If you're looking for a fun and informative program to watch you should check out Adam Ruins Everything on the TRU channel.

Adam Connover picks a (controversial) subject on each episode and 'ruins' some (or all) assumptions you might have (in a funny way) and some might really surprise you.

In my Adam Ruined everything series I go through the episodes and the items that he 'ruins'.

Episode 1 was about : Giving and donating

Note : if you want to watch the episode first, spoiler alert

Episode 2 is about :

Security

• airport-security (TSA)

I haven't flown very much in my life-time. Once to Turkey, once to Portugal and once to the USA. For the first 2 destinations I was very quickly through the security. Traveling to the USA was a whole different story. I had to answer a number of questions before boarding. Writing this, I wonder how they ever could've checked my answers for validity...? Seemed pretty pointless to me. I had to fill in a green-card on the plane. We landed in Chicago where we had to transfer to the plane going to Columbus. This ment getting your luggage, and checking it at the flight to Columbus. After doing so we went to the line for Security where someone asked me if I had any liquids in my bag. Nope... , but that meant going with them for a full scan of my bag. etc etc.

While this does feel secure, Adam came along to tell us that it's all part of a Security-Theater, giving people the illusion of being secure.

If it comes to security on the plane itself, then the reinforced cockpit-doors, multiple air marshals on flights, travelers who are more aware and intelligence agencies who prevent attacks does the actual job.

TSA was tested by Homeland Security and they failed 95% of the tests.

Bruce Schneier came along on a ipad that taped to a segwit telling us :

It is not worth it to get more security-illusion because you gain nothing but you will have to sacrifice a certain amount of freedom and privacies to get it.

It is dangerous to give people the illusion of security while the system actually is vulnerable. Having all the security measures in place will only protect you from the ways that attacks have been carried out before. People who want to do harm can see the actual security and find new ways to bypass them. Instead, money should be spent more on intelligence, investigation and emergency response.

Let's continue to the Security item :

• Tamper resistant seal

Another part of the Security-theater. The Tamper resistant seal that you find on medicine bottles got introduced in 1982 when 1 person killed 7 people by placing Cyanide inside Tylenol bottles. Because people were freaking about this, Tylenol pulled their pills of the shelve and a few months later they introduced the first bottle with a Tamper resistant seal. But... if someone want to harm you, a piece of plastic won't stop them. And the other medicine manufacturers soon followed.

While Tylenol assured people their bottles were safe again, the real problem (what's inside the bottle of Tylenol) was completely ignored by the masses. It causes the death of 150 people each year and sending 78.000 people each year to the hospital. That's a lot! And they marketed their pills as the safest ones while they have a very narrow safety-margin. A total of 4 pills to be exact. That's not very much...

So I never heard of Tylenol since we don't have them here on the shelves but Tylenol is just Paracetamol that's widely available and overly used for stuff like a headache or the flu. What's strange is that you don't need a prescription to buy them while the active ingredient 'acetaminophen' is actually a big cause of acute liver-failure. I couldn't find exact percentages for The Netherlands or the EU but the show states that it is the number one cause in the US.

And apparently children are even more susceptible to a overdose then adults. And you can buy these in INSANE amount of quantities at the supermarkets from cheap, nameless manufacturers and in all shapes and sizes like powders, effervescent tablet, suppository and more. If I want 20 pills from the supermarket like Albert Heijn you only pay 0,49 euro's.

Medical Journal 'The Lancet' stated : if acetaminophen was discovered today ... it would certainly never be freely available without a subscription. Funny thing is that this was stated in December of 1975...

While the issue is not really related with Security, it does show that people tend to focus on a small issue (like the bottle) while ignoring the bigger threat.

• Credit cards

When you sign a receipt with your signature because you pay with a Credit Card doesn't do anything. The signature you put on the receipt is never verified with your original signature. It's just more Security-Theater. The Credit Card is a pre-internet relic where the cleric behind the counter would phone your card number to the bank and later on changed to a machine doing that job. I noticed a few times that when I used the card in a store I had to enter a pin number. Yay for security when someone tries to use the card in a store.

But what if I want to buy something online?

The only thing that someone needs to actually purchase something from your credit card is the Card Number , security code (cvc), expiration date of the card and sometimes billing address. Using this info and the purchase is done without any other form of verification.

And since this information can be obtained in a lot of different ways and when you have a Credit Card, you just have to assume that your information is already stolen at some point. Being a victim of Credit Card Theft is just a case of bad luck that your card information has been used. And there is nothing you can do to prevent it.

And while a lot of things appear to be Security-Theater, nothing is really 'safe-safe' anyway. It all comes down to our own assessment of risks that we see and the risk that we want to take with it. We do that all day long essentially since with every decision we make we look (subconsciously?) at the pro's and con's and take a decision based upon them. (like buying a pad-lock for your shed or replacing the doors with solid reinforced steel doors and a code-lock.)

Being aware of the risks (both online and offline) can give you an advantage and making sure that bad stuff happen a lot less to you because you can make sure that the people that want to do harm are actually up-to-date with their research on how to rip you off.

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Thanks for all the insights Adam. Even though security is one of my interests, the episode did surprise me a lot with the Paracetamol. Until next episode!