Paul Chambers is currently a criminal because he tweeted “****! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your s*** together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high”
Security Theater is a term that describes security countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually improve security.
Theatre, in the genre of tragic farce, is the consequence of unwittingly provoking Britain’s Dad’s Army of anti terror surveillance officers and Paul Chambers is our plucky anti-hero in this comedy of errors.
The convergence of social media (and its ambivalence toward personal privacy) with the intrusiveness of the security services have given us a society so concerned with protecting us, it is smothering us.
I’m writing about this because Paul Chambers, someone with whom I am faintly acquainted on Twitter, was appealing his conviction for the above crime in court this week, the same week I encountered the term “Security Theatre” courtesy of Reddit
Consider that you cannot take anything sharp through airport security, and yet there are an abundance of sharp things for sale in the departure lounge. The purpose of security theatre is not to make airports safer, but to demonstrate order and control to and over obedient passengers. Terrorists can work within these systems, as was highlighted by the cases of Richard Reid and the underpants bombers (who, amusingly, are a wedding band in a parallel dimension).
At an airport departure lounge, these artificial scenarios of control and order are fine and appropriate, to an extent; no one expects an airport security official to have a sense of humour, or the inclination to use his or her common sense when assessing a potential threat; given the stakes, you expect everything to be done by the book.
However, for us to continue enjoying the freedoms that have provided a membrane of ideological justification to our military’s recent Middle Eastern misadventures, there has to be a common sense filter for security services monitoring social networks. The consequence of international terrorism might be heightened security, but it must not be the criminalisation of banter.
