I was in the High Court in London this week (watching the Judicial Review of the Digital Economy Act), and while there were signs up saying that ‘phones should be turned off, several people had their ‘phones out and there was a fairly good twitter-stream for the hearing. Some of the lawyers had laptops, I had my Kindle out, and there was no question that we’d be trying to blow something up.

This was at the Royal Courts of Justice, which houses the English High Court and Courts of Appeal, and while it has … what would have been called airport-style security a few years ago, but now… merely x-ray machines for belongings, and a standard walk-through metal detector at the entrances, security is fairly lax; possibly because the judiciary realise that blowing them up would be kind of pointless; they’re not particularly high-profile.

Incidentally, I was also wandering around our Parliament buildings last week, and they had the same level of security (plus “ID” tags, which merely show that you’ve been through security and are a guest, rather than identifying you personally), and that’s a building that *has* been the subject of a terrorist attack, admittedly some time ago (although I imagine the IRA probably tried more recently).

It seems rather ridiculous to the extreme to put in place all these extra layers of security theatre in US (or other) courts (such as banning phones), and one can’t help but wonder if the reasoning behind it is something along the lines of “airports have tighter security than courts, this can’t be right, we must have more security”, rather than actually being worried about concrete threats.