Security Theater
Rules that outlived the threat that caused them by twenty years and counting.
After Seven People Died From Poisoned Tylenol in 1982, the FDA Required Over-the-Counter Medicine to Come in Tamper-Resistant Packaging. In 1998 It Renamed the Packaging Tamper-Evident, Because It Did Not Resist Tampering.
On 29 September 1982 Mary Kellerman, a 12-year-old from Elk Grove Village outside Chicago, was given an Extra-Strength Tylenol capsule. She was dead by 7 a.m. Adam Janus, a 27-year-old postal worker, also died. His brother Stanley, 25, died the same day as Adam,
Hawaii's Emergency Agency Spent Months Preparing to Warn of an Incoming Ballistic Missile. It Had No Procedure for Saying There Wasn't One.
At 8:07 a.m. on Saturday 13 January 2018, the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency sent the following message to phones, radios and televisions across the state: "BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL." There was no missile. The Federal Communications
The Man Who Wrote the Password Rules Said in 2017 That He Regretted Them. His Own Guideline Had Predicted in 2004 That Everyone Would Capitalize the First Letter and Put the Symbol at the End.
In June 2004 the National Institute of Standards and Technology published Special Publication 800-63, the Electronic Authentication Guideline, by William Burr, Donna Dodson and Timothy Polk. It was written for US federal agencies. Its Appendix A set out a method for estimating how strong a password was, and it
One Man Failed to Light His Shoe on Fire in 2001. Americans Removed Their Shoes at Airport Security for the Next Nineteen Years, While Undercover Investigators Carried Weapons Past Screeners in 67 of 70 Attempts.
On 22 December 2001, Richard Reid boarded American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami with explosives built into his shoes. He then failed to detonate them. He could not get the fuse to light, passengers and crew noticed a man attempting to set fire to his own footwear, and
China GT Says Its Safety Setup Complied With National-Level Standards. The Driver Was Pulled From His Burning Ferrari by a Rival Who Stopped Mid-Race and Took a Fire Extinguisher From a Marshal.
On Saturday 5 September 2026, on the back straight at Shanghai, David Chen of Harmony Racing and Neil Verhagen of TBC by 610Racing made contact and slid through the grass. Chen's Ferrari 296 GT3 struck the Ferrari of Ollie Millroy, which caught fire with Millroy inside it. Loek
Britain Played the "Think of the Children" Card to Build a Digital Checkpoint. A VPN Became the #1 App.
For as long as pornography has existed online, proving you were old enough to see it meant clicking a button that said so.
Every Rule at Airport Security Has a Name, a Date, and Exactly One Guy Who Ruined It for Everyone
Your shoes, your shampoo, and your laptop are all inconveniencing you because of specific people on specific flights on specific dates — decades ago.