Posted on Thursday, September 28, 2006 6:06 PM
For those of you who don't know who Kip Hawley is: he is a Director of Transportation Security Administration (TSA) of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; the agency that brought you all sorts of privacy infringments after that terrible day in September 2001.
Last August, a large panic broke out about so-called Binary Liquid Explosives; one of Hollywood's favourite concoctions when it comes to elaborate things that go boom. Those of you who've seen the excellent movie
Die Hard with a Vengeance must be familiar with that. Basic rule of thumb is that you have two liquids, which are harmless while unmixed.
If the bomber mixes them together; "be somewhere else". Or so they say.
However, e-zine The Register went into this and came to a
conclusion most scientists already know: it's bloody hard to make a stable binary liquid explosive and get away with it.
But, to keep the people happy, they issued a new set of rules in August; you can't bring any liquids onto a plane carrying you to England, Canada or the United States. The only liquids that are exempt are baby milk (I believe two bottles at max, which is a great help if you are in for a flight that lasts 10 hours) and certain medication, such as insuline.
Well, the guy who's responsible for these rules, is aforementioned Kip Hawley, and not everyone is very happy with him.
I came across a thread on the
Flyertalk.com forums, with a
report from a guy stating that he was detained for 25 minutes because he had a bag with "Kip Hawley is an idiot" written on it.
Logically, such an expression would fall under the freedom of speech, as this was his personal opinion. Well, not apparently to the TSA-officer, who pointed to the area before the security check and designated that as an area where our traveller could vent his opinions all he wanted, but not here on the spot where he was standing and compared it to yelling "Fire!" in a crowded movietheatre.
While there are limitations to freedom of speech and that there are countries on this Earth that don't think highly of people calling someone from the government an idiot, saying that someone is an idiot can hardly be regarded as threatening, well, at least in my book.
Oh well, go read it for yourself and if you're still wondering why the U.S. isn't one of my favourite holiday destinations, well...
Cheers, K.