Isn't it pathetically sad what we've grown to accept?
Frog in a slowly heating pot indeed.
Now that we've accepted the horrors of the TSA, they are working on getting us to accept the horrors of the NSA, slowly but surely, until we reach the point that the average person defends every smartphone being hacked and tracked.
The page is actually fairly interesting. It seems to have started with a test where the frog failed to jump out because when it's brain was removed (reminding me of how frogs go deaf when their legs are cut off).
But it does seem that it's a matter of degrees (literally). If sufficiently slow - very slow - the frog may in fact not notice. But it is certainly very slow. It also seems a normal frog will also apparently get bored or restless, and will jump out, not from heat, but because frogs just jump around.
Overall, it seems like a hard thing to test for properly without inflicting some constraint on the frog to encourage it to stay and die.
I wish the airlines would make it clearer to passengers the fees they are paying. If every passenger was reminded just after going through the TSA that $5 of their ticket actually went to the TSA for the procedure, I suspect there would be a lot more pressure for change.
My last trip to London from SFO, according to the ticket fare breakdown, fees were more than 1/2 the ticket. Probably closer to 60%. I would love to see every line item.
Just over Christmas break, we flew from the Vancouver commuter terminal to Tofino. Aside from the delays due to weather, no TSA, super friendly staff, quick mostly comfy flight.
> My last trip to London from SFO, according to the ticket fare breakdown, fees were more than 1/2 the ticket. Probably closer to 60%. I would love to see every line item.
If you were flying a UK airline they were probably counting the "fuel surcharge" as a fee, which in many cases can be the majority of the ticket. I just priced up the cheapest SFO-LHR return on Virgin next month, it came in at $1000, with $458 being "carrier imposed surcharges", counted as fees.
Except they're not fees at all, it's the 'fuel surcharge'. Actual taxes and fees were $233, or 23%. Your airline should have given you a link to the line by line breakdown of every item ($5 custom fee, $2.50 TSA fee, etc) when you bought the ticket.
On a related note, if you're flying from SFO you're not actually interacting with the TSA itself at all, San Francisco is one of the few airports that contracts out security screening to a TSA-approved company (some people think SFO has more 'friendly' security screening because of it, I haven't really noticed).
It was a company purchased ticket, I can probably dig it up...but by fees, I was lumping in surcharges, as you state.
One way my wife and I have helped deal with some of the line hassle -- GOES (for coming back into the country), Clear (had it before PreCheck came about and will reevaluate), and now PreCheck (GOES helped with this).
I've heard some mention that as more and more people become PreCheck eligible, that will become the norm rather than the exception. We shall see.
With regard to SFO not being TSA, I'm aware of this and generally have found them much more efficient than the TSA. Probably my best TSA experiences have been in Seattle (recently) and Kona, friendly and generally laughing. Worst opt out experience was actually SFO w/ a manager who took exception to anyone opting out and waited 10+ min before calling someone over -- "The delay is to encourage you to go through the machines".
Make it a law or greatly encourage airlines to itemize the TSA inspection fee. Also list the prescreening fee for when they profile all your data before you even get to the airport.
What's crazy is people would be upset about the fee and not the procedure itself.
Its actually a good idea. If you take the charge off the ticket price, and put a cash register with the agent checking your id... i'd imagine people would react differently.
A tax return is used to provide your income information to the government. If you want information about how government monies are being spent, you can look it up. This information is freely available online. The tax return is not the proper place for this information, as not all government monies arise from income taxes.
The article misses the most important point! By reinforcing the cockpit doors and locking them from the inside we made it so that a plane can no longer be hijacked.
Even if a bomb is brought on board we would never give control of a plan to hijackers since we now know it may be used as a giant missile, not just an escape vehicle.
Since 9/11 there have been no highjacking attempts, true, but there have been multiple bombing attempts on aircraft by would be suicide bombers, and these bombers were able to evade the limited screening employed at the time. As bomb technology grows more sophisticated and easy to hide, screening has become more rigorous. That's what the TSA is focused on these days.
I think it's pretty weak, both to politicians and to common sense, to use the fact that these bombers failed as an argument to reduce security. They were able to bring bombs on planes. Given enough opportunity, eventually an attempt would have succeeded.
It depends, I think. Human willpower and resources are a finite resource.
If a terrorist could bring down a plane by clicking a button on a website, we would see hundreds of planes downed every day.
If it takes a day of preparation, we'd see perhaps a dozen per day.
If it takes a week, we would see another order of magnitude fewer.
If it takes a year of training and preparation by one or more high IQ individuals with several hundred thousand dollars, we'd see almost none. This is why we haven't seen any more 9/11 style attacks even though they were so amazingly effective as a terrorist tool: it's become sufficiently difficult to pull them off after counterterrorism efforts were amped up.
In other words: criminals can still break into my car if they really tried, but I still lock my car doors.
> If it takes a year of training and preparation by one or more high IQ individuals with several hundred thousand dollars, we'd see almost none. This is why we haven't seen any more 9/11 style attacks even though they were so amazingly effective as a terrorist tool: it's become sufficiently difficult to pull them off after counterterrorism efforts were amped up.
It was sufficiently difficult even before security theater and airline liability reduction measures were ramped up, which is why we didn't see 9/11 style attacks before 9/11.
The point is that planes are only a high value target when they can be used as a missile. If the cockpit is locked from the inside then this possibility goes away. Even with a bomb on board no one will give control to someone who may use the plane as a missile.
There is no more incentive for someone looking to cause mayhem to blow up a plane than there is to blow up a shopping mall or any other building with more than ~180 people inside (the approximate number of seats in a 747).
I believe it's a lot easier to down a plane than to kill 180 people in a shopping mall. The latter would require much more explosive given the wide open spaces. You can bring down a plane much more easily.
Mainly, though, people feel more vulnerable in a plane, so an aircraft bombing is higher impact.
Maybe not malls, what about music events, sold out 300 cap venues like every week in every decently sized city. Hotels with 1000 rooms or office buildings like with the Oklahoma City bombing.
Look at it from the other side. Even with the lax security before, about 999,999,999,999 per billion people were deterred. That is a stupendously high success rate. We cannot make spacecraft with that high a quality level.
> If it takes a day of preparation, we'd see perhaps a dozen per day.
Nope. People are deterred by socialization and innate biology. I could take a gasoline bomb to a nearby school or church and kill hundreds of people within the week, for little expense and a good chance of getting off scot free. So could most people. It is not difficulty or risk that prevent mass killings.
A: the number of people radicalized into anti-American terrorists
B: the opportunity that As have to cause damage
I suspect A went up in the late nineties and continues to be high-ish today. B went up with OBL and the Saudis funding the game, but has gone down post-9/11 for a variety of reasons, including decreased Saudi bankrolls, increased airport and aircraft security, tighter restrictions on student visas, and a weakened Al Qaeda.
I think the change was that people gradually forgot Pearl Harbor or were never educated about it in the first place. Bin Laden had many virtues as a tactician but was poor at strategy and historical perspective. Now that the lesson has been relearned, we are mostly safe from large-scale sneak attacks for another 50 years.
I have to play devil's advocate here: I finally have enough bandwidth for my server, so now that it's working I should reduce it. This makes sense? You've said that now it's working we should start to take it away?
I for one kind of like the fact they have all failed. I would like to keep this track record up since I spend a lot of time on planes. Just my 2c.
To devil's advocate your devil's advocate with a similar analogy: Ok so I've deployed an app to heroku. I'm using 2 dynos, but suddenly my app becomes fairly popular and a bunch of people start getting timeouts. Oh no, better up the dynos to 20. Now no more timeouts but pretty expensive. Seems like now is the time to start benchmarking and figuring out what the right balance is.
I think we're starting to see some of that sort of benchmarking taking place with the TSA, so that's good, but the incentives don't seem like they're lined up properly for the bureaucracy to shrink significantly, regardless of the true level of risk.
This is essentially the problem with all government agencies. They're never motivated by efficiency, but rather by justifying as large a budget as possible.
If your hypothetical heroku scenario were a government project, they'd be proposing a "conservative" increase to 23 dynos for next year.
This is a reasonable argument, but we should pay attention to both the good and bad effects when tallying the value produced by the TSA. After adding up all of the terrorist attacks prevented by enhanced screening (zero?), we should be sure to subtract the wasted hours of people waiting at airports and the deaths caused by increased use of cars for moderate to long distance travel.[0] In the unlikely event that our analysis finds that the TSA saves lives, we should then compare it to other methods of saving lives and be sure to implement only the most cost-effective ones, potentially shutting down programs that are not as cost-effective.
This might be true... but if all they are trying to do is bomb the plane, what makes a plane bomb that much worse than, say, a bus bomb? You can ride greyhound without going through rigorous screening, and yet no one has planted a bomb on a bus.
The excuse for the airplane security has been that they can use the plane as a missile. If this is no longer the case, than planes lose their special status as something that needs to be extra protected. If we feel safe getting on a bus without going through a metal detector, a plane should be no different.
Yes, people can do us harm at any time. They could shoot us, bomb us, stab us, burn us with acid, etc. We accept those risks every day, and almost all of us get through life without those things happening to us. That is because the number of people who want to do bad things to us isn't nearly as great as some would have us believe. We don't need more screening to protect us from very unlikely threats.
Well, they can still shower shrapnel over a large area and crash into the ground, right? I'm not really sure what kind of bomb would actually explode a plane, or what kind of damage it could do on the ground as an undirected crash landing/explosion.
Ok, I was clearly wrong about no one bombing a bus. However, my main point is still true; there are countless places where there are lots of people in confined spaces that are vulnerable to a bomb. We are always vulnerable to harm from someone who wants to hurt us, and there is very little we can do to make us invulnerable to random violence. Thankfully, the risk of dying from random violence is extremely low, near the bottom of the list of things that can kill us. We waste a lot of resources and time trying to prevent someone from harming us on an airplane when it is no more or less vulnerable than anywhere else.
Fair enough. But factual issues aside, stating that nobody attacks ground-based transit systems weakens that point rather than strengthening it.
If you want to argue that near-complete security is infeasible, you're probably better served by acknowledging that attacks on something as pervasive and porous as a bus system are a real possibility. So that's why I thought it was necessary to challenge you on that point.
It's worth noting that neither I nor anyone I know has heard of this bus bombing/mentioned it in conversation, and it's not on TV/frontpage of NYT, etc. But if we switch $Bus for $Plane, this becomes a major media event and everyone will know about it. What is it about aircraft that get the man and his propaganda machine so excited?
Five years ago I took a Greyhound from Portland to Eugene. They looked through my bag when boarding. I also reeked of booze and the security guy suggested I get some mints and try again. But they were checking everyone.
Huh? Much more rigorous? Other than using these stupid full body scanners, nothing much has changed since 9/11. Before 9/11 I walked through a metal detector, and occasionally got pulled aside for a frisking and a hand held metal detector waved over me... Today I bypass the full body scanner and get a frisking. The frisking is a bit more hands on, but thats about it. They use a sniffing machine to see if there is bomb residue on my clothes. But I don't see anything more sophisticated than that.
I was listening to a radio show this past week (All Things Considered, I think) that recounted the history of airplane screenings. It was fascinating. Before screenings, hijackings were much more common and the airlines liked to negotiate themselves to keep things quiet (and, to their thinking, reduce passengers' fear). Hijackings were much more common, but generally dealt with quickly and quietly.
It wasn't until a hijacked plane threatened to hit a Tennessee nuclear power plant that their thinking changed. No longer was it just the plane that was a hostage, but potentially a much bigger area, allowing for much bigger demands ($2Mil, to be exact). [1]
The next year afterwards, though? Flying was up 15%. Turns out people liked not getting hijacked, and were willing to trade a (minimal) security check for that. Of course, the TSA is a much bigger beast today.
They were playing with fire not securing the cockpit since the beginning. Anyone who had slightest idea of how physics worked would automatically see them as a cheap form of guided missiles. Even back in the days of old-fashioned hijackings for political statements, a secured cabin could have possibly done some good.
In the old days, a simple note or declarative statement to the effect that the terrorist had a bomb and would set it off would have been enough to get the pilots to open a locked and secured door.
We required the certitude that opening the door was worse than leaving the door locked and risking the chance that the terrorist may be telling the truth.
That, and there's one more benefit. Before 9/11 we were taught to deal with hijackers by letting them get what they want, because up until that point they usually freed their passengers at that point. Now, passengers have nothing to lose by fighting back, so the response is "do anything you have to to end the threat".
