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About 2/3rds of the way through my afternoon I received a call from one of the many programmers of middle eastern descent that I support. He was in an upper midwestern airport and was calling to notify me that his notebook (a company asset) was confiscated during security screening. They claimed it might contain explosives.
Now in a previous assignment, my caucasian colleagues were flying all over the country doing an XP rollout. One of them got home to discover that his leatherman tool (which has a blade) was in his notebook bag the whole time. He had passed through 3 or 4 security checkpoints like that. He didn't know whether to be more scared that he might have been flagged, or that he wasn't.
So clearly, the case here is one of racial profiling. Understandable, one might argue, all things considered. But anti-Arab prejudice proved a red herring in the Oklahoma City case, and my second point above illustrates just how easy it would be for another McVeigh type to hijack a plane.
But Tom Ridge is sure keeping us safe from those evil programmers.
Now in a previous assignment, my caucasian colleagues were flying all over the country doing an XP rollout. One of them got home to discover that his leatherman tool (which has a blade) was in his notebook bag the whole time. He had passed through 3 or 4 security checkpoints like that. He didn't know whether to be more scared that he might have been flagged, or that he wasn't.
So clearly, the case here is one of racial profiling. Understandable, one might argue, all things considered. But anti-Arab prejudice proved a red herring in the Oklahoma City case, and my second point above illustrates just how easy it would be for another McVeigh type to hijack a plane.
But Tom Ridge is sure keeping us safe from those evil programmers.
