No matter what type of security they put in place at airports, there is still going to be a way for hijackers to take control of an aircraft with the present system in place.
Why doesn’t the FAA adopt an interim security measure that searched each passenger and their baggage before they can fly. This would immediately get passenger back into the air and on to their destination.
In the mean time they should be installing a system on each aircraft that allows the plane to be remotely controlled from a ground station. This would solve many problems and make hijacking obsolete.
Here’s how I see this working:
The ground controller would radio the aircraft when it deviates or shows strange behavior. The pilot would radio back with an encrypted response matching the ground. If no such response is forthcoming the ground control would lock out all control of the jet until the criteria is met. If it isn’t met, such as the case with a hijacking or an unconscious pilot, they would then route the jet to the nearest accompanying destination, land the aircraft and investigate the situation.
The technology for this already exists and is probably somewhat in place.
By encrypting the transmissions, a would-be hijacker has no way of gaining access or fooling the ground control. Moreover, there would be no way for an alternate - unauthorized ground control to take over an aircraft.
There is no doubt that this system would be expensive and time consuming to install but if it were phased in over time the impact would be negligible and the outcome would be safer skies and ground.
Basically, one assumes all hijacker action from within the cockpit is worse that any hijacker action from outside the cockpit. As such, keep the pilot locked in the cockpit from origin to destination.
Doable, but needs a little work with current technologies – the bandwidth needed for such a “remote flying” system would be fairly large, and depending on the distance between the plane and the station, could require a fair chunk of power. Still, those problems can be overcome, and for an emergency situation, a less-than-perfect crudely-controlled system might be sufficient.
In a similar vein, how about a computer override? When the cockpit lets ground control know there’s trouble, the control tower sends an encoded binary “key” to the plane. On-board computers confirm the key, then automatically take over, flying the plane to a preassigned area for a landing (and subsequent investigation from airport security). You would lock out the manual controls, naturally, and the only way to reset the system would be for ground control to broadcast another “all clear” key. This is all very doable with current technologies, and would at most require some advanced planning from the FAA.
I disagree. Just by creating the ability to control aircraft remotely would create more terrorist acts. Hack the encryption (and all encryption is eventually hacked anyway) and you can crash planes all day and don’t have to be anywhere near them or kill yourself doing it.
One simple, cheap and easy solution (as someone else in another thread noted) has already been done by Israel: put armed guards on each plane, perhaps even with a lighter standard of proper use of deadly force. Maybe something like “If passenger X doesn’t sit down and shut up, then shoot him”.
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-The problem here is that a small number of people who aren’t hijackers will probably end up getting killed early on; like, say, beligerent drunks. That will probably only happen a couple times before alcohol service is removed from aircraft and drunks aren’t allowed to board, and from then I’d bet that hijackings will drop way off. - MC
If you have any understanding of encryption technology you would not say this. Currently there are several levels of encryption; 40-bit, where there are billions of possible keys to decipher it, where only one will work, yet is not considered secure. 128-bit has 300 billion trillion times as many keys as 40-bit and is considered secure for most civilian encryption needs.
Now we would be talking about 256-bit encryption for the F.A.A. to control the planes. 256-bit is exponentially more secure and is already being used by most Federal agencies including the Department of Commerce.
It is difficult to equate how hard it would be to decipher but consider this; If you had a million IBM ASCI White supercomputers, each capable of performing more than 1,000 trillion calculations per second, or 1,000 teraflops, or 1 petaflop, running 24/7 you MIGHT be able to decypher the original 256-bit encryption after 268,000 years. I am certain the originating code would have expired after 24 hours.
As for placing armed guards on each flight, while this might work as a deterrent, it has been argued that this is just another way to get a gun onboard. 3-4 assailants against one armed guard would be a breeze, especially considering the suicide mentality of some terrorist. Moreover, should the guard misfire his weapon while the cabin is pressurized, which is most of the time, you would have even more problems. I hope he doesn’t hit the wing!
-Waneman
Fine…give the planes remote controls. If the code is too difficult to crack, terrorists will just go to the towers and control the planes from there.
