Chances are, when you hear something like this from some kind of authority figure, it's because they deal with people who don't get the message. It's never bee

Chances are, when you hear something like this from some kind of authority figure, it's because they deal with people who don't get the message. It's never been ok to play like you're smuggling something through a checkpoint. "Keep your eyes out for the bomb I have in there, ha ha." I'm pretty sure this would get you in trouble even pre-9/11. Probably because there's not that much room between this and an actual bomb threat: "I have a bomb." But people who haven't fully thought through the implications of this think of their words as innocent joking, and I bet some people do actually end up getting arrested who meant nothing by it. No one wins when this happens. So they react by adding an intercom announcement reinforcing what has always been true, which is that you can't say you have a bomb, even if you're just joking. -- When I see stuff like this, I often think of the proverb "Even a broken clock is right twice a day." For people who think that the US is tending towards a police state (as the URL of this piece implies), by far the most compelling evidence of that are the Snowden leaks. Those are a totally different magnitude that stuff like this airport security announcement. If everything you see, including stuff like this, makes you say "OMG the USA is a a police state," then you're not an insightful privacy advocate, you are a broken clock. Insight requires discernment; knowing the difference between what is big and serious and what is small and even reasonable.