Security?

By Z.G. De Vincentiis

The book highlights the fallacies of the airport security system, showing how a collective illusion is draining incredible amounts of public resources which instead could be usefully put to built the real basis of lasting security for all: fostering a more just and free world.
Having travelled to 152 countries and done three round-the-world-tours, the author has developed an unconventional perspective on security, which unfolds seamlessly through a series of collected thoughts and real stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Z.G. De Vincentiis
• Release date: Apr 26, 2020

Z.G. De Vincentiis

I am a three times round-the-world traveller and writer. I hold a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering, dropout from PhD. In 2001, after teaching at the university for ten years, I set out on a 15 months overland world tour. Seven years later, I did another world tour, this time by sea- lasting a year, where I met my Italian husband. Seven more years later came another world tour, this time as a family with our then 3.5-years-old daughter, “Around the World in 99 Days”.Travelling the world so extensively gave me first-hand knowledge of places and an overall view of the world. I became obsessed with borders, security, justice, human behavior, anything related to world affairs. I feel I belong everywhere and nowhere. In 2016, I started a mission to go to every country and I have travelled to 152 countries out of 195. (193 UN countries plus 2 observer states.)I write because “Looking for words, you find thoughts." I live life so that it would make a good story. So far, not so bad.

Book preview

Security?

or

"How to live in the hypnotic world of today

and pretend your life is real"

by

Z. G. De Vincentiis

Published by:

IMPACT BOOKS

Security?

Copyright © 2015 by Z. G. De Vincentiis

Smashwords Edition

Index

Foreword

PART I

It all starts with water

That's a lie, it all starts with security

It all goes on with security

Back Home: Copenhagen Airport Website

Daisy fortune: It works, it doesn't work?

A Custodian, A Watchman, A Warden at Every Point

Afterlife

The following week... More Stories

Grateful for the order you issue us

Suitcase Surgeons

The Grandest Theatre

Consequences

Opting Out

Doing Something

Rational versus Irrational- Who wins?

Anarchy

Dying: Low or High?

Agents of Change

Breaking the status-quo

Update

Normalizing Fear

PART II

On Terrorism

Victim of Wrong Classification

War Against Killing

Found Out Why!

At all costs?

But a Dream...

Foreword

As a world traveller, I've been obsessed with security for a long time. Nowadays, of course, nobody really flies thanks to the coronavirus. The next step seems to be the security control at supermarkets; how to make sure everybody wears gloves and masks, nobody touches anything untouchable, nobody sneezes etc. I don't know to what extremes they can go to control people. They being governments. Perhaps there is a point in trying to establish order by rules and prohibitions and fines. Even by jail sentences.

Yet... I find all this effort to be useless. Or let's say meaningless. In the sense that it's too much cost for too little gain. I've come to realize that most people are ignorant and it is very difficult to educate them, still... An authority above us should not be the solution. We should all strive at achieving a better world through personal responsibility. Now, that’s a word more people should incorporate into their daily vocabulary: Personal responsibility.

This book is full of security search stories- some mine, some compiled from the news, others from dedicated websites. The comments are written to provoke some thought. I am aware that sometimes I go to extremes when making claims. However, it’s intentional. The intention being: Provoking some thought... So that we can question and change the system.

Let this book be a testimony to how fear and stupidity generally go hand in hand. And let’s please work to break the fear beyond some reasonable limit. Go back a bit, go back, don’t cross this line of danger zone: The zone of fear.

Thanks for your support.

PART I

It all starts with water

The woman felt the need to warn me! This is not a normal procedure, next time have your boarding pass with you.

I'm appalled. I need to be scolded like a child for buying water without a boarding pass! As if it's not enough that I am forced to donate a wad of cash to these licensed bandits. No, it's not enough that I am made to pay ten times more for something worth 15 cents. They have to register.: Who bought what, where they are going and who knows what else.

What surprises me more is how people just see these things as sooo normal. Their complacency. I'm appalled yet some more knowing that most people will be shrugging their shoulders and saying Aaah, so what? You're exaggerating if I tell them what happened. The incident goes like this:

We were thirsty. (But we were thirsty at the airport. That was our mistake, our sin.) There was no vending machine around to buy it from. I turned my head towards the cafe in front of our gate, only to see a looong line in front of the only cashier. It would take ages for me to buy water there as it was lunch time and people were ordering food. So I decided to go hunting for another shop. I strolled in brisk steps, looking around. Finally, I found a place selling water. I picked up two bottles and headed for the checkout. There was nobody in line. The woman asked for my boarding pass. I said I left it with my husband at the gate which was far away. The woman didn't offer to let me buy water anyway; she just turned her attention to the young Asian girl who had approached to buy a couple of snacks. The girl had her boarding pass.

