Illusory Security 101

[unixronin]

Idiocy 101:  A Midway Airlines flight was recently returned to the gate in Milwaukee, all the passengers and their luggage taken off the plane and searched, and the entire plane inspected from top to bottom, because someone found Arabic writing in a copy of the airline's in-flight magazine.  The passengers on the flight didn't get to fly out until the next day.

Anyone who's pissed off at the airlines and paying attention now knows he can DoS the airlines merely by scribbling in plausible-looking Arabic in the airline magazine.

Comments

[juuro.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Hebrew counts. I can't scribble Arabic, but Hebrew should look sufficiently exotic to some readers.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I strongly suspect the majority of the panicking classes wouldn't know the difference.

[jilara.livejournal.com]

If you understand Arabic writing principles, (peaks and valleys turn into lines, etc.) you can make any old random doodle look like messages from Allah or whatever. Even more creative than random Japanese-sounding syllables a friend used to do in his "talk like a samurai movie" routine. So someone can be subversive and still claim "hey, I was just doodling, don't you guys know the difference?!" We're getting waaaay too paranoid, nowadays.