It’s 7:45 in Mexico City and 2ks of jogging at the gym has pretty much killed me. When it’s 28 degrees outside and the city sits under a blanket of humidity, you just forget the altitude. Yet we’re higher than any ski resort in Europe which is why, here on the 10th floor of the Intercon Hotel slogging away on the treadmill, my body feels like it’s been attacked, winded and is ready to collapse. Not something that’s likely to happen though, as the four guys with machine guns and their dogs at the door to the gym are doing a pretty good job of keeping us safe.
So two of us admit defeat and sneak out of the hotel for a coffee over the road; a much more civilised start to the day. Though you can’t really ‘sneak’ anywhere in the Intercon today. Every corner of the lobby has a couple of guys silently scanning the room, listening to the light chatter over their earpieces. Next to the row of smiling front of house staff that any self respecting five star hotel likes to line up are a row of special security service staff with a somewhat different look on their faces. Outside there’s a line of federal police 4x4s and some traffic cops directing traffic with submachine guns in a way no-one’s likely to dispute.
It’s all part of the summit of security ministers from Latin America and unlike most niche conferences this one get a lot of interest, some wanted – like the press corps that are pouring off a bus that just pulled up – and some unwanted – hence the security.
We cross the perimeter on the way back from the coffee shop and tumble into a rugby scrum with the news crews that are jostling their cameras and tripods in the queue to be checked. Everyone entering the building is going through the same checkin line: metal detector, credential check and a couple of words with security.
But there are no xray machines, and seeing all these camera crews pushing their tripods and Canons around the metal detector makes me realise that often we look for all the right things but in all the wrong places. The people are screened for metal but the metal equipment isn’t checked for concealed devices. All the newcomers are subjected to the line up, but the cleaning staff walk straight through next to us. The IDs everyone carries are plastic photocards from the 1980s with no biometrics. Now back upstairs and logged on, from my window I can see more than 50 security staff, and at least the same again in the lobby and stairwells. Isn’t there a danger that we use the tools of the past to look for the threats of today? When technology lets part of society step forward into a new era there’s always a timelag before the surrounding systems and structures catch up. Downstairs in the line-up for security that timelag feels uncomfortably visible.
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