Not Quite a Mea Culpa

As a follow-up to my previous post, Rep. Markey (D-MA) has been receiving a lot of criticism on the Net for his calling for the arrest of Mr. Soghoian. Apparently, the bad publicity has had an effect on Mr. Markey, who issued this press release today. The press release is written in a bit of a patronizing tone, and basically says that Mr. Soghoian was stupid, but shouldn't go to jail for it.

Personally, I think that Mr. Soghoian's "ill-considered demonstration" (as Rep. Markey calls it) was brilliant. Security experts have been telling people for years that TSA's activities were mostly to make people think that the government was doing something - and not providing security at all. Even Sen. Shumer (D-NY) tried to bring attention to the exact same scenario as Mr. Soghoian a year ago. It wasn't until Mr. Soghoian created a little PHP script that the government panicked and realized that the emporer wasn't wearing any clothes. And rather than deal with the problem, they decided to shoot the messenger instead.

Maybe this time, after TSA wipes the egg off of its face, it can start to implement security measures that actually provide security. Now that's a novel idea, isn't it?