Back in the day, in the late 1980s, a low-budget television production called Mystery Science Theater 3000 began airing on local stations in Minnesota and gained a cult following over the next decade as the show began appearing on cable TV. It's made comebacks as crowd-funded mini-seasons released via streaming outlets as well. The premise of each episode involved an ordinary guy who was captured by two mad scientists and forced to watch bad B-movies so the scientists could monitor him like a cinematic rat in a biology lab. The entertainment value stemmed from the ordinary guy, making the best of his situtation, reverting to providing a running critique of the bad movie he was being forced to watch.
That vibe, that well of cynical humor, seems perfectly appropriate for use in explaining recent laws, regulations and corporate plans regarding "security" in a variety of settings. Each action exhibits unique failures to understand the larger problems they claim to be addressing and each action exemplifies the manipulation of public opinion for the benefit of large corporations and government itself. But these critiques are not merely entertaining, like listening to someone diss a bad B-movie. Some of these plans reflect a drastic reduction in the freedom of individuals to secure their own property and use physical devices they have purchased as they see fit. Understanding why requires a bit of explanation. Think of this as Mystery Science Security Theater 2026.
The Four Security Shams
Before diving in to the specifics of each sham, the terminology and claimed benefit of each are summed up below. Most of these are hot topics within specific interest groups on the web and more detail is widely available but hopefully these summaries suffice for purposes here.
Operating System Age Verification -- Several American states have begun enacting laws that require operating systems running on mobile phones, tablets and desktop/laptop computers to collect a human user's age at the time a userid is created for that user within an operating system and make that age information accessible via API so that the device itself can block access to age-restricted web sites rather than requiring each web site to implement age-related checks. Why? To protect children, of course.
Developer Verification and New Hurdles for "Sideloading" -- Since the Android operating system for phones and tablets was released, the OS allowed developers writing applications for the devices to load them directly onto the device via a USB connection rather than uploading the app to the Google Play Store (Android's restricted download source) then downloading it from there. This served two use cases. First, developers can TEST new apps through multiple debugging iterations without the extra time of uploading to the Play Store process. Second, it allowed developers to write their own software without EVER needing Google to "approve" the application. In the last year, Google announced restrictions on this sideloading process and devised a new policy requiring any developer wanting to release apps via the Play Store submit a government identification. They also initially stated the "sideload" flow would be eliminated, seemingly requiring every developer wanting to write their own applications for their own use to have to register with Google. (This has been relaxed a bit...) Why? To protect everyone from scams, of course.
FCC Bans on Foreign-Made Home Wifi Routers -- Several American states have begun enacting laws that require operating systems running on mobile phones, tablets and desktop/laptop computers to collect a human user's age at the time a userid is created for that user within an operating system and make that age information accessible via API so that the device itself can block access to age-restricted web sites rather than requiring each web site to implement age-related checks. Why? To protect children, of course.
ICE Goons Deployed to Airports to Backfill Vanishing, Unpaid TSA Agents During Shutdown -- Much of the federal government has been shut down since January 31, 2026 due to a funding impasse over DHS funding and particularly ICE funding. The shutdown halted pay of most government workers, including TSA agents, while requiring those TSA agents to continue working. After 53 days and counting, many TSA agents are calling in sick or quitting, backing up security checkpoints nationwide. To address this staffing collapse, the Trump Administration decided to deploy ICE agents to airports. Why? No one has a clue. Not one.
Unique Forms of Security Theater
Each of these farces share a baseline of technical illiteracy on the part of any who proposed these actions. At the same time, each exhibits its own unique strain of cynicism and misdirection of public attention from more appropriate issues that need to be understood by the public.
OS Age Verification, Responsibility and Futility
Legislation calling for operating systems to collect and maintain age verification data for each user is an extension of existing technology present in most consumer PCs and phone/tablet devices that allows the OS to retain crucial security and licensing data in an encrypted store. Originally, this capability was aimed at ensuring a one to one relationship between the DEVICE and a LICENSE of a particular piece of software to deter theft or cloning of the hardware or theft or cloning of the software based on its license key. Age verification laws are attempting to use this same capability to retain age information about each userid defined within the device and make that accessible through an API to external applications automatically.
