"Liberty cannot be preserved without a general." - John Adams

Secrecy

Are screeners paying attention?

Checkpoints     Classification      Bureaucracy     Secrecy     Expenditure     Passengers     Necessary Evil

Please Remove Your Shoes  got under way in January of 2008. As the project began to identify pertinent critics and experts in airport security, interviews on camera were conducted, starting in May of the same year. Fifteen interviews were taken, ranging from sociologists and media specialists to aviation security experts and even federal air marshals. While the range of interviews, interview questions, and the length of answers would eventually overload the successful structuring of a feature length movie, the interviews remain useful as evidence of thought about an enormously complex subject.

What preconditioned us to throw down our normal sense of legal process after the 911 disaster? What aspects of government and the media changed our attitudes and our standards about personal safety, and what we were willing to tolerate in an effort to achieve it? What in fact is security? These are all questions that this project tried to illuminate in the film. And while some are touched on, many wind up in the book.

But the issues remain interesting. And there is no shortage of controversy about them, as evidenced by some passionate views of 2008 interviewees for this project. Their thoughts are edited into short, topical “webisodes” for your viewing.

 
                   

Copyright 2010