Russian train stations employ metal detectors and barricades. Just as the TSA has been ridiculed in the United States, these were similarly derided in Russia.
And yet this combination was effective in limiting the number of casualties in the recent Volgograd train station bombing. I suspect the amount of Russian editorializing over these security procedures will soon decrease.
Fortunately, while civilian memory is short, government institutional memory is long.
> And yet this combination was effective in limiting the number of casualties in the recent Volgograd train station bombing
It just shifted the site of the attack to a new bottleneck: where everyone is in line to go through the metal detector (which many people also have pointed out is a ripe target for an attack in the post-TSA US).
That's the idea. There were more people waiting for trains inside the station than waiting in line at the metal detector. Russian officials claim that the barricades reduced casualties.
Well, I don't know the layout of the stations, nor do I have any real knowledge of explosives, so I can't really comment on if they actually helped (more than any normal wall or objects in a room), but if you look at the numbers, 14 and 17 fatalities (with about three times that injured) is near the high end of suicide bombings where the bomb is carried on a person.
Suicide bombings in the middle east over the last 10 years, in comparison, have about a 1:3 ratio of bomber to victims. That's a mean, but the outliers tend to barely break 20. So it's difficult to believe that number was reduced by a large amount.
I agree that metal detectors aren't invasive in a way that many other screening methods are. I was just pointing out that you can't put a metal detector in the way of reaching every grouping of people. There will always be targets.
The American public, and detractors of the TSA in particular, have not forgotten 9/11.
Not all "security measures" are created equal. Reinforced cockpit doors and curb-stomping want-to-be hijackers are both effective security measures, as were metal detectors.
Those are not the security measures that critics of the TSA are criticizing.
I don't want to sound like a nutcase conspiracy theorist but to be quite honestly if the government had always wanted an excuse to violate basic human rights, 9/11 was probably the best thing that happened for them.
After 9/11, they were able to convince us that we NEED to be felt up by strangers at the airport and that we NEED to invade a country and that ITS OKAY to just kill thousands and thousands of civilians "by accident" all in the name of National Security and when some civilians try and kick out these strangers that invaded their country and killed their family, they're the nut jobs, they're the bad people, they're the real terrorists.
I honestly think the US is a bigger terrorist that Osama ever was. Now, after 9/11 people we're living our normal lives normally; while in Afganistan, families everyday are terrorized, scared, afraid that this might be their last day. Today might be the day their father doesn't come back. Today might be the last day they see each other.
And before security checks, they were even more common. Criminals treated them almost like bank robberies for a while in the 60's and 70's. Hijack a plane, trade the passenger for a ransom, fly off to some third-world country and live on the ransom.
But if you add security checks, now you don't believe they possess a weapon. Like if someone on a plane today claimed they had a gun, they would be arrested, but not believed.
Maybe you would, but now that there's precedent for flying those planes into buildings instead of just demanding money I hope you can at least understand why lots of people would support those measures.
I only understand people have irrational fears. Even with flying planes into buildings, flying is safer than driving. Yet people are afraid their plan will fly into a building... but have no problems jumping into a car and zipping off. There is evidence that TSA causes more deaths, as more people took to driving after 9/11.
Are flights between European countries, say Denmark and Finland, as easy as the OP's experience? Or has post-911 NSA influenced the majority of modern civilization into encumbrance?
It's pretty much the same. The security checks are a little bit more lax than TSA but no noticeable difference really. The airports in Finland and Denmark are generally pretty fast at getting people through security, maybe because of pretty low volume.
The most time consuming screening, my experience, is in the UK. Flight screening on the Continent is perhaps a touch quicker than in the States, but same ballpark.
It's sad that this headline (presumably) is not tautological.
First, the TSA itself has admitted that there is no evidence of terrorist plots against aviation in the US[0].
Second, the circumstances under which 9/11 happened would be impossible to repeat. Plane cockpits are all but impenetrable[1] - the only reason that some of the 9/11 hijackers were successful was that the standard protocol for dealing with hijackers assumed that hijackers wanted to take the plane hostage for ransom, not use the plane as a weapon. This protocol was fixed almost immediately. (Note that United Airlines Flight 93 did not face the same fate as the other three planes, because the passengers knew what the hijackers were planning.)
Since it's impossible to take control of the cockpit as a hijacker these days, even if someone managed to bring a gun on board a flight, the most damage they could do is kill all the passengers (leaving the pilots unharmed). That is truly a horrible scenario, but that makes flying no more risky than going to the movies or going to school (eg. Newtown, Arapahoe, Boulder).
Of course, one "logical" conclusion is therefore to establish TSA-style security at every school, cinema, mall, etc... in which case we have turned the country into a police state, and we should expect the same crime rates as within federal prisons: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=194
[1] I believe I read another comment on Hacker News a while back in which the pilot had a heart attack after the cockpit had been locked from the inside, but before leaving the gate, and it still took the fire department almost an hour to cut through the door.
> "[1] I believe I read another comment on here a while back in which the pilot had a heart attack after the cockpit had been locked from the inside, but before leaving the gate, and it still took the fire department almost an hour to cut through the door."
I can't find a report of this ever happening, though I did find an article from December 2001 which pointed out potential danger to pilots behind locked doors. It also notes that the danger of an incident mid-flight can be reduced by having a flight attendant step into the cockpit whenever one of the pilots steps out.
(Edit: Lest my nitpicky comment be misunderstood, it also talks a little about how strong the reinforcements are; I think your point about cockpit doors being extremely solid can be reasonably taken as fact.)
With seatbelts and their introduction there were anecdotes about people crashing their cars into ponds, lakes etc. where their lives were saved because they were not wearing their seatbelts. I think it is human nature to want to repeat the one incident where the safety measures could have led to disaster.
Since you are so adept at research, can you find this one for me?
Recently a senior New Labour politician who was responsible for bringing in TSA style checks in the UK wise-cracked about how those that complained should be offered two lines at the airport, one with the body scanners, sniffer dogs, robocops etc. and another - to a different flight - where you could just walk straight on. He wondered which flight would be chosen to go on by those complaining types.
It bugs me now that I can't find the quote or remember whether it was Gordon Brown or some other politician.
Those little commuter planes are decidedly less safe in bad weather, and the pilots operating them tend to be younger/less experienced. It's not a perfect trade-off.
Indeed they are but every plane needs to avoid bad weather as much as possible. Of course the bigger the plane the higher its limits.
Now on pilots, this really depends which pilots you are talking about. North American pilots, and here I am pointing at Canadian pilots more because I am in Canada and I am in the process of getting my PPL (for pleasure),however, I am sure this also applies to US pilots, very well trained. To get a job at a big airline you need experience, and where do you get the best experience, far up north where harsh weather, huge winds and tiny landing strips are located. I don't think that 3 years college will do, unless you are lucky.
I also talk to a lot of commercial pilots as my girlfriend is a flight attendant, so during the travels we go out and chat about everything.
As far as safety, over exaggerated, really. No one cares, well, people do but they shouldn't, because if someone wants to hijack I am sure they will find a way to do it. This is the big boys game on a government level. Tax payers are paying for scanners etc, whoever wins the bid makes them and they are sponsoring the next election. (I will not get into this here but you get the point). Scanners are useless.
This is an older video from 2010, scanners give better pictures nowdays but are still as useless as before. I got scanned at Schiphol 3 months ago, the scanner was not much different from the one shown this video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idICUSiGcqo
It is great to fly small planes, no security, quick, and more fun to fly than a big airliner.
I was only responding to the following, which says nothing about smaller planes:
"Recently a senior New Labour politician who was responsible for bringing in TSA style checks in the UK wise-cracked about how those that complained should be offered two lines at the airport, one with the body scanners, sniffer dogs, robocops etc. and another - to a different flight - where you could just walk straight on. He wondered which flight would be chosen to go on by those complaining types."
Ah, sorry. I didn't read the GP post carefully. I saw "non TSA" and was thinking about the subject of the original article (where TSA security rules don't apply to very small commuter/charter aircraft).
I would pay extra for the walk-straight-on flight. Not a lot extra, mind you, but it'd be worth at least $25 to me to reduce that source of stress and uncertainty. If there were a no-checks airline I would fly that one almost exclusively.
Recently in Africa a suicidal pilot crashed a regional jet[1], killing all aboard, after sending the co-pilot back to check something in the cabin. Due to the locks nobody could re-enter the flight deck (might not have mattered, but who knows). "[The] cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder revealed, that the captain was alone on the flight deck, banging on the flight deck door could be heard on the cockpit voice recorder"
Passenger aircraft are supposed to NEVER operate with only one person on the flight deck, but rules are not always followed.
We don't know how many hijackings have been prevented by the locking doors. Are there any documented cases? We do know of a few cases where they have caused deaths, or at least prevented any chance to try to avert a disaster.
I don't know much about flying airplanes, but does a pilot really need to lock the copilot out of the cockpit for an extended period of time to crash the plane? It seems to me that it's probably not worth spending resources on securing airlines against terrorist pilots (other than doing research on the pilots, obviously).
But according to Cialidini's "Influence", there is a ten times higher chance of dying in a plane crash if you fly in the months immediately after a highly publicized suicide, so securing the plane against a suicidal pilot (as opposed to anyone wanting to carry out a terrorist attack) might very well be more worthwhile than securing it against terrorists.
(Cialdini cites research, which I'm too lazy to look up right now, that claims something as high as 40-50 excess deaths from car and plane crashes in the US per highly publicized suicide)
My claim wasn't due to the danger of a suicidal pilot, but rather the futility of securing a plane against a suicidal pilot. It seems like the problem is roughly equivalent to creating a plane that can operate entirely without a pilot.
I know. But it need not be that hard - being suicidal does not automatically mean someone is prepared to e.g. fight their co-pilot to kill themselves. In fact, most people who are suicidal are not strongly intent on going through with it - it often takes just a little nudge one way or the other to change the outcome.
A co-pilot at the helm, or an unlocked door through which someone may come in and question the pilots actions could very well make all the difference.
The interesting bit (from the book IIRC) is that the copiers will often wait some time so it seems like they are not copying. This is why the risk to subsequent air travel increases after some delay from the original incident. People are partially unpredictable, so it's possible to have an immediate copy as well.
Could that happen? It's not that hard to know that the doors can be locked, and if so, you pretty much give up on trying to get in to the cockpit to take over the plane.
You forget about the subset of crazed American freedom-lovers that may be on any given plane. Hijackers would have to somehow get past people willing to die to stop them. It's just not a viable method anymore.
Anyone who has the guts to take down an armed intruder to save anonymous people from becoming victims of a terrorist plot has my undying appreciation. But, you have to be crazed to do that. There is such a thing as good-crazy. We call it courage. I guess I wasn't clear on that. My bad.
It would not just be about saving anonymous people. It would be about the potential of saving your own life (not fighting back is a sure death, fighting back is only a possible, perhaps likely, death). It is also about saving the lives of family members or friends who might also be on the plane.
Not all fighting back scenarios involve crashing the plane into a field. In fact, now that cockpit doors are reinforced, most fighting back scenarios will end in the plane safely landing. There have already been several cases of passengers successfully fighting back before much damage was done.
tl;dr: I think fighting back is a rational response.
Fighting back if nobody else are willing to take the first step is a rational response. Doing what everyone else is doing is a safer first response - in the hope that someone is crazy enough or desperate enough to be the first person to throw themselves at the guy with a weapon.
1) I know everybody else is thinking that theory. Nobody will move.
2) Bystander effect. Nobody will move.
In short, the one to act first will be me, 'cos y'all a bunch of cowards. (Hopefully not too coward to jump in once someone's made the first move though)
But what you really need to think about is- what if I'm not on that plane? What if every person on that plane is a coward? Will you wait in terror and lose your chance? Are you willing to take that risk?
The reality is that most people are willing to take that risk, intentionally, or more likely not (bystander effect, as you say).
Unless there's literally seconds until the hijacker will be untouchable, that's likely the most rational choice: play chicken with the other passengers, to see who gets desperate enough to act first.
Now, the moment someone acts, all bets are off - some non-negligible subset may quite likely follow the first person, depending on that persons social standing (people are more likely to jaywalk behind a jaywalker in a suit than one in less formal clothes, for example, if neither of them does anything else to get people to follow - our propensity to deviate from the group behaviour depends on how authoritative the person "leading the charge" appears)
Similarly, if at any point it appears that the hijacker will suddenly become impossible to take out, it becomes more rational to go first, out of the risk that nobody will act.