The premise is that sites hosting "adult" content" could interrogate this API and block display of content unless the response returned confirms the appropriate age. Of course, this expands upon existing laws passed in many of the same states requiring adult content to collect "proof" from the visiting user of their age. Business selling adult content or selling adult products (alcohol, marijuana, etc.) HATED this original age verification requirement because those laws put the onus on the BUSINESS to validate the visitor's age. Those businesses supported this new OS-based age verification law because it shifts the onus on age verification away from the web site owner and back to the operating system vendor or the user.
Who were the business supporting this new law? Meta and OpenAI among others. You know... Firms who have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in facilitate sharing offensive content and synthesizing offensive AI images without accountability. Who are some of the organizations objecting to this new requirement? Apple, Google, most Linux communities. Curiously, Microsoft has not exerted much push in public in one direction or the other. It has implemented identical features for products sold in the UK so its relatively low profile on this issue seems to reflect a goal of minimizing controversy rather than any principled stance for faux "safety" or actual "privacy".
The stupidity of OS age verification requirements becomes obvious after seeing that these laws make NO distinction about ANY operating system on ANY device. A smart TV technically requires compliance yet who is the "user" of a TV in a household? Do legislatures enacting these laws expect us to login to the TV in the great room? How about the operating system of a server running "human-less" processes for multiple users (inside a home or in a data center)? How about shared computers in a household? Sure, any modern OS like Windows, MacOS or Linux supports creating multiple users and Linux users in particular are used to creating multiple users to run different pieces of software with different userids as part of securing the machine. However, do most families actually create unique userids for Mom, Dad and the 2.5 spawn?
The pure theater of this type of legislation comes down to this. For the California law and the pending Colorado law, the actual language of the law requires collection of the ATTESTATION of a user's age. Attestation isn't truth and it isn't proof, it's simply a statement. Both laws also stipulate $2500 penalties per child for each "negligent" violation or $7500 per child for each "intentional" violation with exclusive authority to bring civil charges assigned to the State Attorney General.
So what circumstance would lead to a civil case being pursued? Maybe a child abduction traced to a perpetrator who groomed the child via an online system that was blocked per this technology for users under 18, thus proving the child was using a rigged userid with a false attestation? Or a credit card fraud case traced to an online purchase on an adult site by a teen who used a parent's credit card? Are parents really going to fight illicit credit card charges if doing so exposes them to a $7500 fine and legal fees defending themselves against the State Attorney General in court?
It seems pretty obvious most of the parties who might be involved with a false attestation or those benefiting from that false attestation have ZERO incentive to initiate actions that would allow wholesale access to adult content and products by children to be reduced by even ten percent, much less by one hundred percent. But these laws establish a "pencil whipping" precedent of simply physically complying with regulations that solve no problem while conditioning everyone to scoff at the actual law.
Sideloading and Device Ownership
Google's decision to tighten restrictions on "sideloading" immediately raised concerns with developers not only due to the hassle of the process but by the control (implicit and explicit) that Google would be able to exert over developers and the types of applications written for the OS. One aspect of concern stemmed from the fact that use of Android extends far beyond mobile phones and tablets. Many high-resolution touch interfaces used in cars, appliances, kiosks, etc. today uses the Android OS and rely on "non-Play Store" flows to provide updates or simply facilitate development. It isn't clear Google can keep up with reviewing this extra volume of development and enhancement releases or making Play Store a bottleneck for physical installation to devices.
Of course, the larger point of opposition expressed by developers was that it simply is none of Google's business WHO is writing software for Android OS devices and what those applications do. The poster child example of this intrusion is the ICEBlock app that was developed in 2025 to allow individuals to share information about the presence and actions of ICE agents with other users in the immediate area with the app installed. Versions of the app were released for both iOS and Android and both Apple and Google removed the app from their stores after being requested by the Trump Administration which claimed the app was a threat to law enforcement personnel. Well, if you count people showing up to witness and capture evidence of beatings and shootings by ICE agents of random people on the street exercising freedom of speech, yes. Concerns about government or large corporations "banning" applications they don't like are not hypothetical, we have already encountered them.
