Even here in Germany, the overreaction to the event in Aurora can be witnessed:
I went to the cinema last sunday (for Batman), and they had signs all over the place saying something like "In reaction to repeated worried requests about security, we will not allow visitors to be costumed and may search bags."
I won't comment on the knee-jerk reactions of the customers. What more interesting to me is the decision made by the people in charge there, in reaction to those "worried customers". Was the cinema management panicking as well? Or were they just not courageous enough to stay calm and risk being deemed as "not doing something about it"?
That seems more like pandering to customers to me, which is a common thing for businesses to do. Customers keep asking about $foo, so you have to at least pretend to care about $foo.
Yes, but by doing this, you potentially scare all other customers off as well, and make them feel uncomfortable. I don't think that is a wise business decision.
An alternative would be to just give those worried ones a warm fuzzy feeling, without even informing the others.
Or, if that doesn't suffice, just live with the fact that a few people won't go to the cinema for a month.
Of course, I don't know how many people were "worried" in this case. I hope there weren't to many of them, that would be a sign that my country is getting really paranoid.
" I don't know how many people were "worried" in this case."
I think that's the thing about irrationality. If the media hype is strong enough anyone's brain can be taken over.
I remember very clearly the anthrax scare. I remember consciously thinking about anthrax when receiving envelopes at the business when that happened. I knew it was irrational but it was nearly impossible to fight those thoughts until the media attention died down.
What better way to show you care then, as Schneier says, provide security theater?
Otoh, the chance of a copycat crime is much much higher probability wise in the aftermath of such an event. (Even if the chance is super slim you'd have to agree theoretically and from certain past events it is higher.)
My personal favorite is airport security. All those shops that are located behind the inspections points in the airport terminal? How hard would it be for someone to slip something into the inbound merchandise that is sold in those shops? Are they running all that through xray machines? What about all the liquids? Hard to believe that's not a entry point and not being monitored correctly.
Along the same lines there are multiple ways to get a weapon into a movie theater.
I went to the cinema last sunday (for Batman), and they had signs all over the place saying something like "In reaction to repeated worried requests about security, we will not allow visitors to be costumed and may search bags."
I won't comment on the knee-jerk reactions of the customers. What more interesting to me is the decision made by the people in charge there, in reaction to those "worried customers". Was the cinema management panicking as well? Or were they just not courageous enough to stay calm and risk being deemed as "not doing something about it"?