A Slap in the Face From Brazil?
- Details
- Category: Treasure Addis-Mills
- Published on Tuesday, 24 August 2010 19:23
- Written by Treasure Addis-Mills
In times of fear and uncertainty, the typical reaction is to overreact. People do. Groups of people do. Governments do….even the American government does. What? A prime example was in the security systems in airports that were put in place after 9/11. Now, understandably, action needed to be taken, but it was an overreaction. That overreaction caused air travelers to go through extra security: take shoes off, strip every piece of metal from the body, take laptops out of bags, only carry certain amounts of liquids and those had to be put in a special container and x-rayed.
Maybe this made people feel more protected? I somehow believe that the non-air travelers or infrequent air travelers felt more comfortable because they did not realize the impact it made on all travelers: LONG wait times for all, more money to pay additional TSA agents and security at airports as well as the additional infrastructure that was put in place directly afterwards (but then later not used).
This point was recently brought to my thoughts based on a discussion with some colleagues who live in other countries. My thinking in the previous paragraph was on national travel, not even touching on international travel. I didn’t think of all the additional items that were put into place to screen all people coming into the U.S. from other countries: high tech laser fingerprint scanners at each customs agent’s stand as well as digital computer cameras. Each person had to get their fingerprint and picture taken, particularly those with foreign passports. However, isn’t there the needed information on their passport? This caused long lines and people started feeling like these precautions were a bit overboard. Again, there is much difficulty for people who travel often and not much more additional security around it, just the potential feeling of heightened security. It also led people to feel that the U.S. was being a bit pretentious; a bit absurd. Was this really necessary?
My Brazilian colleague said that, to give the U.S. a bit of their own medicine, Brazil decided to copy the U.S. policy. However, they did not spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up all new security infrastructure. What they did when a U.S. plane landed in their country after 9/11, they put all of the U.S. citizens in their own security line. When the U.S. citizens got to the border security agent, there was also a person there with a disposable digital camera taking their pictures. Each person had to hold a chalkboard with their name written on it (ala prison mug shots). Snap…the flash went off and then each person had to dip their thumb in ink and roll it across a card. All passengers were outraged that they had to wait in a line so long and argued that these precautions were not at all necessary. The passengers got anxious standing in the long line and some became verbal about their discomfort. The American airline pilot even had to go through this additional screening. In protest, he held the chalkboard with each hand, middle fingers flying at the camera…..he was later deported for this disrespectful gesture.
But it does bring up a thought: the U.S. got a slap of reality when shown the precautions that they were taking when put in a different perspective. We may think it absurd that Brazil take actions like this, but in reality those are the same action the U.S. took. Think about it.
