Editorial: What does privacy mean in digital age?
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the June 9, 2017, Sacramento Bee.
In the 16 years since the Sept. 11 attacks, we have grown accustomed to taking off our belts and shoes, among other indignities as we follow the dictates of surly Transportation Security Administration guards for the privilege of stepping aboard cramped airplanes.
As UC Davis professor and inveterate reader Julie Sze learned, TSA agents are asking at least some air travelers to place their reading material in bins before boarding. We guess The Sacramento Bee, National Geographic and “Goodnight Moon” would pass inspection. We’re not sure about “The Satanic Verses,” anything written in Arabic, or something truly radical such as The Bible, or the Koran.
We understand that security experts say liquids in containers larger than 3.4 ounces in our carry-on bags constitute security threats. So we discard them, unless we don’t, which happened at the Wichita airport named for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.