I just landed on a flight from Toronto to San Francisco. If you were inside the USA you may not have heard about the various crazy rules applied to travel to the USA, or at least not experienced them. While we were away the rules changed every day, and perhaps every hour.

Toronto was hit the hardest because it has the most flights to the USA of any airport in the world (with a few other Canadian airports not far behind.) Due to the busy border, you clear U.S. customs and immigration through their satellite office in Toronto, so your plane lands you at domestic gates in the USA, making connections far easier.

The USA started insisting on intimate pat-downs on all passengers and complete hand screening of all carry-ons. For a while there was even a regulation that passengers would have to sit in their seats with nothing on their laps (not blankets, not books, not computers) for the last hour of the flight. That got reverted to "pilot's discretion" and in our case there was no talk of this.

The heavy search requirements brought Toronto's heavy to-USA traffic to a standstill. Even with extra mounties pitching in, there was now way to get all those people through the terminal, so the CATSA brought in a near-ban on carry-ons. You could only carry on items from a short list. Notable things not on the list (ie. banned) included books, kid's toys, lenses and various items people bring on not because they need them in flight, but because they are essential to their trip, or are fragile.

After a few days of reduced carry-ons, they got the processing down, as long as you got there 3 hours in advance, sometimes more. A real burden on 1 hour flights to New York, Boston or Washington. Still a burden on my 5 hour flight to SFO, since that was at 7am, meaning getting to the airport at 4am, (1am Pacific Time, about the time I would get to bed.)

The process included the fairly standard x-ray (with agents making various exceptions for people, generally allowing books that could be paged through and even some small knapsacks) with pat down only if you set off the alarm. Then, shortly after you started walking down the row of gates was a 2nd checkpoint. There you got a serious patdown that might remind you of a massage, and a complete hand inspection of everything in your bags. (I suggest they should let you pay extra for a real massage, which also of course detects anything on your body.) Many checks of ID and boarding pass and you are on your way.

There are many disturbing things about the reaction to the underpants bomber but a few stand out.

• It is certain that the TSA and all other major agencies knew about the risk of somebody strapping explosives to their legs and taking them through the magnetometer. So a plan should have been in place long ago about what to do about it, and how to react at the first public incident.
• In spite of this the agencies are out running around like chickens with their heads cut off, changing plans every day, no sign of forethought. Are they just testing the public to see what they will tolerate?
• Lots of talk of thz scanners to see everybody naked. Is this a way to get those accepted, after people complained?
• For Toronto, and most of the Canadian airports, a bad guy can quite readily drive just 90 minutes and go to another airport like Buffalo and get no special screening! While the public does not like this extra trek, it's no burden to the terrorist to do this. Only the innocent are punished.
• You could still smuggle your stuff inside a laptop, or a body cavity or several other places I noticed.
• Keep this up and people will stop flying, and they will definitely go to airports like Buffalo.
• As I have suggested before, appointments for security inspections are one answer to the 3 hour early arrival.
• For me the worst thing was packing lenses in checked bag. I had to improvise protection for them. When such a rule is put in place by surprise over Christmas, you have to expect a lot of people brought stuff that they needed to carry on on the way back, even if they would not plan a new trip today expecting to carry on their fragiles.

With some irony, all this came after a lunch with Peter Watts. If you didn't hear, Peter was crossing back into Canada at Port Huron/Sarnia and got pull over for exit inspection leaving the USA. Because he wasn't a complete little sheep, he reports he was beaten up by the border patrol and now is charged with assaulting an officer. I really doubt he did those things, but the most disturbing thing are those who comment on the story saying it's his fault for not being subservient enough. I understand the reasons for letting police do their jobs, but when you are just inspecting people driving out of the country, with no special reason to believe they are criminals or worthy of above average suspicion or anything but the presumption of innocence we are all owed, then there should be standards, and better defined rights for the subject of the inspections. If a person is not a known threat, why should they not get to ask questions about what is being done to them and their vehicle? Yes, one time in many thousands, an actual nasty criminal might do something odd and need to be set upon with force. It's one of the risks people take doing an armed policing job. It can happen anywhere, any time. But must the people give up their rights and be complete sheep because of it?

Can't we have a system where different situations suggest different levels of police control? Where the police, while they may have the power to give you orders and you have to obey without much chance to question, get in trouble if they abuse that power in a non-hostile situation? Where they have a simple way of explaining that they think the situation has escalated, and a way to declare it that we are taught in school to understand? So if the copy says, "I'm escalation -- get on the ground now" you have to get on the ground, but the cop has to justify later why he escalated. Simply being a citizen who is mindful of his rights doesn't seem much grounds for that.