It's a moral panic. They're never rational. I live near Boston, so our local equivalent of the spooky Google van is: circuit boards. Remember: If you carry you

It's a moral panic. They're never rational. I live near Boston, so our local equivalent of the spooky Google van is: circuit boards. Remember: If you carry your homebrew audio amplifier inside a cheap plastic case, it is not a terrorist threat, but otherwise the cops might threaten you with deadly force and charge you with a felony. Let's not even get into the topic of carrying liquids onto airplanes. The only good thing about incidents like this is that they provide anthropologists with teachable moments. It's easy to laugh when some other culture claims that a camera can "steal your soul". Ha ha! Those primitive people! That sort of thinking would never happen in a sophisticated modern culture like ours!