Security, for whom?

I've always been curious on why things are what they are. One such area is security. We get more and more cameras, guards and safe doors around us. Gated communities are a growing fact even in Sweden where people used to lock the door and leave the key on a nail above it. But is security everything? Are we have happy if we feel secure?

I don't think so. I see it as a trend towards more of the same. One guard makes you want a another guard in another place. And so on until you have cameras and guards everywhere. Will it make you secure and safe?

Let me take an example. When I visited Israel last week there were armed guards everywhere and at all shopping malls they searched your car and asked what you should do here. Did they expect the terrorist to say "I'm going to blow this place up"? And the search was so bad it made me feel even more insecure. If I want to bomb the place it is easy to hide a bomb and get it in the building. On the other hand I got lost when walking in Tel Aviv and suddenly I was in the middle of a park with no lights at all. That made me feel really scared especially since there were men standing in the shrubbery watching me. So you have armed guards everywhere and no lights for everyday safety, it does not make sense to me.

Another thing that does not make sense is the new airport rules and the increased security everywhere. When leaving Copenhagen or Stockholm you have to wait for 30 min up to 1.5 hour to get through security. And then you are not allowed to carry any liquids of any kind unless it is less than 100ml and fits into a one liter plastic bag. The procedures in Copenhagen and most of Europe are from OK to very good with a few exceptions. They are Spain, Portugal and Madeira.

The worst so far is Madeira where they didn't even bother to look through me when the metal detector went off. In Spain they are quite ignorant and sloppy in their search. In Barcelona I went to the wrong luggage terminal and have to go through security once more to get back into the right terminal and go to luggage pick-up. Without showing anything else than my passport. That's an excellent way for terrorists getting in a lot of liquid bombs!

This was before leaving Israel. After having to go through their security procedures, there is no way in hell to get anything past their checks. This is what I call security and it made me feel real safe.

So the feeling this gives me is that security done wrong increases insecurity, both real and experienced, done right is expensive to all parties. There are no easy ways of doing this, but just having a lot of armed guys out there does not increase it, rather the opposite. It can make some people feel secure and then they don't have to take responsibility for their own actions. The lesson from the non-lit up park is that let people see for themselves and then they can make a judgment. Hiding in the dark is only going to increase insecurity.

Finally I strongly believe that people who feel hope and that there is a future are less probable to make any actions. The most important area is to create hope through education in our time. Learning and education is the key here I think. Instead of investing all resources into security measures, spend resources on education and improvement in learning techniques.