It's really just to prevent impulse theft from baggage handlers, bell hops, cab drivers, etc. Even after the leak, these are essentially just as effective as they've always been.
if you walk up with a bolt cutter or a knife, you're going to be much more suspicious.
Note that the guy is hacking away at the lock and the police show up. To tell him to not sit in an active traffic lane.
When go to/from/thru the airport, if I was with Hebrew speaking Jewish co-workers, everything would get thru in a few seconds.
There was one time I (Asian) was with Indian co-workers without the company issue security letter, we were search for 3 hours at the airport. Both of our laptop were completely disassembled and Xray multiple times. We were questioned for a long time separately by multiple people.
They must have our previous trip history base on passport record, etc. But ...
Anyway, later I asked a Jewish co-worker about is there any law in Israel about anti-discrimination base on race, color of skin, language spoken, etc. He said we always / must discriminated base on those info!
A different way for thinking compare the "official PC" view of US.
Good luck keeping that secret.