From Reuters and The National Review.....
Security Theater Comes to Disney World Resort (Benoit Tessier/Reuters) by KATHERINE TIMPF December 28, 2017 11:30 AM @KATTIMPF
A draconian new policy could allow the invasion of guests’ privacy without making anyone safer. Just when you thought Disney World couldn’t be a bigger nightmare, new security measures at some of its hotels are basically allowing Mickey Mouse and his obnoxious friends to invade your room. According to a piece in the Miami Herald, Walt Disney World Resort Hotels has removed the “do not disturb” signs from the rooms in three of its hotels and replaced them with “room occupied” signs as part of a new security policy. What’s more, a Disney cast member will now be required to enter each hotel room at least once per day to “ensure guest safety,” according to Walt Disney World News today. Disney has not explicitly stated its reasons for the new policy, but it seems to have been implemented in response to October’s Las Vegas shooting, when a man was able to enter a hotel room with a boatload of weapons and subsequently murder 58 people.
The worst part, of course, is that the world isn’t really any safer from terrorism because of any of this. The exact same thing is true of this Disney World policy. First of all, it’s not hard to see how these new rules could ruin a vacation. Imagine this: You put up that “room occupied” sign, get into the bathtub, and put on some relaxing music. A Disney cast member — who knows only that the room is occupied, and not that it’s occupied by someone who doesn’t want to be bothered — starts knocking on the door. You can’t hear the knock over your music, and the next thing you know . . . a cartoon character is looking at you naked. Make no mistake: Disney’s new policy destroys the entire decompress-and-chill aspect of any vacation. Instead, you have to sit in your hotel room on edge all the time, knowing that at any moment, you might be expected to respond quickly to a knock at your door or else be joined by a dude in a Goofy suit. That doesn’t exactly sound relaxing — and, as it stands now, it isn’t going to make anyone any safer. Again, anyone who is really interested in hotel-based violence could probably get away with it regardless of this policy. He could make sure his weapons are easy to hide at a moment’s notice, and stay in his room to make sure that no one goes through his stuff. If a cast member tried to interfere in some way, then he could use the weapons on that person. Honestly, the only way that Disney could even hope to guarantee complete safety would be to arm its cast members with military-grade artillery, allowing them to enter into any room at any moment without knocking, and demanding that they search through everyone’s stuff. Yes, Las Vegas was terrifying and tragic, but would anyone really want to stay in a hotel that’s overrun with a gun-wielding, cartoon-costume-wearing army? That kind of scene may sound far-fetched, but when you think about it, it’s really not. After all, our society clearly has a penchant for valuing a false sense of security over privacy and civil liberties. People will willingly accept government surveillance and unnecessarily invasive pat-downs just because they’re told those measures are for their own “safety,” without thinking about whether that’s true — or about the liberty that’s being lost in the process.
