The importance of security

I have long been a believer in doing whatever is necessary (within acceptable limits, of course) to protect our national security – which is why I am supportive of the 42-days pre-charge detention which caused David Davis to resign and force a by-election.

Before I proceed with the main point of my post, I’d first like to state that, initially, I believed what Davis did was honourable and, though I disagreed with his reasoning behind it, there is no denying he took a principled stand. However, I must admit that the by-election turned into a farce when it became clear that his serious contenders included the Monster Raving Loony Party and the National Front – although this was more down to the Labour Party in shamefully refusing to field a candidate.

Anyway, as I was saying, security is important – and each of us has our own little role to play in ensuring that the nation’s security may be upheld. One of the actions includes not leaving anything unattended in prominent places – say, for example, an airport.

Now, it is near-tradition that, when I go away, something has to happen. Last year, for example, we were hit by the tail-end of a tropical storm and the year before we were witness to a mini tornado just yards from the pool we were in. This faux pas was, though, my fault.

I had been shopping in Dixons and bought a set of mini-DV tapes for my camera and a travel adapter for US sockets. I then went into WH Smith and bought a copy of The Spectator and Total Politics. It took me about five minutes to realise that, as I sat texting people and reading Total Politics, my Dixons bag was missing. Instantly, I rushed into WH Smith and looked around: not there. I asked to see if it had been handed in: nope. Then it suddenly dawned on me – I had put it down so that I could take money out of my wallet, and not picked it up again once I had finished!

The conclusion I came to was that some other shopper had picked it up and thought “hey, this could be useful” – although in hindsight, the chances of the next customer being someone who was travelling to the US with a camera that took mini-DV tapes were pretty remote. I sat back down and waited for our flight to be called (it was three hours late, remember?), continuing to text people by making light of what was, in reality, a potentially serious situation.

However, ten or fifteen minutes later I heard an announcement over the tannoy that was, for once, not the usual taunting “please do not leave baggage unattended” notice: “would the passenger who left the Dixons bag in WH Smith please come to the information desk”. Great! I thought. They’ve found my bag. It was just a shame that they made the announcement after I had gone into Dixons and re-bought the items.

But why am I telling you this? Why should my occasional absent-mindedness (hey, I am only human) be of any concern to you? Well I just thought I’d use this as an example of why security is important. By the time the incident occurred, the airport security were well assured that I didn’t have any bombs, weapons, liquids, sharp objects, nail clippers, pens, lapel pins, paper cut-outs of knives, etc. in my bag (okay, so I think that they do go a bit overboard with some things – although pens are allowed!) or my shoes and that I was not carrying any such items on me by virtue of the fact that I didn’t set the metal detector off. That doesn’t mean that they get lax.

No security system is infallible. No doubt there are ways in which a would-be terrorist could evade the system and end hundreds of lives. Look at September 11 – terrorists got through, security was tightened. Richard Reid boarded an aircraft with a shoe bomb in 2001, security was further tightened. Terrorists planned to use liquid explosives to cause attacks in 2006, security was further tightened. Terrorists used a jeep filled with explosives to attack Glasgow airport in 2007, security was further tightened.

The mere fact these new means of attack have been uncovered mean that security can be tightened to guard against them. However, it also means that there are possibly still further, as yet undiscovered ways of evading security and attacking us at airports and in the air. The last thing we need to be doing is distracting security by arguing with them, leaving baggage unattended just because you have to go to the toilet quickly and it won’t matter being on its own for a few seconds or leaving baggage unattended because you forgot you even had it.

But worse than this – the last thing you want to be doing if you see baggage unattended is to ignore it. Whilst I was in Florida at one of the parks I saw a bag left on its own. Nobody was stood near it, but plenty of people were talking past it, clocking it and ignoring it. Because our services are so good, we haven’t had a major terrorist attack for three years and as such are becoming lax. The threat level “severe” is now so overused that it has lost meaning. And yet the next unattended bag you see could be the last bag you ever see.

So please, don’t take the threat against our security lightly. We all have a part to play, so let’s try and play it together – yes I will be more careful with my luggage in future! – and ensure that we are the winners in this battle, not the terrorists out to destroy our lives.