But the bystander effect is there for a reason: It is generally quite safe to do what everyone else is doing. Except when it isn't.
In terms of hijackings, as it turns out, it is quite safe: Most hijackings, even after 9/11, ends with no dead victims. 9/11 represented a small set of extreme aberrations from hijackings both before and after.
With that in mind, throwing yourself on an armed hijacker only becomes rational once it appears they'll otherwise gain control of the cockpit, at the earliest.
Bystander effect is less about safety and much more about leader/follower. The bystander effect is basically what happens when you get a lot of followers together near an "event". It can be prevented by the presence of a leader.
Anyway, I don't intend to wait and find out what the hijacker intends, and as the best window for action is going to be right after he/she walks by your seat, your window for action is small. When they are far away, you have to close the distance, which costs you surprise. So waiting to see if they are going to try to breach the cockpit is probably not the best plan.
Well, I guess if they take a hostage at the back of the plane and yell "take me to Prague!", it's probably not worth it, I guess there would need to be some attempt to read their intentions.
I would like to believe I would be the one trying to stop them. But, frankly, I've never had a loaded weapon pointed at my face. No one knows how they're going to respond with death knowing at their door. It's something you have to experience.
Nitpicking, but I wouldn't consider the people they are saving to be anonymous, but strangers. Maybe in the defender's eyes they are just fellow Americans.
I think both of those are a great example of the fact that X-Ray + metal detectors provide sufficient protection in conjunction with alert passengers. Is the guy next to you trying to light his shoe or trying to set his pants on fire? Take him down.
More importantly, security is provided by catching would be terrorists before they even get anywhere near the airport. Because otherwise they can do a lot more damage at a crowded security checkpoint than they could with whatever explosives they managed to mix in their underwear. This is a job for intelligence agencies, not for the TSA.
Bomb sniffing dogs are more effective at a fraction of the cost.
But really, if someone wants to destroy a plane, they're going to be able to destroy a plane. The question is not "should we try to stop people from blowing things up?" The question is "what are reasonable and effective means to stop people from blowing things up?"
> But really, if someone wants to destroy a plane, they're going to be able to destroy a plane.
Unless we have measures to prevent them from getting on the plane in the first place, and since no bombs have been going off on a plane for quite a while, isn't that a sign that the security measures are working?
You can't point to this as a success of the security measures. First, it implies that there are a significant number of bombers who are either captured or deterred. If the first was true, both the Bush admin and the Obama admin would be touting it as a success. If these "numerous" bombers are being deterred, you can't point to the security measures as the deterrent. It might be the NSA, CIA, or other organizations (US and other) that would be disrupting their plans. Otherwise it's back to the magic rock that keeps tigers away.
> You can't point to this as a success of the security measures. First, it implies that there are a significant number of bombers who are either captured or deterred. If the first was true, both the Bush admin and the Obama admin would be touting it as a success. If these "numerous" bombers are being deterred, you can't point to the security measures as the deterrent.
Why not? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you are making a claim without backing it up.
Sorry to break it to you, but bomb sniffing dogs are not really all that great at sniffing all means and methods for creating and delivering "bombs". And dogs don't make corporate and political parasites billions of dollars. How do you expect the exploiting class to live without tapping into citizen tax supported corporate welfare profits?
To me this is the prime reason that the TSA is useless. There are a half dozen ways to get explosives and other stuff THROUGH TSA checkpoints, not to mention the other dozen exit points into the airport. Anyone determined enough, will get through. About the only person they have a chance in stopping is a random lay person who just decided this morning. And they don't even seem to be able to stop that person. But looking at all the other risks in life, I'll take my chances.
The Israelis liked to claim that both probably would have been spotted at the multiple checkpoints they put into Ben Gurion Airport. Being as both were so anxious they more or less sweated through the bombs they were carrying.
Thus cockpits doors are not impenetrable if you could bring the necessary tools with you. If we did remove the security screening an attacker could come with 30 kg of professional cutting gear in his bag, and not even safes and concrete walls can withstand that for long.
Do you not think someone would spot them sawing the door open? Also keep in mind that pilots are FLYING THE AIRPLANE. They can just start to do maneuvers that would make it impossible for attackers to even stay at the cockpit door, let alone take it apart.
"About twenty minutes after takeoff, as the flight crew carried on a casual conversation, Calloway entered the flight deck and commenced his attack. Every member of the crew took multiple hammer blows which fractured [the flight crew's] skulls. A lengthy struggle ensued with the flight engineer and captain as Tucker, also an ex-Navy pilot, performed extreme aerial maneuvers with the aircraft, at times flying upside down, with the intent to keep the hijacker off-balance."
Doesn't matter. By the time they cut through the door, the pilot would already have performed an emergency landing at a nearby airport. You're going to have a hard time cutting through the cockpit door when a SWAT officer is pressing your head against the floor.
Ever used professional cutting gear? There is no carry on bag I've ever seen that would fit the smallest petrol powered gear I've used. The blade alone is 300mm http://www.hirepool.co.nz/equipment-hire/s1/1/s3/61/FetchGro...
However electric gear is smaller. If you can find a power point and a decent extension lead, run it to the pilot's door, avoid someone unplugging it, don't blow a fuse, don't get it too smokey to breath (bring respirator or get a passenger to assist by pouring water on the door - avoid the water/electrics issue as that can be dangerous. 1 minute of cutting can make so much dust/smoke you can't see your hand in front of your face). You'll be through that door in under an hour!
I think that the most serious risk in this scenario is that pilots would have a great chance to die of laughter when they'd figure out what this noise is.
Let's all remember why the TSA was created; solely so the Bush administration could buffer the economic impact of their shit economic policy and the effects of the terrorist attacks that group of feeble minded simpletons played right into. It's a make-work program, plain and simple.
Let's also remember what genius methods and techniques the "terrorists" used to hijack some planes....they "smuggled" some box cutters on the plane. .... The END ... FIN
I bet you if any one of you put a plastic craft blade, you know, the marker sized ones with the break away blades, in your carry on bag you would not be stopped or discovered; especially if you placed it with the blade on edge to the image.
Here's a tip though, never, NEVER ever will another plane be hijacked by anyone else using those means. Not only did the "authorities" finally secure the cockpits like it had been pleaded for years prior to 9/11, but I can guarantee you that anyone even attempting would be ripped apart by the limbs. I, for one, don't care if you were able to smuggle a middle-earth battle axe on the plane; you will be dead within seconds of pulling some shit.
That being said, I'm not quite certain if it has gotten any better, but just relatively recently it was still rather easy to access the runways and bays. Just saying, the phantoms we are fighting might get "genius" and pull of a "highly sophisticated plot" that my seven year old could plane and execute with just a tablet computer at their disposal.
> Let's all remember why the TSA was created; solely so the Bush administration could buffer the economic impact of their shit economic policy and the effects of the terrorist attacks that group of feeble minded simpletons played right into. It's a make-work program, plain and simple.
The transfer of existing security responsibilities from airlines to the federal government wasn't a make-work program, it was a measure to eliminate potential airline liability for future security failures.
It was about the economy, because reducing the airlines liability risk going forward was one of many steps taken to help the airline industry, but it wasn't primarily a "make-work" program.
It was also at least partly intended to streamline coordination of all the parties involved. You had various federal organizations under Treasury, DOJ, DOD, FBI, DOT, and others that were all silos. Sounds good on paper, merge them into one overall "DHS" and poof everything runs like a Swiss watch. Of course that never happens in reality. It was just an even bigger bureaucracy that still has a bunch of internal silo organizations.
Forming DHS was, at least notionally, about coordination. Moving airline security from private carriers to the federal government was about liability. Since it was a new internal security operation, it made sense to included it in the new internal security department. But since it wasn't a federal agency before, it wasn't really part of the coordination of existing federal agencies that motivated the creation of a new internal security department.
Meanwhile, one of my pet peeves is that while they stop small sharp items, I can, and do, carry my 1.2 meter umbrella with a solid wood handle and thick steel ribs. It would take about 10 minutes to reshape it into a sturdy pike. To be clear, I don't think they should stop them, but I do think that if you aim to stop sharp items with the excuse that they might be used as weapons, stopping something that can actually easily be turned into a fairly dangerous weapons ought to be top of the list.
First time I was travelling with it, I went to check it in, and they looked at me as if I was stupid. Clearly no terrorist has tried to use a huge umbrella as a pike yet, so it's not yet a risk. If I was a terrorist, testing a suitable set of objects with enough sharpened metal pieces for whether or not they'd ask me to check them in would be trivial - any terrorists being stopped by their lack of ability to bring something sharp on are so dumb they'd be stopped by someone drawing a stop sign in crayons and insisting they're not allowed to pass.
So the terrorists are either really stupid, there aren't that many of them, or they, like you, are smart enough to realise that they'd better have some pretty horrible weapons to be able to survive a hijack attempt in a post-9/11 world.
In other words, it's not even about stopping sharp items, but about giving the appearance of stopping a suitable set of objects that will keep people concerned about terror threats.
What about liquids? Pretty much every trip I end up forgetting some bottle or other of liquids, generally a half litre bottler of some drink, often because the mother of my child keeps putting bottles in his bag that I don't notice until after security. Not once have they been noticed at the security checks.
So it's a show, as those who do want to get liquids past can just put them in their carry on and send it through with good odds of being able to walk straight on. If they cared, they'd do better. But they don't care, as this is not about stopping a viable plot, but about keeping up appearances.
Meanwhile my 4 year old was picked out for secondary screening when we flew to visit my mother for christmas, without setting off the metal detectors, and had to pass his shoes through and go through the new scanners, and get patted down; I was furious, but didn't want to upset or scare him or risk messing up his christmas by making a fuss about it; and when we'd gone through, I found a full drinks bottle in his bag that they'd missed.
A wooden stick with sharpened steel ribs sufficiently strong to penetrate a body sticking out in front of it does not strike you as more likely to be useful than a pair of scissors or something along those lines in keeping other passengers in check?
My point is not that it'd be a great weapon - it's not. But compared to the stuff they are confiscating, it's miles ahead in terms of potential damage.
It demonstrates either a total lack of critical thinking when deciding what to allow, or how little this has to do with security, or both.
Personally I'm quite pleased they don't ban my umbrella, but I'd prefer it if they removed most stuff from the list of banned items.
Let's all remember why the TSA was created; solely so the Bush administration could buffer the economic impact of their shit economic policy and the effects of the terrorist attacks that group of feeble minded simpletons played right into. It's a make-work program, plain and simple.
Initially, the Bush administration and the GOP resisted the creation of a Federal airport security service. They were not at all excited about a big new (particularly unionized) government workforce. But the Democrats fought for it and won that political argument. Here's a contemporaneous news account that covers the basics: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=87570
The GOP had majorities in both the House and Senate, and the linked article mentions begins by mentioning the unanimous passage of the bill in the Senate. The law in question was the Aviation Security Act. When it passed in the house, 136 Democrats voted against it (partly due to concerns about unionization eligibility), but only 2 Republicans and 1 independent did. So I don't think it's fair to say 'the GOP resisted the creation' of the TSA. As for the administration, transportation secretary Mineta wanted to federalize airport security from the outset.
The GOP had majorities in both the House and Senate...
No, they didn't. By then, Senator Jim Jeffords had become an independent, caucusing with the Democrats and giving them a one-vote majority control of the chamber. Also, FWIW, Norm Mineta was the token Democrat in the Bush cabinet.
And of course everyone voted for the bill once it was clear it would pass. Who wanted to be against enhanced airline security?
I'm not saying the GOP put up the fight of the century on the TSA, far from it. But it's a mischaracterization of history to say that Bush demanded a dramatic expansion of the Federal workforce as some kind of economic smokescreen. If that were so, you'd expect to find accounts of Democrats at least raising token opposition to this brilliant political stratagem.
The idea that the Bush administration created the TSA just to create jobs is ridiculous. There are much cheaper ways to create jobs (e.g. fixing highways), and much as people like to deride George Bush's intelligence, there is no way his administration would have created the TSA for such a stupid reason.
That comparison is valid only if you have data demonstrating that the TSA has successfully deterred/foiled aviation terror plots.
