----- Original Message -----
From: "Derek Martin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Jon 'maddog' Hall, Executive Director, Linux International"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, September 20, 2001 10:34 PM
Subject: Re: Home again, and a glimpse of the future
[snip]
> > 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!!
(or that you could frighten them to death with a Windows XP cd, WITHOUT
breaking it!)
>
> 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.
After all, people in the most secure places in the country (prisons) make
fatal weapons ALL THE TIME and use them effectively. We can't effectively
limit airline passengers to the same resources that prisoners are allowed,
can we? (Strip them; give them airline-issued outfits to wear with no metal
buckles and no strings or cords, and keep all their possessions in a paper
envelope, to be reissued to them on deplaning.) Not practical at all.
>
> 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.
Many airline pilots are ex-military, and some are not. I think the choice to
carry a weapon or not should be the pilot's (or other crew member.) If they
are willing to take that responsibility, fine, then we should use the
resource. If they don't want to carry a gun, then we can put the marshall on
the plane. A marshall could be a permanent or semi-permanent addition to the
weaponless crews.
>
> - 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...)
(Don't need to ask. I understand that the marshalls use rubber bullets to
prevent decompressions.)
>
> - 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.
That you need to explain...to me anyway. :o) How would you guarantee that
some terrorists would be in one section and the rest would be in another?
Wouldn't families want to sit together? Wouldn't terrorists figure this out
and claim to be members of the same family?
>
> 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.
Knowing that your plane could potentially be used as a flying bomb helps
too. Up to this point, most hijackers wanted to go somewhere, get money, and
escape, leaving the passengers and crew alive and mostly unhurt. Flying the
plane into the ground is overkill if this is the expected result.
>
> 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.
Again, it depends on what you expect will happen. See above. The passengers
that DID rebel knew their fate, so there was nothing to lose.
>
> 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.
Now that we all know what could or most likely will be the outcome of future
hijackings, I'm sure everyone will want to fight the hijackers.
[snip good if somewhat obvious points]
Rich Cloutier
SYSTEM SUPPORT SERVICES
President, C*O
www.sysupport.com
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