On Thu, Sep 20, 2001 at 01:52:58PM -0400, Jon 'maddog' Hall, Executive Director, Linux
International wrote:
> And of course the careful packing job I did was not duplicated on return of
> the suitcase.
This is something that really burns me...
I consider the airplanes, terminals, and airports the property of
their respective owners (whether or not they are government agencies);
as such I think they have a right to ask you to subject your luggage
to search for items which represent a risk to them and their
passengers, such as bombs, electronic devices that could interfere
with proper operation of the plane, etc. You DO have a choice after
all -- don't fly on their airplanes.
However, I don't believe that does not give airline employees the
right to man-handle your possessions. I'll get back to this in a
second...
> Of course I did not tell her how I could use the wires from the airline
> telephone and the power source still in my laptop to do anything that I could
> have done with my cables and AA batteries.....and more.
>
> Or that a CDROM broken in half makes a fantastic knife....very sharp!!
This is another really good point. Where do you draw the line? The
fact is, many every-day common items can be used just as effectively,
or more effectively, as weapons as items actually intended as weapons
can. For example, with a ball point pen you could potentially stab
someone and cause a fatal injury. With a pair of reading glasses, I
can make 4 weapons to pass out to my terrorist buddies: two glass
lenses (slashing weapons) and two earpieces (slashing or stabbing
weapons). A laptop computer can be used as a blunt weapon,
potentially enabling an assailant to crush your skull. Certain
household items can be carried onboard by seperate individuals and
combined onboard to make a bomb capable of taking down the aircraft.
How do you effectively combat these types of threats? You really
can't do it by searching people's luggage at the terminal, and c'mon
people, taking away the plastic eating utensils from airport lounges
is just silly. Airport staff should take reasonable precautions to
ensure that you are not carrying explosive devices on board their
airplanes, but tearing through every nook and cranny of your suitcase
and making a mess of your personal belongings is probably going way
overboard. Most devices capable of taking down a plane will be fairly
obvious to people who look for them for a living... There's only one
way to effectively combat the kinds of small, personal threats which I
describe above, that I can see: average citizens must take an active
roll in their own defense.
Now, there are probably some things airlines could do on the planes to
improve the hijacking situation in a general sense. Some suggestions
I have would be:
- Bullet-proof the cockpit, with a window in the door so that the
pilots can see if the flight attendants are accompanied by bad guys.
It should be HARD for terrorists to get in there.
- Many, if not most airline pilots are former military. Give them
guns. They already know how to use them.
- Have air marshalls fly on large numbers of flights (this has some
potential problems associated with it, which I won't go into unless
someone asks...)
- Firewall off the sections of the airplane. This could serve two
useful purposes: 1) contain the terrorists to one compartment and 2)
split up terrorist to keep them disorganized and out of
communication.
All of these options offer some potential benefits. But in the case
of the recent hijackings, the best option would be to have a passenger
base which is informed about the threats to their safety, and educated
about how to defend themselves. And of course, willing to do it.
According to reports, there were typically 4 men involved in each
plane hijacking. These men were armed with knives with smaller than
4" blades. With roughly 100 or more other people on board each of
these planes, I'm almost embarrased for our country that these people
were successful in taking control of the plane. Almost, but I'm
fairly certain that if I were there, I would have sat in my seat, much
like all the rest of the passengers.
But what would have been the outcome if just a handful of brave souls
on each plane fought back? After all, the terrorists were weilding
only knives... the odds are you'd get cut if you resisted, but that's
better than being dead, isn't it? And if those passengers who
resisted knew how to defend themselves, their odds of being injured
would be that much more deminished, and the odds of them succeeding in
putting down the terrorist threat would be that much more enhanced.
And where is the harm in learning to defend yourself? It will
probably have other positive effects, like improving your overall
physical condition, too.
We've now seen that we have real enemies in the world, people who are
willing to sacrifice their own lives to hurt us; they are willing to
die to cause injury to the average citizen of this country. There is
very little defense against this type of enemy, other than to stop
them before they accomplished their mission. The ONLY people who
could have done that were the passengers and/or crew members on board
those planes. My favorite quote from Thomas Jefferson is, "The price
of freedom is eternal vigilence." While the specific circumstances
may be somewhat far from what Jefferson might have imagined, this
scenario is EXACTLY what he was talking about. The bottom line is in
most circumstances, the person most able to protect you from threats
is YOU. The choice that terrorists seem to be leaving us with is a
simple one: be prepared to defend yourself, or be prepared to die.
In the coming months, as our government attempts to retaliate for the
attacks against our civilization, I think it is not unreasonable to
assume that terrorist groups led by Osama bin Laden, and others which
support his goals, will try to weaken our resolve by further terrorist
activity inside our borders. If I were a terrorist, that's what I'd
do. Each time the U.S. attacks some target in the middle east, a new
round of terrorist attacks. I would not be at all surprised if this
is what bin Laden is planning. I hope I am prepared to defend myself,
and I hope you all are too.
> Finally, in Newark airport I went to have some lunch, and found that I had
> no knife of any type, metal or plastic, at the lunch counter. Luckily I had
> gotten an omlet as the main course, but ever try to spread cream cheese from
> a single-serving container on a begal with a large spoon?
Heh... I initially mis-read this type-o as "beagle", and envisioned
maddog chasing a small dog around an airport lounge with a plastic spoon
slathered with cream cheese. I hope that amuses you as much as it did
me... =8^)
--
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Derek Martin | Unix/Linux geek
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Retrieve my public key at http://pgp.mit.edu
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