If you have that data (which I'd love to see), there are still powerful arguments that TSA funding would have been better spent in many other ways (better training budgets for security/investigative personnel, more "soft" layers at airports, fewer kneejerk infrastructure upgrades).
Might be because the airplane is already over US territory. Thus, if you smuggle a bomb on board and the plane explodes, it might crash into a US city. Flights going to the States need to travel for quite a few hours before they reach US territory.
It's not hugely complex to create interlocks such that the cabin occupancy is monitored and the locks are opened when the cabin has fewer than two occupants. I can't immediately think of a completely failsafe version, but I suspect with a bit of time this could be readily achieved.
Yet another in a long line of "data wonky" articles that misuse statistical data to support a position that is emotionally attractive.
> Would this increase hijacking? Probably. But there's no reason to believe it would increase casualties from terrorist attacks overall. That's because increasing airport security just leads terrorists to direct their assaults elsewhere.
There are two huge problems with this statement.
First, you cannot draw such a causal conclusion from statistical data alone.
Second, it's pulling a subtle slight of hand--the goal of airport security is NOT to reduce terrorist casualties overall. It is to reduce violent attacks of any kind on airplanes, specifically.
At the base of this argument is an implication that terrorist attacks are zero-sum: reduce them in one place, get an equivalent more in another. But that's not how security works.
Look at it in digital terms--it would be like saying that we don't need to bother with strong passwords, because all those did was drive up the number of phishing attacks. Maybe we could just get of passwords, since the total number of intrusions would not go up. And besides, just think of all that wasted effort to create, hash, store, remember, and manage passwords.
Does that sound stupid? I hope so, because it is. But that's exactly the type of argument that this article is making.
This is a false equivalency. There are numerous, perfectly good reasons why you should store hashed passwords in a database.
Frisking Grandma is another story. Air marshals, metal detectors, and reinforced cockpit doors should be sufficient to halt the vast majority of terrorist attacks. As with any system, a determined adversary will absolutely get in. That is what makes the TSA theater.
> This is a false equivalency. There are numerous, perfectly good reasons why you should store hashed passwords in a database.
That is precisely his point. The TSA is in place not only to stop terrorist attacks (this is the false equivalency the article's author relied on), but ALSO to defend against a myriad of security risks, one of which happens to be "Terrorism".
I think that I must have misused false equivalency. My driving point is that implementing a hashing mechanism is in no way the same as TSA security theater, in theory or in practice. For instance, if 5 oz of liquid is dangerous on an airplane, why is it not dangerous in the trash can next to the security line?
And security only stops the 5oz+ liquids that people willingly disclose, or in the rare case they catch it in your bags. I regularly find I've forgotten to take out 0.5l (17oz) bottles from the bags I've passed through the x-ray machine. Nobody has ever caught it.
They did, however, catch the circuitry of the blinking lights in my 4 year olds old shoes, which caused nervous looks for a few moments until one of the screeners who knew what they are looked over at the screens.
IF an attacker has the ability to attack unprotected plains and the ability to attack unprotected trains,
AND the attacker is determined to attack,
AND the attacker and defender basically care the same about successful plane attacks vs train attacks,
THEN protecting the planes alone is useless, as it just shifts attacks to trains.
For example: I think we can agree that it is pointless to put a lock on your back door, if your front door is wide open.
In other words, given a budget of X, it is better spend it to raise MINIMUM(plane security, train security) then to raise MAXIMUM(plane security, train security), since the attacker will attack your minimum. This is just minimax AI theory.
"AND the attacker and defender basically care the same about successful plane attacks vs train attacks,"
Can't hijack a train and knock down a skyscraper with it. At least not very well. Every once in a while a drunk or nutcase takes a train for a joyride (I come from a long line of railroadmen, I hear stories aside from whats in the paper). Most of them screw up the E-brake system but if its a former employee then the worst case is the switches get thrown to derail the engine before the lunatic hits anything. Its very expensive but not much of a big deal.
I know it's crazy, but I've always thought the easiest way to rehabilitate this guy would be to hire him to do the job he's so obsessed with(if he's capable).
"Second, it's pulling a subtle slight of hand--the goal of airport security is NOT to reduce terrorist casualties overall. It is to reduce violent attacks of any kind on airplanes, specifically."
Since cockpits are now near-impossible to break into, why is a violent attack on an airplane worse than a violent attack in a movie theater? Probabilistically, the expected carnage in the latter case is higher.
> First, you cannot draw such a causal conclusion from statistical data alone.
From what else but (suitable) statistical can you draw such a conclusion?
> Does that sound stupid? I hope so, because it is.
Yes.
> But that's exactly the type of argument that this article is making.
No. The argument says that the attacks on society as a whole will likely remain constant regardless of airport security because there are many other, unsecured attack vectors.
Going back to your analogy, airport security is like allowing only passphrase-secured SSH keys of 8192 bits (say), while at the same time running a telnet daemon which gives root immediately – the latter corresponding to all the unsecured roads, malls, trains, you-name-it.
That is, if we don’t want to specifically protect airports but human lives, we have to consider not only the security gain from increased security in one area, but also whether this reduces the effectivity of attacks overall. If we want to protect one whole server and not just the SSH daemon, we have to consider not only making the SSH daemon as secure as possible but also all the other software running on this server – at which point we notice that it cannot be possibly feasible to secure this thing 100%, because nobody likes going through metal detectors to be allowed to leave their house.
> the goal of airport security is NOT to reduce terrorist casualties overall. It is to reduce violent attacks of any kind on airplanes, specifically.
OK, but this is an argument for throwing out airport security entirely. Is that what you meant to say?
If I owned an airline, sure, I'd be all about reducing airline passenger casualties by killing non-passengers somewhere else. But there's no public interest in redirecting attacks; the public interest is in reducing them.
> Look at it in digital terms--it would be like saying that we don't need to bother with strong passwords, because all those did was drive up the number of phishing attacks.
> Does that sound stupid? I hope so, because it is. But that's exactly the type of argument that this article is making.
The phenomenon of a counterbalancing reaction occurring when you make some change to a system is pretty general. How much of the desired effect (reduced casualties, or reduced breaches) of the change you made comes through, vs how much is eliminated by the reaction (increased effort directed to bombing theaters, or sending out phishing attacks), is an empirical matter; the fact that phishing attacks don't rise to nearly the level that password-guessing attacks were at before we started using stronger passwords (incidentally, we have weak passwords now, have always had weak passwords, and it is not generally felt that password strength is where we need to improve our online security), has no implications for the likely reaction of attacks to airport security.
The "type" of the argument is fine; it's broad enough that it can work in one domain and fail in another.
> But there's no public interest in redirecting attacks; the public interest is in reducing them
I'm not sure that's true though. Airplanes can be used as powerful weapons. I'd rather leave the knife depot open than the nuclear power plant, even if the number of attacks remains constant.
Utilitarianism is not the basis for U.S. public policy. If it was, we'd outlaw guns, smoking, soda, fried foods, and apply FAA-levels of scrutiny to automobiles.
The public wants to believe that when they get on an airplane, it will not crash for any reason. That is the problem that the TSA helps to address, along with the FAA, NTSB, and federal air marshals.
The public also wants to believe that when they get on a bus, it will not crash for any reason. This is a problem that the TSA is actively aggravating.
Policy based on unreasoning panic is nearly always bad policy. The fact that you can articulate "I'm scared!" doesn't make it good policy.
The TSA does not aggravate it, because the vast, vast majority of bus crashes are not caused by terrorism, or indeed, by a crime of any kind. In contrast, a very significant percentage of airline fatalities over the past few decades were caused by violent crimes or acts of terror.
Rambo screenings would likely have a better effect, myself and others often get so pumped up by action movies we're one wrong tone of voice from going postal. Hijackers wouldn't stand a chance in such an airplane.
> At the base of this argument is an implication that terrorist attacks are zero-sum: reduce them in one place, get an equivalent more in another. But that's not how security works.
The analogy you give certainly does sound stupid, but nobody said that the effect was necessarily zero sum, what the sum is is in fact an empirical matter and the research was about precisely this question. Unlike passwords, it would not be all that surprising for it to be approximately zero sum in this case. Terrorists don't sit down and think 'how can I attack an airplane', they sit and think 'how can I cause maximum damage for minimum investment'. Against that kind of opponent, there's no point choosing one tactic and fortifying it beyond reason while leaving a million other options for someone pursuing a strategy of terror. The effective money is spent on identifying the criminals and countering them rather than cherry picking one or two specific techniques. You can see this in most historical counter terrorism efforts.
Very occasionally, it's effective to identify point fixes for things that are low hanging fruit for terrorists. Reinforced cockpit doors almost certainly were part of that. Almost everything else that's been done on air travel since? Not so much.
> Second, it's pulling a subtle slight of hand--the goal of airport security is NOT to reduce terrorist casualties overall. It is to reduce violent attacks of any kind on airplanes, specifically.
That's the job of the personnel at the airports. However, we want to know whether the TSA is a program that should be funded, funded at the level it currently is, or given the powers it currently is. That is a question about the most effective way to reduce terrorist casualties overall (or arguably limited to US citizens anyway). It's no sleight of hand to be concerned about efficiency in the measures we take as a society to combat terrorism.
> First, you cannot draw such a causal conclusion from statistical data alone.
It's not clear to me why you think that the burden of proof lies in that direction. We have a problem - terrorism. We take some expensive measures - over the top checks at airports. It's not "data wonky" to demand that the programs we've put in place are able to produce real evidence of effectiveness.
I mean, I think the point of all security is to reduce the total numbers of deaths from terrorist attacks overall, not just per means of transportation.
That said, the fact of the matter is that the article doesn't back up its claim that airport security doesn't reduce terrorist casualties overall. Instead it states some bizarre equivalence between the decline in the number of hijackings (-6.9) and the increase in the number of instances of other kinds of terrorism (+6.8). But clearly other forms of terrorism do not cause nearly as much death as plane hijackings do, which for each one numbers in the hundreds, so we could be talking about an integer factor decrease in the number of deaths from terrorist attacks - 4x, 5x, 6x - by merely replacing them with other, less destructive terrorism. After all, the relative destructiveness of a plane hijacking is WHY terrorists do it at all. Suddenly airport security seems to look a lot more effective and a lot more worth it. So obviously they didn't mention casualties at all, since it would undermine the point they are trying to make.
> But clearly other forms of terrorism do not cause nearly as much death as plane hijackings do, which for each one numbers in the hundreds
[citation needed]
Some hijackings have caused deaths in the hundreds, namely 9/11 style suicide hijackings. However this is the exception. Even post-9/11.
According to the list of hijackings on Wikipedia, of the 21 notable hijackinged since 2000, all the non-9/11 hijackings resulted in 5 victims killed (one accidentally when storming the plane).
Note that post-9/11 there appears to have been a substantial increase in instances where the passengers have overpowered the hijackers, presumably out of fear of terrorists planning on killing them all.
But overall, even including the WTC deaths, plane hijackings does not appear to have caused more than a few tens of victims on average; exclude the WTC dead, and the number is small - most hijackings in fact appears to have ended without any deaths.
And few of the deaths that do happen appears to have been intended by the hijackers (many of the deaths have occurred due to crashes as a result of struggles, or when the planes get stormed by security forces).
Quite a few planes have been blown up in midair by bombs either carried on or concealed in checked luggage. TSA defends against this kind of attack as well.
The article advocates getting rid of all security screenings, TSA or otherwise.
We had private screening services at airports before 9/11 and people still had to arrive 1+ hours early, and still complained about the hassle of security screenings.
True, but that is distinct from hijackings, which was what I responded to, where the assumptions about reasons for hijackings, as opposed to bombings, is completely out of line with how actual hijackers have acted.
Anyway, the airplane bomb plots are also quite shocking in light of the TSA: There's been a number of attempts post creation of the TSA that failed only because of the ineptness of the bombers rather than because of the TSA.
But this is also a different type of plot: In most airplane bombings, the passengers have had no means of identifying the bomber prior to the explosion. Most of them have been bombs placed under seats or in cargo compartments rather than things like the "shoe bomber".
Regardless of the above, I believe that even if you count the dead from all the airplane bomb plots with the hijackings, the average number of dead will not come out all that high compared to other forms of terrorism, unlike what the earlier commenter seemed to assume. Even quite a few of the bombs ends up with no fatalities, or a low number, and only a few of the bombs that have taken out whole planes have been larger planes, most have been smaller regional flights.
