JD Fenech wrote: > Jon makes a valid point about what the 9/11 terrorists used for training > and coordination and how our system seems to be reacting to such things. > The homeland security people should be trying to think one step ahead of > would-be terrorists, rather than being reactive.
A lot easier said than done ... the would-be terrorist just have to come up with one idea. The security people have to come up with all possible ideas. Would-be terrorists have to get lucky just once. Security people can never make a mistake. Tough job. Clearly the aviation security people aren't doing everything right, but they've caught a few attempts now and have most likely discouraged many more. > Anything is dangerous if you let it be. People > should exercise a little reason and discretion instead of simply > blanket-banning or controlling entire classes of things to stop > terrorism, such as flight simulators (banning or dumbing-down) or > bottled water (sniff it, make them take a drink of it, etc). > All true, except the would-be terrorists don't seem to be as creative as they could be. They are still really fascinated with taking down airplanes because that is relatively spectacular and gets tons of press. Personally, if they stay distracted with the idea of airplanes, I'm happy because that means they aren't exploring any of 100 million other ideas to cause problems. Want to scare yourself? Watch the news for a month or two and see all the accidents and mistakes and whatnot that freak people out or cause death and destruction. Now think about how hard it would be for a would-be terrorist with no concern for his own life or future to replicate some of those same occurrences for as long as he can until he's caught. I'm happy they are stuck on airplanes right now. > To be honest, I'm surprised terrorists even want to use planes anymore. > Sure, they're a good way to efficiently kill a lot of people (if you can > get ahold of one), Planes = Fear + publicity + media, etc. that gives them a lot of what they are going for right now. > On the other hand, I'll risk being blown up if it means > that I get to retain my freedoms. (I'm not too worried about keywords. > I'm probably already on someone's watchlist.) > I will say that after I got married and had kids, my views on a lot of things changed. (but not the fact that I'm right) :-) Personally, when I travel I'd prefer to see my family and my kids again and will put up with a lot to minimize the risk of that not happening. I'd be first in line to vote for a device to put in everyone's car to force them to drive the speed limit past my house when my kids are out playing in the yard. When I was single and had only myself to worry about, I'd happily drive 100 mph down the wrong side of the freeway ... :-) There are things here that must be debated as a society, but it's easy to get distracted and start debating unimportant things. We (the world) needs to discuss the balance between security and convenience, liberty, and safety. Also, I feel it's important to make a key distinction: Crime == risk of 1 person (or a very small number of persons who probably deserved it or put themselves in a bad situation) being murdered. Terrorism == thousands of innocent people being slaughtered. BIG difference. We need to debate where we should draw the line between reacting to a crime after the fact versus preventing a terrorist act before it happens. I can accept a small and infrequent loss of life (i.e. crime) in return for general freedom and liberty. I can also accept people making their own choice to put themselves at risk (i.e. driving, eating junk food, smoking, etc.) But can we accept the loss of thousands of innocent lives and only react after the fact? I don't think I find this acceptable. Individually we can say we'd prefer to keep our freedoms and risk being blown up, but that's no good because what ever we do in terms of fighting terrorism versus accepting risk has to be done collectively as a society. One person can't say "don't profile me, don't suspect me, I don't mind being blown up" and another person "please check me carefully and violate any freedoms you want, I highly value my life." We don't get to decide that individually, society as a whole needs to draw the proper balance, but I just don't feel like the key issues are getting debated clearly. > Also, it's sometimes fun to leave something to the imagination, since > it's not like I'll ever join the mile high club. :-P That would be a quick way to get your flight diverted to the nearest airport and get yourself on the evening news. :-) Curt. -- Curtis Olson http://baron.flightgear.org/~curt HumanFIRST Program http://www.humanfirst.umn.edu/ FlightGear Project http://www.flightgear.org Unique text: 2f585eeea02e2c79d7b1d8c4963bae2d ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? 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