Schneier on Security

In late July, Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley announced a change in his agency’s air travel screening policy: Effective August 4, cigarette lighters would no longer be banned from airplanes.

Explaining the measure in an interview with the New York Times, Hawley acknowledged that confiscating lighters at security checkpoints—the TSA’s policy for the last two years in the wake of a failed shoe-bombing attempt—had been a waste of resources. Terrorists, he noted, might just as well ignite bombs on airplanes using small batteries (or, as he didn’t note, matches)…