Handcuffs, hoods and orange jumpsuits in latest US airport security crackdown
12 Jan 2007 by hra
The US Department of Homeland Security today unveiled details of a fresh raft of tough new measures as part of its ongoing campaign to bolster security at international airports. Coming only days after reports of plans to extend fingerprinting in order to hold all passengers' biometrics permanently on the FBI's criminal database, these latest measures, applying to all flights from the UK, have been heralded in the US as proof of the continuing "special relationship" between the two nations.Effective from February, all passengers leaving the UK will be strip-searched at gunpoint, fitted with RFID tracking chips, and issued with orange jumpsuits. (The only permitted exceptions, sadly from the point of view of waiting paparazzi, will be Prime Ministers visiting ageing rock stars). Once onboard their aircraft, passengers will be handcuffed, hooded and shackled to their seats for the duration of their flight. Frivolous luxuries such British Airways airline food will regrettably be a thing of the past under the tough new regime.
On arrival in the US, passengers will undergo several hours of grilling by US interrogators using information from the UK's burgeoning network of databases, whose next upgrade is set to include full medical records and GPS tracking data as well as the credit card histories and email logs currently supplied. If accepted into the USA as opposed to being "re-routed" to an alternate, more discreet, destination, passengers will be escorted to a state-run hotel where they will be under continual surveillance until the time of their release on parole back to the UK. They will then be wished a pleasant trip home and invited to have a nice day.
At a Washington press briefing today, a Homeland Security spokeswoman denied that the extra security would put people off travelling to the USA and insisted that "Land of the Free" is still an appropriate description for that glorious nation. "These necessary measures may seem a nuisance to some travellers and cause additional delay and disruption in a minority of cases, but it is a small price to pay to keep the American people safe."
A random poll of passengers at Heathrow echoed this view. 82-year-old Gladys Ramsbottom, en route to visit her grandchildren in New York, was asked whether she had any objection to innocent little old ladies being treated as criminals by FBI goons. "If it saves lives then so be it. Whatever it takes," she told an assortment of TV crews. "And ooh I've always wanted one of those orange jumpsuits. You can't get them in the shops these days, not anywhere. My friends at bingo will be ever so jealous." Ms Ramsbottom was later seeing furtively pocketing a fat brown envelope.
Reaction from al-Qaeda has been more muted. A senior US spokesman told DeadBrain that most of their recruits – those not already in the US by now – simply stroll in across the Mexican border. "If anyone does stop them, they just say they're 'helping out the US economy by doing jobs no one else wants to do'," he explained. "But some people prefer to jet in from Colombia. As long as they make sure they label their Semtex 'cocaine' and take care of the local crime boss this end, no problem."
Significant numbers still come on the conventional route by plane from Heathrow, untroubled by the extra security (other than having to label their Semtex "polonium" in this instance). "They do it for kicks – it's all part of the travel experience," the spokesman claimed. "After all, how many people have proven track records as suicide bombers?"
