05.12.08
overzealous security
There were some stories recently about how the Vancouver Olympic Committee was looking for 900,000 person-hours of additional security from private-security firms in the three months before the Olympics. From the article, they are worried about weapons of mass destruction and attacks on “soft targets” like restaurants and hotels.
Um, excuse me: but how does posting a rent-a-cop outside Joe’s Bar and Grill keep a van full of goons with submachine guns from attacking it? How does posting a rent-a-cop (or even ten or one hundred) from setting off a truck bomb as it passes over the Lion’s Gate bridge?
It seems to me to be completely, totally, utterly pointless to spend more money on private security agents. All that will do is make people uncomfortable. If they really want to be effective, they need to spend money on more and better investigators to find the baddies before they get very far, more and better border agents to find munitions before they get in, and more and better bomb-sniffing equipment (to help find the munitions).
This is nothing but security theatre, and I resent my tax dollars being spent on it.
