Once at the memorial you must go through a metal detector and your belongings must be X-rayed. Officers will inspect your ticket—that invulnerable document you nearly left on your printer—at least five times. One will draw a blue line on it; 40 yards (and around a dozen security cameras) later, another officer will shout at you if your ticket and its blue line are not visible. Eventually you’ll reach the memorial itself, where there are more officers and no bathrooms. You’re allowed to take photographs anywhere outside the security screening area—in theory if not always in practice.
via Sept. 11 memorial: Does the World Trade Center site really need so much security? – Slate Magazine.
I talked to Bruce Schneier, a leading thinker on security and the man who coined the term “security theater” to describe measures that are visible or intrusive but also pointless or ineffective. Schneier responded to a description of the memorial’s visible security with a pointed question: Is the memorial to the victims—or to our collective stupidity?