If you look at Wikipedias list of terrorist incidents, and choose a few years at random, a large number of the largest indicdents you find will be bombs in busy locations, or trains - airplane hijackings or bombs with large number of fatalities are rare occurrences in comparison.
It's not really informative to compare the average casualties of hijackings after the period where airport security increased. And with the exception of 9/11? That's like saying that the 1940s were a very peaceful and harmonious time, with the exception of World War II.
Look at the deaths per hijacking incident before 9/11 - well before, when we might glean some useful data to compare.
I'm not sure what your first problem is. Are you implying that hijacking would NOT increase? Statistically speaking there have been more US hijackings before 9/11 than after. Couple that with "we are making it easier for bad guys to bring weapons on board" I think it is a reasonable assumption to say "it will PROBABLY increase hijacking"
Didn't the author actually that that terrorists attacks ARE a zerosum game? (There was evidence, but the author admitted it was more anecdotal than proof) I don't think he was subtle here at all.
If we ONLY had passwords because of phishing attacks, then it wouldn't be stupid to get rid of them (based on your statement) But we have passwords for other reasons. We don't have TSA for other reasons (well some people think we do, that is to find drugs)
All the TSA has done is ensure that someday a suicide bomber will blow up the security line, and destroy the travel industry at the same time. There is no backup plan once that happens other than picking people up at home in armored vans.
That's reductio ad absurdum if I've ever heard it.
That's like saying "all the army has done is ensure that someday an enemy will attack with weapons so devastating that the entire country will be destroyed in one foul swoop."
The army doesn't make people stand in long lines next to a barrel full of suspected explosives. And then make them take their shoes off and walk across a dirty floor, so someone else can stick their hand down the persons pants.
In large organizations, the appearance of risk is much more important than the reality of risk. Big organizations (like governments) will do things that actually increase risk, so long as the things look on the surface like they will reduce risk.
Saying that TSA security doesn't reduce terrorism risk is a reasonable argument (although I think it's wrong; consider the possibility of gun-toting yahoos wanting to be "safe" with "self-defense" and blowing a hole in the fuselage because they saw a suspicious brown person). But politically, saying to give up TSA security because it doesn't work is basically impossible. Voters will demand that politicians do something about the threat of terrorism.
If leaders wanted to improve security, and they knew how, they could do that, while simultaneously adding theatrics and populist talk to create the appearance of security.
If you want theater, you give them theater, not a prison experience.
Lets try a Hollywood analogy. The execs tell the director to make a formulaic teen comedy. How long would a film director last if he replied, F those guys I'm making a documentary about the Soviet Gulag system and they're gonna like it because its for their own good.
The discussion is being carefully controlled by those in power to make sure that no one steps out of line and considers, maybe just for an instant, that possibly there could exist a form of expensive meaningless security theater that doesn't involve brutalizing the population.
No, they're subjecting us to the TSA for a reason that isn't security theater.
What I find particularly evil about the TSA is their Pre program that lets you bypass security lines for $85. Mind you, you'll only be granted that sort of privilege after an approval process that requires you submit the non-refundable fee along with an application. So paying $85 doesn't even guarantee you a spot.
It's as if after implementing all this theater, imposing myriads of restrictions, that they realized it was all ineffective, and now they're reframing the entire situation by acting as if they're catering to customers by offering a program that reverts things to how they were a little over a decade ago, but now for a fee.
The PreCheck program isn't just a fee; it's a rather thorough background check. And being approved for it doesn't actually guarantee lower scrutiny, as PreCheck'd travelers remain eligible for the random high-security selection.
Others have also mentioned that many times the PreCheck line is closed, forcing background-checked passengers to go through normal security lines anyway.
I travelled around the USA a bit earlier this year. At one point I was at a small regional airport in Florida where I was running late for my flight.
The TSA attendant, a Good Ol' Boy, asked "Do y'all have the Pre?"
I said I didn't know what it was. He cracked a grin and said "It don't matter, we don' got it anyhow". We then had a friendly chat about life in Australia before he waved me through.
He is chalking up a lot of things that existed before 9/11 to the TSA. 15 years ago we all still had to stand in line to go through metal detectors to get into the terminal. Also how can you compare loading time on a 9 passenger Cessna 402 to something like a 737-300 that can hold 120 people? That's silly. It takes more time to board larger planes than smaller ones and that has nothing to do with security.
I go through the TSA screening several times a month, and while I don't appreciate the invasion of privacy, it isn't really that big of a pain in the ass to stand in line for a few minutes and put all your bags through the scanner.
Not just a jumbo either, 30-40 at a single airport at one time with ~100people per plane (~4,000 total) vs 9 people on a single Cessna likely 2-3 times a day maximum
The author laments "all the waste that one stupid government policy can generate." But there seems to be little hope that any of it will go away any time soon.
Why? Because of a statement I've seen attributed to Karl Denninger[0]: "One man's waste, fraud, abuse, scam, and theft is another man's paycheck."
If there were no need for TSA-compliant messenger bags, Timbuk2 would likely see a drop in revenues. If there were no TSA, a whole bunch of people employed as TSA agents would be out of work. I'd expect everyone making money off the current system of security theater to fight tooth and nail to preserve the money they're making.
I grew up in the 70s. Back then, there was an entire generation that was smoking pot, although it was very recently deemed illegal.
It was a weird time. Most young people either smoked pot or knew somebody who did. There wasn't much odd about them, although we were told that smoking pot was terrible. On the street, however, it was fairly obvious that this was an overreaction. To hear some folks talk, there was little difference between heroin and pot. That was obviously not true.
It took 50 years for common sense to get back into the system, and even now, when the change is starting, it might be another 10 or 20 years to fully reverse pot laws. I'm not a pot user, but I find this slowness-to-adapt to common sense amazing.
Unfortunately, the system isn't just glacial in fixing bad laws -- it's fairly quick to add new bad laws as we go along. TSA is the case in point. Just like the pot laws, we're constantly told that there is a terrible danger out there that we need protection from, even though it's blatantly obvious that this is an overreaction and power grab. Nobody seems to be driving the bus.
So I guess we'll go through 50 years of increasing TSA "supervision" of travel until we see some kind of sanity? And how many TSAs will we have by then? It's depressing to think about.
I always feel like the oddball, but I don't mind the current state of our airport security. Given the option of two flights, one with security and the other without, I'm taking the flight with security precautions... Irrational or not.
Definitely irrational. The problem is the security precautions make you feel safer. But you aren't. In fact, if I was a terrorist and I had the choice of attacking a "secure" airplane versus and unsecure airplane. I'd attack the secure plane every single time... It would spread more terror.
Personally I would prefer flying without any security checks.
I am going to die one day; statistical chances are high that will not be due to a terrorist attack.
In fact I flew from South Africa to Europe 4 or 5 years back (in a large Airbus). No metal detector, no scanners, no taking-shoes-or-belt-of, just the quick scan of the carry on. Took 2 minutes, and I did not feel unsafe in any way.
911 cannot be repeated (as pointed out many times before). The TSA checks are a theater and everybody knows it.
the core issue is that a lot of very young people are now starting to debate this shit that only remember 9/11.
we just had the 25 year anniversary of Lockerbie. that bomb not only killed all on board the plane, but a lot of people on the ground. no need to hijack.
and we now have a lot of suicide bombers, see just the last two days on Volgograd.
have the Israelis scaled down their anti-bomb detection measures? no? then neither should the west.
i fly a lot, internationally. i do not mind the checkpoints. i mind dying pre-maturely in a fireball.
Do you drive? Walk across a street? Before 9/11 what were the odds that you would die pre-maturely in a fireball (an airplane fireball?) I don't know the number but it was so small to be virtually 0. You were much more likely to die in a myriad of other ways. Probably more likely to get shot to death at a movie theater. Yet that probably doesn't stop you from going to the movie theater... And yet you don't mind being treated like criminal at the airport.
I think what most people are forgetting is the reason for such measures on flights. An hijacked flight is very different from other hijaking/terrorist situations. It leaves you with almost no options except maybe to shoot it down. There is absolutely no other tactical moves that can be made. The same cannot be said for similar attacks on theaters/schools etc. A flight is also a moving threat that requires swift response, and it can strike (when used as a weapon) over quite a large area (In terms of targets it may choose).
Now, if we as this article suggests remove all security to get on flights. As someone planning such an incident, i.e. pull out a gun or other random acts of terror; It would follow that getting on a flight to do such a thing would be the best move. You literally have access to 200+ people with no where to run in a confined area, with no security. The reason flights are given security vs other places such as theaters etc is not some random act. It is cause of the specific threats that are posed by hijacked flights/weapons on flights that are fundamentally different from other locations.
(How fast would the cops get to someone who starts firing at people in any city with such high population density?, now compare that with what happens in a flight, you have no options, and once it starts you practically write off the people who are on the flight because you have no chance of saving them)
All big jets have fly-by-wire systems that could easily be remotely commanded. There's no reason why hijackers should be given control of the aircraft; indeed at this point the planes themselves could probably be programmed to refuse to point at the ground in urban areas outside of a glide path.
That leaves them with the option of blowing up the aircraft at inconvenient places. That's a significantly tough and narrow plan of attack.
Being given control of the aircraft is secondary. You've condemned 200 odd people to death cause of one person on the flight. A small bomb, any thing to disrupt the flight will do that. (This is very easy as opposed to going to a theater or other urban crowded locations and staying alive long enough to take out that many people). The point being your only option is to lose everyone on the plane. Is that a casualty you're willing to accept. Security works by deterrence. If every time someone starts shooting in theaters and schools, the casualty is upwards of 200, its going to be a more viable option. Its a question of the cost of doing something vs the damage it causes. the inherent nature of flights (Since they fly), is that it takes relatively less effort to get one to crash. And it terms of preparation (in this ideal scenario as per this article), one guy just has to walk into a plane with items you get in your local store (propane maybe?). Im not an expert on this, but i just feel the effort required is just ridiculously easy if there is going to be no one to keep a tab on what you carry/have access to on a flight.
We could also implement Israeli style security, namely profiling (not racial but terrorist), when you go through Ben Gurion, you go from car to gate in about 30 min, and at no point do yo have to remove your shoes, or even remove your laptop from it's bag, no matter what type of bag it is.
Now I'll grant you if you're coming from Ramallah and you're flying to Pakistan through Turkey and Dubai you should probably give yourself and extra hour or two, but as long as have no nefarious motives and tell the truth you will be on your way. But this is true regardless of the color of your skin or religious beliefs. I have a friend who was doing something like that and he's white, very clearly Jewish and religious. (Often those stories you hear of the 3 hour long interrogations are because the dude was/is an active participant on the rock throwing attacks and they have pictures of him that he is unaware of...)
Living on an island in Canada I've taken these small commuter flights a number of times. Being able to hop on near the actual flight time is fantastic. Few points about these smaller flights:
- Typically they still want you there 30 mins early to check-in and load the baggage.
- The pilot to passenger ratio makes them very expensive. A 20 minute flight for me is costlier than a 5 hour one to a major hub. I rarely pay for these out of my own pocket.
- Being a smaller operation your pilot can be very young and inexperienced.
- These planes are very small and at times get uncomfortably hot in the summer.
- The majority of crashes around here are from similarly sized aircraft. Always an uncomfortable reminder of what can go wrong.
- Flying in any kind of adverse weather can honestly be pretty terrifying in a smaller plane. If your lucky they'll delay or cancel it altogether.
- Sometimes your pilot will leave the window open and a wasp will fly in prior to take off. Sitting in the co-pilot seat in a cramped plane, it may be up to you to kill it :)
Overall I prefer the smaller flights in the summer, but I'll take the slow security for the safety of the bigger plane in winter.
I took a small commuter plane from Seattle to Portland and it was the best time flying I've ever had. Free parking at Boeing field, free coffee in a quaint little terminal, walk right onto the plane, enjoy a short flight, and then walk right to the light rail station.
I guess I also need to point out that I didn't die on that trip. Not even once.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 251 ms ] threadFrog in a slowly heating pot indeed.
Now that we've accepted the horrors of the TSA, they are working on getting us to accept the horrors of the NSA, slowly but surely, until we reach the point that the average person defends every smartphone being hacked and tracked.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
But it does seem that it's a matter of degrees (literally). If sufficiently slow - very slow - the frog may in fact not notice. But it is certainly very slow. It also seems a normal frog will also apparently get bored or restless, and will jump out, not from heat, but because frogs just jump around.
