSA is now reportedly planning to impose additional pointless restrictions on airline passengers, such as limiting access to blankets, and requiring passengers to stay in their seats during the last hour of flight, even though it was a passenger who got out of his seat during the last hour of flight who thwarted the recent attempted terrorist attack by putting out the fire the Nigerian terrorist had set to the explosives he carried on the plane.

For more on the TSA see here.