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Top-level
 When I arrived in New Delhi, my hosts were somewhat flustered because Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had just announced that he would give the opening keynote, which meant a lot of rescheduling and shuffling - but also a *lot* of security. I was told that the only things I could bring to the conference center the next day were my badge, my passport and my hotel room key. 29/ 6 comments
But the speakers and delegates gathered in the hotel lobby the next morning, we were told that we *could* bring phones, after all. Because of course we could. You can't fly people from all over the world to India and then ask them to forego the device they use as translator, map, note-taker, personal diary, and credit card. Some prices are just too high. 31/ They took a *lot* of security measures. Everyone went through a metal detector, naturally. Then, we were sealed in the plenary room for more than an hour while the building was sealed off. Armed men were stationed all around the room, and the balcony outside the room was ringed with snipers: https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/54165263130/ 32/ We were prohibited from leaving our seats from the time Modi entered the room until he left it again, despite the fact that the PM was never more than a few steps from the single most terrifying bodyguard I'd ever seen: https://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/54164805776/ 33/ And yet: the fact that we were less than two months out from an extremely successful, highly public demonstration of the weaponization of small batteries in personal electronics did not mean that we all had to leave our phones at the hotel. After that, I'm tempted to think that, just possibly, security theater's curtain has rung down and its long SRO run has come to an end. It's a small bright spot in a dark time, but I'll take it. eof/  |
Gregory's Server
I couldn't bring a laptop, a phone or a spare battery. I couldn't even bring a pen ("they're worried about stabbings").
Modi - a lavishly corrupt authoritarian genocidier - has a lot of reasons to worry about his security. He has actual enemies who sometimes blow stuff up, and if one of them took him out, he wouldn't be the first Indian PM to die by assassination.
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