[lotuseclat79]

The Rule Of Law Over The Rule Of Reason.

While not directly a tech/business related story, Jonny sent in this rather disturbing story of a grandmother arrested in Indiana for buying two whole boxes of cold medicine in less than a week.
...
The whole thing is ridiculous, but is symptomatic of a problem that we're seeing all too often, where the focus is on enforcing poorly thought out laws, to ridiculous consequences, with no attempt to ever look at the negative consequences and seeing if the original law made any sense in the first place.

-- Tom

[1002richards]

... and here's another case of the law not being used sensibly. Two UK police officers looking after each others children but not registered child minders:

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/l...cle6852372.ece

[Couriant]

Reminds me of my Target days...

But seriously, judgement is needed here... if the grandma had a lab in her kitchen then fine... obviously she didn't.

As to the UK thing... that is rediculous.

[Knotbored]

I have a metal knee replacement so I always get a full body search at airports (time consuming, inconvenient but not too intrusive.) I am always surrounded by elderly and wheelchair bound passengers and never yet have I seen anyone I consider suspicious being patted down. Every time news reporters or even FBI checks of airport security it fails miserably. When can some logical security checks be determined that get passenger terminals back to some reasonable way of isolating suspicious travelers?

[lotuseclat79]

Originally Posted by Knotbored

I have a metal knee replacement so I always get a full body search at airports (time consuming, inconvenient but not too intrusive.) I am always surrounded by elderly and wheelchair bound passengers and never yet have I seen anyone I consider suspicious being patted down. Every time news reporters or even FBI checks of airport security it fails miserably. When can some logical security checks be determined that get passenger terminals back to some reasonable way of isolating suspicious travelers?

Hi Knotbored,

Reminds me of the "Stasi" state cops at Logan (Boston) airport in Oct 2001 when I was headed for UK to drive a Lotus on their track in Norwich (an Elise 2).

This one state cop had a mean suspicious look on his face, I thought his head was going to pop any minute as he watched and trailed very closely this middle-Eastern man in Arab robes. He was packing a machine gun and just itching for something to happen. You could feel the tension in his glare.

Nothing happened - and his blood pressure must have returned to normal.

9/11 fallout I suppose.

-- Tom

[thingamajig]

How could the pharmacist have known that grandma was not buying the medicine for a lab? On the other hand, what happens when you have a family of sick people? There are plenty of bad laws to go around. This one in Indiana sounds like another knee-jerk vote to give the appearance of doing something.

Anyone that wants to get something past airport security would go out of their way to not look suspicious. Random screening is a good idea. A baby stroller or a wheel chair would both be great places to hide something.

[Knotbored]

I heard this story from several sources, including one that claims it happened to a relative. It seems someone packed a cheese loaf (only available locally) next to a GameBoy in a backpack and sent it through the xray airport security. It seems the wiring combined with the texture gave an alert matching a bomb threat and closed down the airport and the carrier (a middle aged housewife) was taked to a detension room for 2 hours while the bomb squade "disarmed" the cheese loaf!

[thingamajig]

I've just noticed something I find ironic about the title of this tread, "the rule of law vs the rule of reason". This makes the assumption that our legislatures make law that is reasonable. I see little evidence of this.