I quickly thought: I have the exact amount of change for the water. So I asked the girl if she could buy the water for me, I'd be paying her. The girl did not understand it much but said okay. Still, the cashier didn't take the water bottles I held out to her, she just attended the girl. I waited. The girl paid her bill, but didn't walk out. She was handling her bags. I repeated my request if she could lend me her boarding pass to buy water. She did. I handed it to the other cashier as the first one had simply ignored me and gone on to attend another customer. This cashier did it, that is she sold me water. Without my own boarding pass! Can you imagine??! What generosity and helpfulness (!) But as I said, scolding me and teaching me the lesson that I need to carry my boarding pass with me all the time like a good girl. I want to shout COME TO YOUR SENSES! at the top of my lungs.

It's not even alcohol, id est something that you are limited to buy at a duty-free. Besides, I had done even that favor to someone. Some guy whom I did not know. He was buying bottles and bottles of alcohol in front of me and the cashier said he exceeded his limit. I told him he could put it on me if he wished. That is I offered him my boarding pass. Oh what a big crime I've committed. I admit and I repent. Do to me what you will; I am ready to take up my punishment. Is it a scolding like Don't do it next time? I'd say you'd better come up with a good deterrent 'cause otherwise, I'm sorry, I guess I'd be doing it again. I want to scream Come to your senses! at the top of my lungs.

That's a lie, it all starts with security

We're at Rome Fiumicino Airport... I requested my three-year old daughter not pass through the metal detectors but be hand-searched instead. They declined. Had they accepted it, I myself would have gone through their detectors in a mannerly way. But as they didn't let my daughter pass, I said I'm not passing either.

The man said Under the circumstances, you'll need to go to the police.

Ok. My husband, as he knew my standing against these searches, had printed and taken along with him a regulation that a friend of his working for the EU had signaled. Albeit, it doesn't explicitly say you have a right to ask for a hand-search but it says:

"4.1.1.2 Passengers shall be screened by:

(a) a hand search; or

(b) walk-through metal detection (WTMD) equipment."

Naturally, my husband was the one to go have a chat with the Italian police. I'm keeping an eye on our bags with my daughter. I wait and wait, he doesn't come back.

Eh, I said to myself, Had I known it would take so long, I would have passed. Where is this man? He came back in 10-15 minutes. Along with a police. A young man. Has an innocent face.

Soo? I asked my husband.

Fine, he answered. They're going to get your information, make photocopies of your documents and will let you pass.

The police told me to follow him. In English. When we came to the end of the line, he asked for our (mine and my daughter's) boarding passes and my ID. Meanwhile, another man interfered. Turned out he was the head of security. He did not share the police's opinion of letting me get away with being hand-searched just out of whim. They exchanged a couple of remarks, but apparently the police has the last say. He said Wait here to me and turned around.

As the police walked away with my papers, the head of security approached me. He asked if I knew Italian. I replied, A bit. I'm sure he knew English, but he either wasn't confident enough to speak it, in which case I'd say he shouldn't have been occupying such a position at an international airport, or he wasn't tactful enough to speak with me in what was obviously my preferred language. Anyway, he asked why I didn't want to pass through the detectors? Just out of curiosity.

I might be pregnant, I fudged. Which I could be... What business is it his? I wasn't going to tell this man all my philosophy about how I don't believe in this security theater, that it's a farce, that if money was spent on people, on making the world a better place for all instead of on these equipments and security, there wouldn't be any need for all these in the first place. If I deemed there was a chance he could understand, I might have.

If everybody did like you, this place would be blocked, he said.

I hardly held myself from saying That's exactly the point. Actually it wasn't that hard because he continued speaking Italian and I didn't want to respond with my broken Italian. When a person cannot express himself properly, he looks stupid even if what he's saying is real smart. Besides, I didn't give a hoot about the man.

They do it in America, I said.

Their organization is different there.

So you set up your organization accordingly too, what do I care?

It had been some time since the police had gone. The security man had now started talking to my husband and didn't really want to listen to me anyway when I attempted to say something. He was just trying to explain how he was a family man, how he cared about children and let children under three pass on the side as their fontanelle might not have closed yet and the detectors could be harmful. He also mentioned that this was the first time anybody asked to be hand-searched in the fourteen years he had been serving.

I had started wondering what the hell the police was doing all this time. If he was going