Hangar9,
I simply can't believe that you are saying what you are saying. Your blind faith in the idea that what the government does is best for you makes you the ideal robot.
It is older people and those who are able to think critically and for themselves who question stupid laws like these.
Everyone who works at or flys from an airport knows that the security is simple to bypass, and is only achievement is visible security to the masses.
Nobody here has mentioned any operational "secret" that any observant bad dude wouldn't notice himself. If you think they wouldn't then it is you who has the ego - not the posters here.
The rules are crap. The people who enforce them tend to be over-zealous with a little power and low pay.
Don't you get the irony of having a securitar guard exerting his will over you when he has half your IQ, and his only job qualification is a TAFE security certificate and the fact that he applied for the job!!!!
As I have said in the past - now everybody is an authoratative figure - airport securitar guards may have been unemployed two months ago and are now securitar nazis. This is not the Australia I remember, nor the one that I want to live in.
blah.