It's worth noting that on March 19, 2026, Google altered the implementation plan for the sideload process. Rather than eliminating it entirely or imposing a 24-hour wait EACH TIME a user or developer wants to push a standalone APK archive onto a device, Google decided to implement a first-time 24-hour waiting period, followed by another option to disable repeated delays that appears in user settings after the first 24-hour wait. Google's rationale is that this flow is effective at prevent casual users from being tricked by scammers into downloading malware with a false sense of urgency. At the same time, knowledgeable users and developers will be able to see an advanced configuration option that further allows sideloads for the next 7 days or forever after the first 24-hour wait elapses. A rare example of push-back leading to a much better result.
Manipulating Consumer Markets for National Security or Grift?
The FCC announcement of bans on any new home wifi routers is an example of government regulation that sounds appropriate at first but sounds ridiculous after the briefest of technical review. The FCC's announcement can be read here
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-420034A1.pdfThe policy announcement included this statement:
The Executive Branch determination noted that foreign-produced routers (1) introduce “a supply chain vulnerability that could disrupt the U.S. economy, critical infrastructure, and national defense” and (2) pose “a severe cybersecurity risk that could be leveraged to immediately and severely disrupt U.S. critical infrastructure and directly harm U.S. persons.”
President Trump’s 2025 National Security Strategy stated: “the United States must never be dependent on any outside power for core components—from raw materials to parts to finished products—necessary to the nation’s defense or economy. We must re-secure our own independent and reliable access to the goods we need to defend ourselves and preserve our way of life.”
The announcement links to a separate document identifying steps manufactures must take to obtain approval to sell their products in the US:
https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/Guidance-for-Conditional-Approvals-Submissions0326.pdfThe approval document includes three categories of information that must be submitted, including corporate structure (legal name, shareholders owning more than 5%, board members), factory and supply chain disclosure (bill of materials required to make the device, origin of each part, intellectual property owners of hardware or software, etc.) and a US manufacturing and onshoring plan (a time-bound plan for establishing or enlarging US manufacturing of the device, percent of components already made in US, current US headcount, etc.).
Yer humble obedient scrivner WTH actually has extensive familiarity with the administration and logistics of purchasing, activating, configuring and updating tens of millions of consumer-grade Internet access devices. From as neutral a perspective as can be mustered coming from this background, all of this SOUNDS as though its motivations are plausible. Discovery that tens of millions of home routers have backdoors that could be instantly turned on at a previously arranged time to execute denial of service attacks WOULD be devastating to national security and the economy. The nature and severity of these concern are not new in 2026. Identical concerns were raised about Chinese telecom manufacturer Huawei in the early 2010s, leading to that vendor being banned from use within American telecom networks.
The plausibility of these concerns vanishes in the context of the Trump Administration and the Trump Family grift machine. Note that approval requests must provide a "plan" for on-shoring some or more of any new device's manufacturing. It only requires a "plan" and it also allows the "Department of War" to explicitly approve devices it deems to pose no risk. These devices have a typical physical lifespan of about 7-10 years but the security standards and user features implemented within them typically lead to replacement every 4-6 years. As such, the market for these within the US is probably about 22 million yearly (133 million households spread across six years, worst case).
This new "ban" serves to add a new arbitrary choke on supply while putting a corrupt Administration and Pentagon in a position to pick and choose exceptions to the rule with virtually zero public oversight. It also provides a means for Trump Family insiders to front-run trading in any stock of any firm that might be particularly helped or hurt by any arbitrary decision made within the Trump Administration.
This is not a hypothetical concern. Numerous news outlets have documented cases of ENORMOUS trades being executed 15-30 minutes prior to major announcements from the Trump Administration or Trump's own social media that involved between $192 million and $1.5 billion dollars of futures position trades executing on that inside information. These trades were TEN TIMES the size of average trades executing during that period reflecting an extremely high confidence level in the outcome and reflecting a belief that nothing would be done. After a year of this pattern, nothing HAS been done so that sense of legal invincibility seems justified at the moment.
ICE - A Dessert Topping and a Floor Wax
I mean, really... Is there anything these ICE agents can't do? Is there any problem that doesn't get better by adding ICE in the mix? In Trump's mind, anyway? Shooting people in cars? Kidnapping children and transporting them across state lines? Sure, why not deploy a bunch of heavily armed, poorly trained, ignorant goons to overpacked, already-tense, high-security airports and have them do EXACTLY NOTHING?