Overall, it seems like a hard thing to test for properly without inflicting some constraint on the frog to encourage it to stay and die.
Just over Christmas break, we flew from the Vancouver commuter terminal to Tofino. Aside from the delays due to weather, no TSA, super friendly staff, quick mostly comfy flight.
If you were flying a UK airline they were probably counting the "fuel surcharge" as a fee, which in many cases can be the majority of the ticket. I just priced up the cheapest SFO-LHR return on Virgin next month, it came in at $1000, with $458 being "carrier imposed surcharges", counted as fees.
Except they're not fees at all, it's the 'fuel surcharge'. Actual taxes and fees were $233, or 23%. Your airline should have given you a link to the line by line breakdown of every item ($5 custom fee, $2.50 TSA fee, etc) when you bought the ticket.
On a related note, if you're flying from SFO you're not actually interacting with the TSA itself at all, San Francisco is one of the few airports that contracts out security screening to a TSA-approved company (some people think SFO has more 'friendly' security screening because of it, I haven't really noticed).
One way my wife and I have helped deal with some of the line hassle -- GOES (for coming back into the country), Clear (had it before PreCheck came about and will reevaluate), and now PreCheck (GOES helped with this).
I've heard some mention that as more and more people become PreCheck eligible, that will become the norm rather than the exception. We shall see.
With regard to SFO not being TSA, I'm aware of this and generally have found them much more efficient than the TSA. Probably my best TSA experiences have been in Seattle (recently) and Kona, friendly and generally laughing. Worst opt out experience was actually SFO w/ a manager who took exception to anyone opting out and waited 10+ min before calling someone over -- "The delay is to encourage you to go through the machines".
Make it a law or greatly encourage airlines to itemize the TSA inspection fee. Also list the prescreening fee for when they profile all your data before you even get to the airport.
What's crazy is people would be upset about the fee and not the procedure itself.
Took 5 seconds to find.
A tax return is used to provide your income information to the government. If you want information about how government monies are being spent, you can look it up. This information is freely available online. The tax return is not the proper place for this information, as not all government monies arise from income taxes.
Even if a bomb is brought on board we would never give control of a plan to hijackers since we now know it may be used as a giant missile, not just an escape vehicle.
Yes, and they've all failed. That means we have at least enough security, and we should start thinking about scaling it back.
If a terrorist could bring down a plane by clicking a button on a website, we would see hundreds of planes downed every day.
If it takes a day of preparation, we'd see perhaps a dozen per day.
If it takes a week, we would see another order of magnitude fewer.
If it takes a year of training and preparation by one or more high IQ individuals with several hundred thousand dollars, we'd see almost none. This is why we haven't seen any more 9/11 style attacks even though they were so amazingly effective as a terrorist tool: it's become sufficiently difficult to pull them off after counterterrorism efforts were amped up.
In other words: criminals can still break into my car if they really tried, but I still lock my car doors.
It was sufficiently difficult even before security theater and airline liability reduction measures were ramped up, which is why we didn't see 9/11 style attacks before 9/11.
There is no more incentive for someone looking to cause mayhem to blow up a plane than there is to blow up a shopping mall or any other building with more than ~180 people inside (the approximate number of seats in a 747).
Mainly, though, people feel more vulnerable in a plane, so an aircraft bombing is higher impact.
> If it takes a day of preparation, we'd see perhaps a dozen per day.
Nope. People are deterred by socialization and innate biology. I could take a gasoline bomb to a nearby school or church and kill hundreds of people within the week, for little expense and a good chance of getting off scot free. So could most people. It is not difficulty or risk that prevent mass killings.
A: the number of people radicalized into anti-American terrorists
B: the opportunity that As have to cause damage
I suspect A went up in the late nineties and continues to be high-ish today. B went up with OBL and the Saudis funding the game, but has gone down post-9/11 for a variety of reasons, including decreased Saudi bankrolls, increased airport and aircraft security, tighter restrictions on student visas, and a weakened Al Qaeda.
I for one kind of like the fact they have all failed. I would like to keep this track record up since I spend a lot of time on planes. Just my 2c.
I think we're starting to see some of that sort of benchmarking taking place with the TSA, so that's good, but the incentives don't seem like they're lined up properly for the bureaucracy to shrink significantly, regardless of the true level of risk.
If your hypothetical heroku scenario were a government project, they'd be proposing a "conservative" increase to 23 dynos for next year.
[0]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/excess_automo...
The excuse for the airplane security has been that they can use the plane as a missile. If this is no longer the case, than planes lose their special status as something that needs to be extra protected. If we feel safe getting on a bus without going through a metal detector, a plane should be no different.
Yes, people can do us harm at any time. They could shoot us, bomb us, stab us, burn us with acid, etc. We accept those risks every day, and almost all of us get through life without those things happening to us. That is because the number of people who want to do bad things to us isn't nearly as great as some would have us believe. We don't need more screening to protect us from very unlikely threats.
What about the one that happened yesterday?
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/killed-blast-s...
If you want to argue that near-complete security is infeasible, you're probably better served by acknowledging that attacks on something as pervasive and porous as a bus system are a real possibility. So that's why I thought it was necessary to challenge you on that point.
It wasn't until a hijacked plane threatened to hit a Tennessee nuclear power plant that their thinking changed. No longer was it just the plane that was a hostage, but potentially a much bigger area, allowing for much bigger demands ($2Mil, to be exact). [1]
The next year afterwards, though? Flying was up 15%. Turns out people liked not getting hijacked, and were willing to trade a (minimal) security check for that. Of course, the TSA is a much bigger beast today.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Airways_Flight_49
But they were relying on statistics I suppose.
In the old days, a simple note or declarative statement to the effect that the terrorist had a bomb and would set it off would have been enough to get the pilots to open a locked and secured door.
We required the certitude that opening the door was worse than leaving the door locked and risking the chance that the terrorist may be telling the truth.
And yet this combination was effective in limiting the number of casualties in the recent Volgograd train station bombing. I suspect the amount of Russian editorializing over these security procedures will soon decrease.
Fortunately, while civilian memory is short, government institutional memory is long.
It just shifted the site of the attack to a new bottleneck: where everyone is in line to go through the metal detector (which many people also have pointed out is a ripe target for an attack in the post-TSA US).
Suicide bombings in the middle east over the last 10 years, in comparison, have about a 1:3 ratio of bomber to victims. That's a mean, but the outliers tend to barely break 20. So it's difficult to believe that number was reduced by a large amount.
Yes they did, but according to this article they claim all sorts of things, much of which is not true:
http://latitude.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/30/powerlessness-a...
Such as the identity of the bomber (she later posted on her FB page, "Nope, I'm still alive!").
Not that I'm trying to imply that Russian officials are particularly different in this regard!
http://www.cracked.com/blog/7-reasons-tsa-sucks-a-security-e...
(yeah I know it is a cracked article, but this time it is different)
Not all "security measures" are created equal. Reinforced cockpit doors and curb-stomping want-to-be hijackers are both effective security measures, as were metal detectors.
Those are not the security measures that critics of the TSA are criticizing.
"Is eliminating airport security politically untenable? Maybe"
"Would this increase hijacking? Probably."
LOL
After 9/11, they were able to convince us that we NEED to be felt up by strangers at the airport and that we NEED to invade a country and that ITS OKAY to just kill thousands and thousands of civilians "by accident" all in the name of National Security and when some civilians try and kick out these strangers that invaded their country and killed their family, they're the nut jobs, they're the bad people, they're the real terrorists.
I honestly think the US is a bigger terrorist that Osama ever was. Now, after 9/11 people we're living our normal lives normally; while in Afganistan, families everyday are terrorized, scared, afraid that this might be their last day. Today might be the day their father doesn't come back. Today might be the last day they see each other.
Airplane hijackings are actually much more common than most people think. From 1988-1997, there were about 18 airplane hijackings per year, down from the peak of 82 in 1969: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking. Interesting to read the history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings#196....
In the old days, once didn't actually require a weapon to hijack a plane. Merely the claim of possessing a weapon was sufficient.
First, the TSA itself has admitted that there is no evidence of terrorist plots against aviation in the US[0].
Second, the circumstances under which 9/11 happened would be impossible to repeat. Plane cockpits are all but impenetrable[1] - the only reason that some of the 9/11 hijackers were successful was that the standard protocol for dealing with hijackers assumed that hijackers wanted to take the plane hostage for ransom, not use the plane as a weapon. This protocol was fixed almost immediately. (Note that United Airlines Flight 93 did not face the same fate as the other three planes, because the passengers knew what the hijackers were planning.)
Since it's impossible to take control of the cockpit as a hijacker these days, even if someone managed to bring a gun on board a flight, the most damage they could do is kill all the passengers (leaving the pilots unharmed). That is truly a horrible scenario, but that makes flying no more risky than going to the movies or going to school (eg. Newtown, Arapahoe, Boulder).
Of course, one "logical" conclusion is therefore to establish TSA-style security at every school, cinema, mall, etc... in which case we have turned the country into a police state, and we should expect the same crime rates as within federal prisons: http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=194
[0] http://tsaoutofourpants.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/tsa-admits-...
[1] I believe I read another comment on Hacker News a while back in which the pilot had a heart attack after the cockpit had been locked from the inside, but before leaving the gate, and it still took the fire department almost an hour to cut through the door.
I can't find a report of this ever happening, though I did find an article from December 2001 which pointed out potential danger to pilots behind locked doors. It also notes that the danger of an incident mid-flight can be reduced by having a flight attendant step into the cockpit whenever one of the pilots steps out.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2001-12-17/news/0112160265_...
(Edit: Lest my nitpicky comment be misunderstood, it also talks a little about how strong the reinforcements are; I think your point about cockpit doors being extremely solid can be reasonably taken as fact.)
With seatbelts and their introduction there were anecdotes about people crashing their cars into ponds, lakes etc. where their lives were saved because they were not wearing their seatbelts. I think it is human nature to want to repeat the one incident where the safety measures could have led to disaster.
Since you are so adept at research, can you find this one for me?
Recently a senior New Labour politician who was responsible for bringing in TSA style checks in the UK wise-cracked about how those that complained should be offered two lines at the airport, one with the body scanners, sniffer dogs, robocops etc. and another - to a different flight - where you could just walk straight on. He wondered which flight would be chosen to go on by those complaining types.
It bugs me now that I can't find the quote or remember whether it was Gordon Brown or some other politician.
Now on pilots, this really depends which pilots you are talking about. North American pilots, and here I am pointing at Canadian pilots more because I am in Canada and I am in the process of getting my PPL (for pleasure),however, I am sure this also applies to US pilots, very well trained. To get a job at a big airline you need experience, and where do you get the best experience, far up north where harsh weather, huge winds and tiny landing strips are located. I don't think that 3 years college will do, unless you are lucky.
I also talk to a lot of commercial pilots as my girlfriend is a flight attendant, so during the travels we go out and chat about everything.
As far as safety, over exaggerated, really. No one cares, well, people do but they shouldn't, because if someone wants to hijack I am sure they will find a way to do it. This is the big boys game on a government level. Tax payers are paying for scanners etc, whoever wins the bid makes them and they are sponsoring the next election. (I will not get into this here but you get the point). Scanners are useless.
This is an older video from 2010, scanners give better pictures nowdays but are still as useless as before. I got scanned at Schiphol 3 months ago, the scanner was not much different from the one shown this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idICUSiGcqo
It is great to fly small planes, no security, quick, and more fun to fly than a big airliner.
Opinions are personal.
"Recently a senior New Labour politician who was responsible for bringing in TSA style checks in the UK wise-cracked about how those that complained should be offered two lines at the airport, one with the body scanners, sniffer dogs, robocops etc. and another - to a different flight - where you could just walk straight on. He wondered which flight would be chosen to go on by those complaining types."
Passenger aircraft are supposed to NEVER operate with only one person on the flight deck, but rules are not always followed.
We don't know how many hijackings have been prevented by the locking doors. Are there any documented cases? We do know of a few cases where they have caused deaths, or at least prevented any chance to try to avert a disaster.
1: http://avherald.com/h?article=46c3abde&opt=0
(Cialdini cites research, which I'm too lazy to look up right now, that claims something as high as 40-50 excess deaths from car and plane crashes in the US per highly publicized suicide)
A co-pilot at the helm, or an unlocked door through which someone may come in and question the pilots actions could very well make all the difference.
