Mike J
Am I missing the point here??
I would suggest you are. As are quite a few. Most here are pilots / passengers who fly planes and are probably very good at it, so why not fly planes/travel quietly and let the security experts do their job.
I do not agree that taking nail files etc off flight crew is the way forward but who am I and they have to be seen to be doing something in the wake of 9/11 within a limited budget.
You all have a view / issue with regards to security (quite rightly so as you stand to suffer a lot if it goes wrong) but none of you are in a position and never will be in a position to assess what we should or should not do with regards to intelligence that is to hand, you will only be told a small bit so that the source of the information is not compromised.
In a perfect world with regard to terrorism every communication between them should be monitored but I think it is prudent to think that this is not possible and the wee bits that the agencies get we should be grateful for and accept their judgement on the limited info they have. It is not always going to be right but they must er on the side of caution, so why not accept what is happening, instead of claiming its political point scoring, poor intelligence or another conspiracy.
The agencies did not react to intelligence received before 9/11 and they got slaughtered for it, so why should they listen to the hypocrites amongst us now.
Safe and happy flying to you all and lets get out of this hole we are digging for ourselves to the delight of the scumbag terrorist