America After the Attack

11/21/2001 English German

Edition # 34
San Francisco, 11-21-2001

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America After the Attack

Michael Due to the tightened security regulations in air travel, the "Süddeutsche Zeitung," whose Friday edition we have subscribed to, unfortunately no longer arrives on time. As we recently learned from a note from distributor, the printed material now has to spend 24 hours in a compression chamber along with other air freight to ensure that the sharply written articles, with their concentrated journalistic impact, do not blow up an airplane. Oh man! Hopefully, the ladies and gentlemen at the FAA or whoever issues these ridiculous regulations will attend a proper security training session to distinguish between blind activism and sensible security measures. An excellent article by a security guru in the field of computing, Bruce Schneier, can be found here.

Figure [1]: The Süddeutsche Friday edition has to go into a compression chamber before it comes to us.

BART, San Francisco subway system, is not far behind and closes all station restrooms for security reasons. Hmm, that will surely deter the terrorists. One gets the impression that many are taking advantage of the situation to abolish inconvenient things (like maintaining train station restrooms) or to push through previously blocked intrusions into privacy under the guise of "We need more security." At the airport, soldiers in camouflage uniforms and with long rifles are standing around. Well, at least they are safer than the Uzis (submachine guns) with which the German police made airports insecure in the early 70s at the height of the terrorism scare.

Figure [2]: The subway in San Francisco is closing the station restrooms.

Since everyone is now afraid of receiving mail with anthrax spores, the American postal service has issued a flyer with instructions on how to inspect incoming mail. Is the mail from someone you don't know? Is it over-posted? Is there no return address? Then you should not open the mail, not shake it, not sniff it, but forward it to the appropriate authorities.