The ICE deployments to airports have been obvious shams from Day One. Local and national news crews ROUTINELY recorded video combining a line of travelers snaked around a terminal waiting to pass through security while five or ten heavily armed ICE agents stood next to a bathroom or sat in a food court doing absolutely NOTHING to facilitate actual SCREENING of passengers. There's a good reason for that. ICE agents have no training on scanning procedures and equipment and, equally importantly, ICE agents have no logins to TSA systems to act as drivers license and boarding pass checkers. There is literally NOTHING an ICE agent can do inside an airport to fill in for a missing unpaid TSA agent.
So why have ICE agents been deployed to airports? The first obvious answer is Trump is literally so dementia-diminished that he doesn't understand the difference in roles between ICE and TSA and has no underling willing to tell him no to one of his many, many, MANY bad ideas. In Trump's dementia-impaired cognition, ICE has become the fill-in word he uses any time he needs to name an actor to pursue an action he has proposed with no rational thought. And again, because no underling is willing to say no, we get ICE agents walking around on paid overtime doing NOTHING while TSA agents work with no pay or stop showing up entirely.
In reality, this actually IS the core of this issue. The government is shutdown PRECISELY because Trump has insisted on a MASSIVE funding INCREASE for ICE while simultaneously rejecting the imposition of requirements of ICE officials to comply with rules of transparency that apply to all other government law enforcement. The government is shutdown PRECISELY because Trump is insisting on a giant blank check to grow an agency already involved with calamitous failure while eliminating ANY accountability for that agency.
The fact that Trump and his cloud of advisors including types like Steve Bannon have publicly mused about deploying ICE agents to voting sites in the November 2026 midterms clearly indicates Trump views ICE as his personal storm troopers. Deploying them to airports serves absolutely no practical point for citizens but serves to remind all of us that Trump doesn't care about legality or practicality, only loyalty.
In general, a few parting remarks must be conveyed with all of these cases of "child safety" and "security" theater.
First, if anyone ever believes that government and giant corporations and the billionaires that control them care ANYTHING about the safety of children and the need to protect them from predators, ponder this. We are now seven years into a saga that has divulged the existence of nearly six million documents covering a period of nearly thirty years. Those documents confirm at least a DOZEN wealthy millionaires and billionaires were involved in the sexual exploitation of at least ONE THOUSAND minors and young women across multiple countries. They indicate corruption and ethical failings on the part of multiple state and federal prosecutors over multiple Republican and Democratic administrations.
Yet, the only person convicted of any crimes related to this saga was shifted from a minimum security prison in Tallahassee, Florida to a lower security level federal prison camp in Bryan, TX after meeting with the President's former personal defense lawyer and current deputy Attorney General. Sex offenders are supposed to be ineligible for minimum security camp facilities per federal sentencing guidelines yet this offender gets relocated within two days of a private discussion with a top Administration official?
Yet, despite an explicit law enacted nearly UNANIMOUSLY by Congress requiring the disclosure of nearly six million pertinent documents, the Department of Justice has only released about 3.5 million of the documents, heavily redacted many in ways that violate the explicit law involved and is stonewalling on the rest?
Proposals that fixate on "child safety" in this environment are often red herrings, intended to silence criticism of the larger futility of the proposal given the way things actually work or to distract from concerns over hidden aims not explained by proponents.
Second, there may not be any better example of the insanity of the mind of Trump than the deployment of poorly trained, poorly vetted ICE agents into the existing security theater of the TSA screening process at airports who then literally do nothing. We are spending a premium to transport these agents to remote cities, put them up in hotels and pay their wages while TSA agents work through a shutdown with zero pay so the President can satisfy some dementia driven mental tic that requires him to feel like he's being tough on someone while every aspect of the actual problem goes unsolved. America is likely at a threat level not seen since September 11, 2001 due to America's attack on Iran. Yet TSA is shorthanded because of a shutdown triggered by Trump's demand to EXPAND the budget of ICE while accepting zero controls and accountability on its actions.
Trump is incapable of lying over any extended period because he is incapable of silencing his inner dialog. He's made it clear that "ICE" is his mental shorthand for a dedicated force beholden to him as President to support ANY goal he imagines. The current shutdown is worth continuing indefinitely until Congress is willing to exert the required control over Trump's private gestapo.
The karma on these matters cannot accumulate forever without returning to make an appearance at some point.
WTH
