Jet Lagged Zzzzzzz
The NY Times ran a series of OP-Ed pieces during the holidays concerning flying. Commercial airline pilot Patrick Smith delivered one of the best pieces with Security Follies.
In his piece Smith comments, “Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful and pointless.”
Examples of the practical and effective measures are explosive scanning for checked luggage
Aspects of the absurdity ones are passenger pat downs and confiscation of their pointy objects…
Oh and lets not forget the mandatory shoe removal…
Smith then elaborates on why such matters are absurd one point that really stood out was,” Conventional wisdom says the terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard box-cutters. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings.
In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail.
For several reasons — particularly the awareness of passengers and crew — just the opposite is true today. Any hijacker would face a planeload of angry and frightened people ready to fight back.”
In an essence we are spending billions of taxpayers dollars to thwart an attack that has already happen.
He then laments of the stupidity of the liquid and gel restrictions that are a result of the breakup of a London-based cabal that was planning to blow up jetliners using liquid explosives.
Everything surrounding this was blown out of proportion as the leaders of this plot were still in the process of recruiting, lacked passports, airline tickets and never produced liquid explosives.
On top of that the actual notion of someone mixing together explosive liquids together in an airplane restroom is pure fiction…
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That aside the most important an aspect of the piece is how willing the American people to go along with these stupid procedures with no resistance at all. Not even a whimper of outrage.
Then in typical American fashion instead of finding ways to improve our policies we find ways to profit from them with things like the Registered Traveler in which you pay to have your personal information on file just to avoid the hassle of airport security….
Fear is a powerful weapon….
Please read Patrick Smith’s article
In his piece Smith comments, “Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful and pointless.”
Examples of the practical and effective measures are explosive scanning for checked luggage
Aspects of the absurdity ones are passenger pat downs and confiscation of their pointy objects…
Oh and lets not forget the mandatory shoe removal…
Smith then elaborates on why such matters are absurd one point that really stood out was,” Conventional wisdom says the terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard box-cutters. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings.
In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail.
For several reasons — particularly the awareness of passengers and crew — just the opposite is true today. Any hijacker would face a planeload of angry and frightened people ready to fight back.”
In an essence we are spending billions of taxpayers dollars to thwart an attack that has already happen.
He then laments of the stupidity of the liquid and gel restrictions that are a result of the breakup of a London-based cabal that was planning to blow up jetliners using liquid explosives.
Everything surrounding this was blown out of proportion as the leaders of this plot were still in the process of recruiting, lacked passports, airline tickets and never produced liquid explosives.
On top of that the actual notion of someone mixing together explosive liquids together in an airplane restroom is pure fiction…
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
That aside the most important an aspect of the piece is how willing the American people to go along with these stupid procedures with no resistance at all. Not even a whimper of outrage.
Then in typical American fashion instead of finding ways to improve our policies we find ways to profit from them with things like the Registered Traveler in which you pay to have your personal information on file just to avoid the hassle of airport security….
Fear is a powerful weapon….
Please read Patrick Smith’s article
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