Discussing any behavior, especially in the media, makes it more likely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copycat_suicide (Werther effect)
The interesting bit (from the book IIRC) is that the copiers will often wait some time so it seems like they are not copying. This is why the risk to subsequent air travel increases after some delay from the original incident. People are partially unpredictable, so it's possible to have an immediate copy as well.
Could that happen? It's not that hard to know that the doors can be locked, and if so, you pretty much give up on trying to get in to the cockpit to take over the plane.
Not all fighting back scenarios involve crashing the plane into a field. In fact, now that cockpit doors are reinforced, most fighting back scenarios will end in the plane safely landing. There have already been several cases of passengers successfully fighting back before much damage was done.
tl;dr: I think fighting back is a rational response.
1) I know everybody else is thinking that theory. Nobody will move.
2) Bystander effect. Nobody will move.
In short, the one to act first will be me, 'cos y'all a bunch of cowards. (Hopefully not too coward to jump in once someone's made the first move though)
But what you really need to think about is- what if I'm not on that plane? What if every person on that plane is a coward? Will you wait in terror and lose your chance? Are you willing to take that risk?
Unless there's literally seconds until the hijacker will be untouchable, that's likely the most rational choice: play chicken with the other passengers, to see who gets desperate enough to act first.
Now, the moment someone acts, all bets are off - some non-negligible subset may quite likely follow the first person, depending on that persons social standing (people are more likely to jaywalk behind a jaywalker in a suit than one in less formal clothes, for example, if neither of them does anything else to get people to follow - our propensity to deviate from the group behaviour depends on how authoritative the person "leading the charge" appears)
Similarly, if at any point it appears that the hijacker will suddenly become impossible to take out, it becomes more rational to go first, out of the risk that nobody will act.
But the bystander effect is there for a reason: It is generally quite safe to do what everyone else is doing. Except when it isn't.
In terms of hijackings, as it turns out, it is quite safe: Most hijackings, even after 9/11, ends with no dead victims. 9/11 represented a small set of extreme aberrations from hijackings both before and after.
With that in mind, throwing yourself on an armed hijacker only becomes rational once it appears they'll otherwise gain control of the cockpit, at the earliest.
Anyway, I don't intend to wait and find out what the hijacker intends, and as the best window for action is going to be right after he/she walks by your seat, your window for action is small. When they are far away, you have to close the distance, which costs you surprise. So waiting to see if they are going to try to breach the cockpit is probably not the best plan.
Well, I guess if they take a hostage at the back of the plane and yell "take me to Prague!", it's probably not worth it, I guess there would need to be some attempt to read their intentions.
More importantly, security is provided by catching would be terrorists before they even get anywhere near the airport. Because otherwise they can do a lot more damage at a crowded security checkpoint than they could with whatever explosives they managed to mix in their underwear. This is a job for intelligence agencies, not for the TSA.
But really, if someone wants to destroy a plane, they're going to be able to destroy a plane. The question is not "should we try to stop people from blowing things up?" The question is "what are reasonable and effective means to stop people from blowing things up?"
Unless we have measures to prevent them from getting on the plane in the first place, and since no bombs have been going off on a plane for quite a while, isn't that a sign that the security measures are working?
Why not? I'm not saying you're wrong, just that you are making a claim without backing it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FedEx_Flight_705
"About twenty minutes after takeoff, as the flight crew carried on a casual conversation, Calloway entered the flight deck and commenced his attack. Every member of the crew took multiple hammer blows which fractured [the flight crew's] skulls. A lengthy struggle ensued with the flight engineer and captain as Tucker, also an ex-Navy pilot, performed extreme aerial maneuvers with the aircraft, at times flying upside down, with the intent to keep the hijacker off-balance."
It worked, too. Everyone survived.
Let's also remember what genius methods and techniques the "terrorists" used to hijack some planes....they "smuggled" some box cutters on the plane. .... The END ... FIN
I bet you if any one of you put a plastic craft blade, you know, the marker sized ones with the break away blades, in your carry on bag you would not be stopped or discovered; especially if you placed it with the blade on edge to the image.
Here's a tip though, never, NEVER ever will another plane be hijacked by anyone else using those means. Not only did the "authorities" finally secure the cockpits like it had been pleaded for years prior to 9/11, but I can guarantee you that anyone even attempting would be ripped apart by the limbs. I, for one, don't care if you were able to smuggle a middle-earth battle axe on the plane; you will be dead within seconds of pulling some shit.
That being said, I'm not quite certain if it has gotten any better, but just relatively recently it was still rather easy to access the runways and bays. Just saying, the phantoms we are fighting might get "genius" and pull of a "highly sophisticated plot" that my seven year old could plane and execute with just a tablet computer at their disposal.
The transfer of existing security responsibilities from airlines to the federal government wasn't a make-work program, it was a measure to eliminate potential airline liability for future security failures.
It was about the economy, because reducing the airlines liability risk going forward was one of many steps taken to help the airline industry, but it wasn't primarily a "make-work" program.
First time I was travelling with it, I went to check it in, and they looked at me as if I was stupid. Clearly no terrorist has tried to use a huge umbrella as a pike yet, so it's not yet a risk. If I was a terrorist, testing a suitable set of objects with enough sharpened metal pieces for whether or not they'd ask me to check them in would be trivial - any terrorists being stopped by their lack of ability to bring something sharp on are so dumb they'd be stopped by someone drawing a stop sign in crayons and insisting they're not allowed to pass.
So the terrorists are either really stupid, there aren't that many of them, or they, like you, are smart enough to realise that they'd better have some pretty horrible weapons to be able to survive a hijack attempt in a post-9/11 world.
In other words, it's not even about stopping sharp items, but about giving the appearance of stopping a suitable set of objects that will keep people concerned about terror threats.
What about liquids? Pretty much every trip I end up forgetting some bottle or other of liquids, generally a half litre bottler of some drink, often because the mother of my child keeps putting bottles in his bag that I don't notice until after security. Not once have they been noticed at the security checks.
So it's a show, as those who do want to get liquids past can just put them in their carry on and send it through with good odds of being able to walk straight on. If they cared, they'd do better. But they don't care, as this is not about stopping a viable plot, but about keeping up appearances.
Meanwhile my 4 year old was picked out for secondary screening when we flew to visit my mother for christmas, without setting off the metal detectors, and had to pass his shoes through and go through the new scanners, and get patted down; I was furious, but didn't want to upset or scare him or risk messing up his christmas by making a fuss about it; and when we'd gone through, I found a full drinks bottle in his bag that they'd missed.
My point is not that it'd be a great weapon - it's not. But compared to the stuff they are confiscating, it's miles ahead in terms of potential damage.
It demonstrates either a total lack of critical thinking when deciding what to allow, or how little this has to do with security, or both.
Personally I'm quite pleased they don't ban my umbrella, but I'd prefer it if they removed most stuff from the list of banned items.
Initially, the Bush administration and the GOP resisted the creation of a Federal airport security service. They were not at all excited about a big new (particularly unionized) government workforce. But the Democrats fought for it and won that political argument. Here's a contemporaneous news account that covers the basics: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=87570
How did you end up remembering it differently?
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2001/roll425.xml
No, they didn't. By then, Senator Jim Jeffords had become an independent, caucusing with the Democrats and giving them a one-vote majority control of the chamber. Also, FWIW, Norm Mineta was the token Democrat in the Bush cabinet.
And of course everyone voted for the bill once it was clear it would pass. Who wanted to be against enhanced airline security?
I'm not saying the GOP put up the fight of the century on the TSA, far from it. But it's a mischaracterization of history to say that Bush demanded a dramatic expansion of the Federal workforce as some kind of economic smokescreen. If that were so, you'd expect to find accounts of Democrats at least raising token opposition to this brilliant political stratagem.
This is like saying that we're seeing fewer and fewer occurrences of tuberculosis, therefore TB vaccines are useless.
If you have that data (which I'd love to see), there are still powerful arguments that TSA funding would have been better spent in many other ways (better training budgets for security/investigative personnel, more "soft" layers at airports, fewer kneejerk infrastructure upgrades).
That's funny, because I got searched more thoroughly leaving the USA than when I was flying to the USA.
> Would this increase hijacking? Probably. But there's no reason to believe it would increase casualties from terrorist attacks overall. That's because increasing airport security just leads terrorists to direct their assaults elsewhere.
There are two huge problems with this statement.
First, you cannot draw such a causal conclusion from statistical data alone.
Second, it's pulling a subtle slight of hand--the goal of airport security is NOT to reduce terrorist casualties overall. It is to reduce violent attacks of any kind on airplanes, specifically.
At the base of this argument is an implication that terrorist attacks are zero-sum: reduce them in one place, get an equivalent more in another. But that's not how security works.
Look at it in digital terms--it would be like saying that we don't need to bother with strong passwords, because all those did was drive up the number of phishing attacks. Maybe we could just get of passwords, since the total number of intrusions would not go up. And besides, just think of all that wasted effort to create, hash, store, remember, and manage passwords.
Does that sound stupid? I hope so, because it is. But that's exactly the type of argument that this article is making.
Frisking Grandma is another story. Air marshals, metal detectors, and reinforced cockpit doors should be sufficient to halt the vast majority of terrorist attacks. As with any system, a determined adversary will absolutely get in. That is what makes the TSA theater.
That is precisely his point. The TSA is in place not only to stop terrorist attacks (this is the false equivalency the article's author relied on), but ALSO to defend against a myriad of security risks, one of which happens to be "Terrorism".
They did, however, catch the circuitry of the blinking lights in my 4 year olds old shoes, which caused nervous looks for a few moments until one of the screeners who knew what they are looked over at the screens.
IF an attacker has the ability to attack unprotected plains and the ability to attack unprotected trains,
AND the attacker is determined to attack,
AND the attacker and defender basically care the same about successful plane attacks vs train attacks,
THEN protecting the planes alone is useless, as it just shifts attacks to trains.
For example: I think we can agree that it is pointless to put a lock on your back door, if your front door is wide open.
In other words, given a budget of X, it is better spend it to raise MINIMUM(plane security, train security) then to raise MAXIMUM(plane security, train security), since the attacker will attack your minimum. This is just minimax AI theory.
Can't hijack a train and knock down a skyscraper with it. At least not very well. Every once in a while a drunk or nutcase takes a train for a joyride (I come from a long line of railroadmen, I hear stories aside from whats in the paper). Most of them screw up the E-brake system but if its a former employee then the worst case is the switches get thrown to derail the engine before the lunatic hits anything. Its very expensive but not much of a big deal.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/12/25/transit-impostor-arre...
Since cockpits are now near-impossible to break into, why is a violent attack on an airplane worse than a violent attack in a movie theater? Probabilistically, the expected carnage in the latter case is higher.
From what else but (suitable) statistical can you draw such a conclusion?
> Does that sound stupid? I hope so, because it is.
Yes.
> But that's exactly the type of argument that this article is making.
No. The argument says that the attacks on society as a whole will likely remain constant regardless of airport security because there are many other, unsecured attack vectors.
Going back to your analogy, airport security is like allowing only passphrase-secured SSH keys of 8192 bits (say), while at the same time running a telnet daemon which gives root immediately – the latter corresponding to all the unsecured roads, malls, trains, you-name-it.
That is, if we don’t want to specifically protect airports but human lives, we have to consider not only the security gain from increased security in one area, but also whether this reduces the effectivity of attacks overall. If we want to protect one whole server and not just the SSH daemon, we have to consider not only making the SSH daemon as secure as possible but also all the other software running on this server – at which point we notice that it cannot be possibly feasible to secure this thing 100%, because nobody likes going through metal detectors to be allowed to leave their house.
OK, but this is an argument for throwing out airport security entirely. Is that what you meant to say?
If I owned an airline, sure, I'd be all about reducing airline passenger casualties by killing non-passengers somewhere else. But there's no public interest in redirecting attacks; the public interest is in reducing them.
> Look at it in digital terms--it would be like saying that we don't need to bother with strong passwords, because all those did was drive up the number of phishing attacks.
> Does that sound stupid? I hope so, because it is. But that's exactly the type of argument that this article is making.