The strip-search idea is crap too. That is a total suspension of American rights. I don’t think that anyone would stand for it.
The part that pisses me off is that the terrorists reportedly took over the planes with the use of knives. Why the hell didn’t anyone of those passengers just kick their asses? I have a hard time believing that not one person on those planes had the cojones to go “Passenger 57” on those guys!
What about quantum computers? It’ll be a while before they come into widespread use, but from what I’ve heard, a sufficiently powerful quantum computer could theoretically try all the possible keys at once.
This is a true and valid point. One distinction that might be made here is that should a terrorist group come into ownership of a quantum computer and actually know how to program the algorithm array, then they could have just as easily built a weapon of mass destruction such as a nuclear device.
Although there is a deluge of research being done on how a quantum computer could be build, none actually exist outside theory. Eventually the problem of quantum coherence and a suitable programming schema will be developed but we are talking many years. Once there is a working model and even production models, they would be closely regulated so that they can’t be used to circumvent what ever level of encryption is being used at that time.
To that end, I would hasten to guess that since we already are using 128-bit encryption for securing our most valuable documents and transactions, we would move up to a multi-dimensional matrix of operators rather than the linier keys currently in use. This would make the quantum computers ability to factor this matrix impossible.
Oh, and too true Tyklfe, but when it’s not safe to be setting at your desk…
Sorry, I’ll refrain from posting using the title of a well known movie to illustrate a point. That point being, I would have attempted to kick some ass. I am not, nor have I ever been, someone who could be bullied.
While I agree with your desire to be able to have done something - and I’m sure every American feels the same. What we need to keep in mind is that we aren’t privy to what was told to the passengers or what they were seeing. Case in point: Would you have lashed out at them had they been holding a remote to which they told you would blow up the jet? Remember, as a passenger, you don’t know what their eventual goal will be.
It has to be safe to fly soon- I am stuck on Maui and I need to start my classes in California on Tuesday. Forget fear, I have places to go!
I can think of one way of enhancing total safety, but it isn’t a pretty one. First, we disallow carry-ons entirely, and perhaps institute full body searches and the like to ensure that there are no weapons in the cabin. We also carry luggage in seperate cargo-only flights. Perhaps this could be arranged by having one big daily luggage drop off along each major route, and finding ground transport or something to get it from there to smaller airports. This would cause major delays in luggage handling, but would certainly teach us all to pack light. Perhaps as back up we also employ cockpit seals, Air Marshalls and other measures.
All of this would make air travel expensive and a royal pain in the ass. I must emphasize, however, that it would not be a violation of your rights. Air travel is not a fundamental freedom, nor is it provided by the government. Airlines are free to make searches a requirement for boarding, and to handle luggage in any way that they see fit. A ticket purchase is a contract, and the airlines are free to set the terms.
I don’t see any of this really happening, but I do wonder what surprises await me at the airport (assuming that I ever get to go home!)
WTC is the first time that hijackers have used the aircraft as a weapon, which caught everyone off guard.
Until Tuesday, every hijacker just wanted to divert the plane somewhere, land it, and make demands.
Apparently on United 93 the passengers started to attack the hijackers as soon as they heard the WTC had already been struck.
I predict this will happen again with all future hijackings. No passenger or crew member will believe that a terrorist trying to take over a plane has non-lethal intentions.
SMUsax, this has already been gone over: they could not take over the control towers if they are in military bases surrounded by troops.
As for the OP, I agree with Tyclfe: It never was safe to fly, in the same way that it its not safe to cross the street or drive a car. In fact its far safer to fly, and just because of this incident it doesn’t mean that its suddenly less safe to fly. Hell, its probably safer, due to all the safety measures they will now introduce.
Yeah, I’m having cowardly selfish thoughts, and probably rather pointless. I’m in South Korea now. I’ll be flying back to Canada in about two months. Although I know that a Korea - Canada flight is a fairly low-risk one, and that things might be quite a bit different in two months, I can’t help but feel a little bit nervous at the thought of flying back home.
Go figure. This either makes me an idiot, a coward, or a bit of both.