Prank or yet another worry.

[bruce]

On 8/18/2024 at 9:55 PM, Bryson said:

I remember working some of the masonic halls in Central London where they would make us submit to a full metal-detector and X-ray of our personal bags, but then allow us to empty a van-worth of un-inspected flight cases into the building.  I didn't have a knife on me, sure, but I might have had a nuclear weapon in a flight case for all they knew...

We once hosted a "Tony Blair" gig, during a time of raised security. We were told "no tech on the stage area, at all, just give us a pair of XLRs". 

Building was sealed and swept.

They arrived with a lectern in a (sealed and bonded) flight case. Broke it out, plugged our mic lines into it, quick soundcheck, did the event, lectern back in case, sealed and shipped off to next venue.

I'm sure I've mentioned here the time we hosted Obama, during the COP conference. All "top secret", we'd given them a choice of several rooms, they chose the top floor boardroom because it had spectacular views. And on the day of the event, asked us if we could black out the windows...

 

[kalmatthew]

7 hours ago, bruce said:

No cable, no connector. Those blinds are completely self contained -there's one in my daughter's house. There's a remote control, and a rechargable battery inside, plug it into a USB once every few months to charge it up. About a hundred pounds.

I've got several of these and they are easily available custom printed let alone the esase of sticking something to them. Blinds other than rollers might be even easier to hide, and since most just use a send and hope 443 Mhz signal then a transmitter could be almost anything. 

[pscandrett]

On 8/18/2024 at 9:55 PM, Bryson said:

I remember working some of the masonic halls in Central London where they would make us submit to a full metal-detector and X-ray of our personal bags, but then allow us to empty a van-worth of un-inspected flight cases into the building.  I didn't have a knife on me, sure, but I might have had a nuclear weapon in a flight case for all they knew...

A bit late to the party, but I've done several events at one particular football stadium where they send down a guy to check all our flightcases before taking them in to the venue. Only, of course, the guy clearly isn't trained properly, doesn't know what he's looking for, and basically opens the flightcase lids, looks a bit baffled and closes them again before letting them on their way. He was most grateful when we pointed out the cases with the video wall panels had convenient windows in the side so he could peer in without actually opening the cases...

The only thing that this security check achieved was massively slowing down the get-in. I know that a lot of security checks are mainly deterrents (eg bag checks at a theatre) but it was just the sheer futility of this guy's inspections that were frustrating. After all, think of the nefarious stuff you could put /inside/ something like a moving head or whatever.

Compare this to a gig that I did in a prison where they needed a full inventory of /everything/ we were going to take in...