The phenomenon of a counterbalancing reaction occurring when you make some change to a system is pretty general. How much of the desired effect (reduced casualties, or reduced breaches) of the change you made comes through, vs how much is eliminated by the reaction (increased effort directed to bombing theaters, or sending out phishing attacks), is an empirical matter; the fact that phishing attacks don't rise to nearly the level that password-guessing attacks were at before we started using stronger passwords (incidentally, we have weak passwords now, have always had weak passwords, and it is not generally felt that password strength is where we need to improve our online security), has no implications for the likely reaction of attacks to airport security.
The "type" of the argument is fine; it's broad enough that it can work in one domain and fail in another.
I'm not sure that's true though. Airplanes can be used as powerful weapons. I'd rather leave the knife depot open than the nuclear power plant, even if the number of attacks remains constant.
You cannot get to the pilots anymore using the plans used last time, so thus the exigent danger you are speaking of is gone.
The public wants to believe that when they get on an airplane, it will not crash for any reason. That is the problem that the TSA helps to address, along with the FAA, NTSB, and federal air marshals.
Policy based on unreasoning panic is nearly always bad policy. The fact that you can articulate "I'm scared!" doesn't make it good policy.
to provide security theater. It would be a heck of a lot cheaper and more effective to just play rambo movies on the inflight entertainment system.
Actually, it's not just making that argument, it's referencing studies to back it up: http://www.campbellcollaboration.org/lib/project/11/
> At the base of this argument is an implication that terrorist attacks are zero-sum: reduce them in one place, get an equivalent more in another. But that's not how security works.
The analogy you give certainly does sound stupid, but nobody said that the effect was necessarily zero sum, what the sum is is in fact an empirical matter and the research was about precisely this question. Unlike passwords, it would not be all that surprising for it to be approximately zero sum in this case. Terrorists don't sit down and think 'how can I attack an airplane', they sit and think 'how can I cause maximum damage for minimum investment'. Against that kind of opponent, there's no point choosing one tactic and fortifying it beyond reason while leaving a million other options for someone pursuing a strategy of terror. The effective money is spent on identifying the criminals and countering them rather than cherry picking one or two specific techniques. You can see this in most historical counter terrorism efforts.
Very occasionally, it's effective to identify point fixes for things that are low hanging fruit for terrorists. Reinforced cockpit doors almost certainly were part of that. Almost everything else that's been done on air travel since? Not so much.
> Second, it's pulling a subtle slight of hand--the goal of airport security is NOT to reduce terrorist casualties overall. It is to reduce violent attacks of any kind on airplanes, specifically.
That's the job of the personnel at the airports. However, we want to know whether the TSA is a program that should be funded, funded at the level it currently is, or given the powers it currently is. That is a question about the most effective way to reduce terrorist casualties overall (or arguably limited to US citizens anyway). It's no sleight of hand to be concerned about efficiency in the measures we take as a society to combat terrorism.
> First, you cannot draw such a causal conclusion from statistical data alone.
It's not clear to me why you think that the burden of proof lies in that direction. We have a problem - terrorism. We take some expensive measures - over the top checks at airports. It's not "data wonky" to demand that the programs we've put in place are able to produce real evidence of effectiveness.
That said, the fact of the matter is that the article doesn't back up its claim that airport security doesn't reduce terrorist casualties overall. Instead it states some bizarre equivalence between the decline in the number of hijackings (-6.9) and the increase in the number of instances of other kinds of terrorism (+6.8). But clearly other forms of terrorism do not cause nearly as much death as plane hijackings do, which for each one numbers in the hundreds, so we could be talking about an integer factor decrease in the number of deaths from terrorist attacks - 4x, 5x, 6x - by merely replacing them with other, less destructive terrorism. After all, the relative destructiveness of a plane hijacking is WHY terrorists do it at all. Suddenly airport security seems to look a lot more effective and a lot more worth it. So obviously they didn't mention casualties at all, since it would undermine the point they are trying to make.
Everytime someone complains about security at the airport - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3dYS7PcAG4
People are enjoying an incredible privilege being able to fly in the air.
[citation needed]
Some hijackings have caused deaths in the hundreds, namely 9/11 style suicide hijackings. However this is the exception. Even post-9/11.
According to the list of hijackings on Wikipedia, of the 21 notable hijackinged since 2000, all the non-9/11 hijackings resulted in 5 victims killed (one accidentally when storming the plane).
Note that post-9/11 there appears to have been a substantial increase in instances where the passengers have overpowered the hijackers, presumably out of fear of terrorists planning on killing them all.
But overall, even including the WTC deaths, plane hijackings does not appear to have caused more than a few tens of victims on average; exclude the WTC dead, and the number is small - most hijackings in fact appears to have ended without any deaths.
And few of the deaths that do happen appears to have been intended by the hijackers (many of the deaths have occurred due to crashes as a result of struggles, or when the planes get stormed by security forces).
We had private screening services at airports before 9/11 and people still had to arrive 1+ hours early, and still complained about the hassle of security screenings.
Anyway, the airplane bomb plots are also quite shocking in light of the TSA: There's been a number of attempts post creation of the TSA that failed only because of the ineptness of the bombers rather than because of the TSA.
But this is also a different type of plot: In most airplane bombings, the passengers have had no means of identifying the bomber prior to the explosion. Most of them have been bombs placed under seats or in cargo compartments rather than things like the "shoe bomber".
Regardless of the above, I believe that even if you count the dead from all the airplane bomb plots with the hijackings, the average number of dead will not come out all that high compared to other forms of terrorism, unlike what the earlier commenter seemed to assume. Even quite a few of the bombs ends up with no fatalities, or a low number, and only a few of the bombs that have taken out whole planes have been larger planes, most have been smaller regional flights.
If you look at Wikipedias list of terrorist incidents, and choose a few years at random, a large number of the largest indicdents you find will be bombs in busy locations, or trains - airplane hijackings or bombs with large number of fatalities are rare occurrences in comparison.
Look at the deaths per hijacking incident before 9/11 - well before, when we might glean some useful data to compare.
If we ONLY had passwords because of phishing attacks, then it wouldn't be stupid to get rid of them (based on your statement) But we have passwords for other reasons. We don't have TSA for other reasons (well some people think we do, that is to find drugs)
That's like saying "all the army has done is ensure that someday an enemy will attack with weapons so devastating that the entire country will be destroyed in one foul swoop."
Saying that TSA security doesn't reduce terrorism risk is a reasonable argument (although I think it's wrong; consider the possibility of gun-toting yahoos wanting to be "safe" with "self-defense" and blowing a hole in the fuselage because they saw a suspicious brown person). But politically, saying to give up TSA security because it doesn't work is basically impossible. Voters will demand that politicians do something about the threat of terrorism.
Now, they can't stop it without looking "soft on terror". This is how bureaucracy goes awry (see "War on Drugs" for another example).
Lets try a Hollywood analogy. The execs tell the director to make a formulaic teen comedy. How long would a film director last if he replied, F those guys I'm making a documentary about the Soviet Gulag system and they're gonna like it because its for their own good.
The discussion is being carefully controlled by those in power to make sure that no one steps out of line and considers, maybe just for an instant, that possibly there could exist a form of expensive meaningless security theater that doesn't involve brutalizing the population.
No, they're subjecting us to the TSA for a reason that isn't security theater.
Stupidity, not malice.
It's as if after implementing all this theater, imposing myriads of restrictions, that they realized it was all ineffective, and now they're reframing the entire situation by acting as if they're catering to customers by offering a program that reverts things to how they were a little over a decade ago, but now for a fee.
a.k.a. the "sir we assure you that this is a completely random check" racial/gender/economic profiling
The TSA attendant, a Good Ol' Boy, asked "Do y'all have the Pre?"
I said I didn't know what it was. He cracked a grin and said "It don't matter, we don' got it anyhow". We then had a friendly chat about life in Australia before he waved me through.
so in other words, heightened airport security has worked.
I go through the TSA screening several times a month, and while I don't appreciate the invasion of privacy, it isn't really that big of a pain in the ass to stand in line for a few minutes and put all your bags through the scanner.
Why? Because of a statement I've seen attributed to Karl Denninger[0]: "One man's waste, fraud, abuse, scam, and theft is another man's paycheck."
If there were no need for TSA-compliant messenger bags, Timbuk2 would likely see a drop in revenues. If there were no TSA, a whole bunch of people employed as TSA agents would be out of work. I'd expect everyone making money off the current system of security theater to fight tooth and nail to preserve the money they're making.
[0] See e.g. http://www.market-ticker.org/akcs-www?singlepost=3149840
I looked at a couple of the products but couldn't quite work it out.
It was a weird time. Most young people either smoked pot or knew somebody who did. There wasn't much odd about them, although we were told that smoking pot was terrible. On the street, however, it was fairly obvious that this was an overreaction. To hear some folks talk, there was little difference between heroin and pot. That was obviously not true.
It took 50 years for common sense to get back into the system, and even now, when the change is starting, it might be another 10 or 20 years to fully reverse pot laws. I'm not a pot user, but I find this slowness-to-adapt to common sense amazing.
Unfortunately, the system isn't just glacial in fixing bad laws -- it's fairly quick to add new bad laws as we go along. TSA is the case in point. Just like the pot laws, we're constantly told that there is a terrible danger out there that we need protection from, even though it's blatantly obvious that this is an overreaction and power grab. Nobody seems to be driving the bus.
So I guess we'll go through 50 years of increasing TSA "supervision" of travel until we see some kind of sanity? And how many TSAs will we have by then? It's depressing to think about.
In fact I flew from South Africa to Europe 4 or 5 years back (in a large Airbus). No metal detector, no scanners, no taking-shoes-or-belt-of, just the quick scan of the carry on. Took 2 minutes, and I did not feel unsafe in any way.
911 cannot be repeated (as pointed out many times before). The TSA checks are a theater and everybody knows it.
we just had the 25 year anniversary of Lockerbie. that bomb not only killed all on board the plane, but a lot of people on the ground. no need to hijack.
and we now have a lot of suicide bombers, see just the last two days on Volgograd.
have the Israelis scaled down their anti-bomb detection measures? no? then neither should the west.
i fly a lot, internationally. i do not mind the checkpoints. i mind dying pre-maturely in a fireball.
Now, if we as this article suggests remove all security to get on flights. As someone planning such an incident, i.e. pull out a gun or other random acts of terror; It would follow that getting on a flight to do such a thing would be the best move. You literally have access to 200+ people with no where to run in a confined area, with no security. The reason flights are given security vs other places such as theaters etc is not some random act. It is cause of the specific threats that are posed by hijacked flights/weapons on flights that are fundamentally different from other locations.
(How fast would the cops get to someone who starts firing at people in any city with such high population density?, now compare that with what happens in a flight, you have no options, and once it starts you practically write off the people who are on the flight because you have no chance of saving them)
All big jets have fly-by-wire systems that could easily be remotely commanded. There's no reason why hijackers should be given control of the aircraft; indeed at this point the planes themselves could probably be programmed to refuse to point at the ground in urban areas outside of a glide path.
That leaves them with the option of blowing up the aircraft at inconvenient places. That's a significantly tough and narrow plan of attack.
Now I'll grant you if you're coming from Ramallah and you're flying to Pakistan through Turkey and Dubai you should probably give yourself and extra hour or two, but as long as have no nefarious motives and tell the truth you will be on your way. But this is true regardless of the color of your skin or religious beliefs. I have a friend who was doing something like that and he's white, very clearly Jewish and religious. (Often those stories you hear of the 3 hour long interrogations are because the dude was/is an active participant on the rock throwing attacks and they have pictures of him that he is unaware of...)
- Typically they still want you there 30 mins early to check-in and load the baggage.
- The pilot to passenger ratio makes them very expensive. A 20 minute flight for me is costlier than a 5 hour one to a major hub. I rarely pay for these out of my own pocket.
- Being a smaller operation your pilot can be very young and inexperienced.
- These planes are very small and at times get uncomfortably hot in the summer.
- The majority of crashes around here are from similarly sized aircraft. Always an uncomfortable reminder of what can go wrong.
- Flying in any kind of adverse weather can honestly be pretty terrifying in a smaller plane. If your lucky they'll delay or cancel it altogether.
- Sometimes your pilot will leave the window open and a wasp will fly in prior to take off. Sitting in the co-pilot seat in a cramped plane, it may be up to you to kill it :)
Overall I prefer the smaller flights in the summer, but I'll take the slow security for the safety of the bigger plane in winter.
Of course, you'll be much more limited by weather than a transport-class aircraft.
I guess I also need to point out that I didn't die on that trip. Not even once.