You have just purchased two books from a well-known bookstore. As you leave the shop, the alarm sounds. Do you
a) Make a run for it out onto the pavement?
b) Return to the cashdesk and tell them how incompetent they are?
c) Stand around and wait for someone to challenge you?
I got it wrong yesterday. I chose c). I stood for fifteen seconds in the shop doorway waiting to see if anyone would step over and arrest me, or even challenge me, or even wave at me from the tills, but nothing. So I shrugged, set off the alarm again, walked out of the store and strolled off nonchalantly down the street. Nobody followed me. At which point I realised why c) had been the wrong choice.
I still had one more book I needed to buy, from somewhere, except that all those books were inside the bookshops, and I was outside. And, separating us, electronic gates that would beep at me if I dared enter and criminalise me when I tried to exit. I took a deep breath and entered my next bookshop, expecting the worst. But the apathetic staff again ignored the manic beeping, both on the way in and (more surprisingly) on the way out. Same thing in a third (beep)bookshop(beep). Suddenly this was too easy. Here I was blatantly setting off alarms all over Oxford Street and not one person seemed to care. On entering the fourth bookshop, however, staff at last noticed and trustingly swiped my previous purchases across the magnetic wiper thing at the cashdesk, and I was able to proceed with my shopping as normal.
It struck me that technology is getting better at disturbing the lives of the innocent. In-store security tags are more likely to trap the casual shopper than the shoplifter. Ticket barriers at stations slow down passenger flow, but the determined non-payer can still vault over them, or sneak through behind a legitimate ticketholder. Anti-theft coding prevents you from playing certain CDs on your home computer, whether you plan to rip a hundred illegal copies or none. ID cards (if they're ever introduced) will be an excuse for the police to stop anyone they so wish, but no small plastic rectangle will ever stop a determined terrorist by itself. And then there's air travel...
I am a walking magnet for airport security. No matter how many keys, electrical items and small coins I remove from my pockets, I always beep on the walk through the scanner. I'm then set upon by the burliest security guard (usually female) for a thorough pat down, after which I have to remove my footwear so that she can check I haven't hidden a spare pair of nail scissors in my socks. We're all now viewed as potential terrorists, and treated accordingly, just so that the one in half a billion passengers who really are terrorists can be stopped. American flightsecurity must be the most technologically neurotic of all. Fingerprints, digital photographs, biometric scanning, and no queueing by the on-board toilets in case you're plotting to storm the flight deck. Fingers crossed I have better (beep) luck on my next transatlantic flight.
