Is anyone else happy to just take their chances with regards to a terrorist attack?

Great Debates
1

After seeing the debacle in Boston this week (detailed here), I’ve started wondering something:

Is there anyone else out there who’s prepared to say “You know what? I’m happy to take my chances with regards to the whole terrorism thing, if it means I don’t have to take my shoes off before getting on a plane, deal with the city grinding to a standstill everytime some idiot leaves their gym bag on the train, or have to show my driver’s licence at the Post Office every time I mail a parcel overseas.”

I fail to see how preventing me from bringing a bottle of water on a flight is doing anything except increasing profits for the airlines by forcing me to pay for one on the plane*. I fail to see how recording my driver’s licence details when I mail christmas gifts makes the world safer. I fail to see why people on the other side of town need to be inconvenienced by something that’s happened in the centre of the city, especially if it hasn’t involved some sort of actual explosive detonation.

IMHO, the whole thing is just getting out of hand. I feel less safe as a result of all the paranoid security precautions, and when I read threads like the one linked to earlier, I shake my head and wonder what the fuck happened to the world.

*Budget airlines in Australia charge you for refreshments

2

I believe the best defense is a good offense. I would junk most of security rules, the one that provide little or no benefit, and spend the money on the active penetration and disruption of terrorist groups and regimes. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who can legally carry a weapon on the ground should be able to do so on an aircraft.

3

I’ve posted along those lines here before. IMO, the “inconvenience” imposed by certain measures exceeds the marginal increases in safety. It strikes me as ludicrous for anyone to experience a major airport and think this is the best system an ostensibly developed nation could come up with. And so many “security” measures seem aimed at creating the appearance of security, rather than actually providing any benefit. Add to that that I’m a big fan of personal privacy, which seems to take a big hit by most security measures.

But there are many folks who seem to think that any inconvenience or intrusion is warranted if there is any chance of increased safety.

4

Certain measures are overkill; other’s aren’t. The necessity of the inspection of shoes was shown by Richard Reid; the restrictions on fluids were plainly silly. The question is, where do you draw the line? Terrorists only have to be successful once.

5

And what if they are? They still manage to kill far less people than die on the roads. Or die from untreated influenza. Or die from any number of much more common causes which, in reality, are much more likely to affect a normal mortal than the remote possibility of a terrorist attack.

If only the multiple billions of dollars spent on ‘anti-terrorism’ to prevent maybe a couple thousand deaths would be spent on cancer research to prevent tens of thousands of deaths…

But people in their illogical ways are much more afraid of something big and splashy (albeit exceedingly rare) happening to them than they are of the things which will actually kill them.

6

So what should the airlines do when some other goofball gets on a plane with a bomb hidden in their colon?

7

It is paranoia, pure and simple. There are risks that are far more common that nobody cares about because they aren’t as sensational. Like getting struck by lightning. People who freak out every time they see a U-Haul truck parked on the side of the road are just being hypocritical if they aren’t also wearing lightning rods on their heads.

Thats what I think anyway. Too much money is being thrown away to appease a few paranoid people. Next century when they write a sequel to “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds”, this will be the topic of the first chapter.

8

I’ve got mixed feelings, myself, Martini Enfield. The first thing to remember is that any effective security arrangement is going to be inconvenient. In fact, I suspect it can be accurately summed up that security is usually effective in direct proportion to how much of an inconvenience it is.

So, any effective measures are going to be time-consuming, and a nuisance.

Having said that, I also believe that with respect to most of the additional safety measures that have been instituted lately that they’re mostly or all show, and no real substance. Some of the changes since 9/11 make a good deal of sense to me - the increased security and screening for getting on airplanes makes sense to me. I’m not as sure about the whole “no bottles that might be liquid or gel explosives” thing, but most of it just seems a sensible reaction to seeing how devastating a multi-ton aircraft moving at high speed can be, when used as a weapon.

(BTW, I really, really, really don’t want to see people carrying handguns on planes, myself. Unless you’re loaded with non-penetrating loads, I suspect that any firing would depressurize the cabin - which can be just as deadly as anything else one can name. Does anyone remember that Greek airliner crash?)

But most of the legal and procedural changes aside from those, that have been instituited since 9/11, seem to be doing one of two things (If not both.): Increasing the powers and size of the government with no other discernable benefit; and establishing the precedent that civil rights are granted to citizens by the government. Both of these things are things that bother me greatly.

The fiasco in Boston, however, is based on something else - it’s the assumption that if you don’t recognize what something is, or why it’s there, it must be a terrorist attack. And that kind of reasoning really seems a bit over the top. Perhaps it’s the trickster in me, but my first guess when I heard what the icons were was that it had to be just a slightly more technological version of graffitti. A nuisance, perhaps - but not a danger. It’s very different from the British flail last year with the ‘fake’ bombs that some idiot artist put up around the Underground. Those were designed to look like bombs, complete with nails sticking out.

Anyways, to get back to the OP - I am inclined to agree. I’m not going to advocate throwing out all the changes since 9/11, but most of them, yes. Part of being a free people means that you can’t have perfect security. For that matter, Benjamin Franklin was likely right when he said, “They that would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The devil, of course, is being in defining what one considers essential liberty.

9

I have frequently flown on the most secure airline.

Once the security guy said ‘you have done this more often than me’ (sic)

I resent having to check in my Swiss Army knife, but I have an X-Ray friendly corkscrew made of carbon fibre that both serves its function and would be useful in a scrap.

10

I think it’s been shown by numerous academic studies that people are bad at risk assessment.

If we tackled auto accidents in the ham-handed way we have taken on the prospect of a terrorist attack we would be driving 20 mph and the number of autos on the road would be limited to one every half mile.

11

As I’ve said before, the national response to terrorism was to completely abandon any rational approach to addressing risk. Roughly 3,000 people in the United States have died from Islamic terrorism. Adding up the costs of the various wars in the Middle East since then and various agencies dedicated to fighting terrorism, we’ve spent more than two hundred million dollars for each victim.

If a rare disease had claimed a total of one American life, we would not spend two hundred million dollars fighting that disease.

Politicians fight terrorism because it’s good politics; the very low risk of getting blown up by a wacky religious fundamentalist grips the mind much more than the higher but more prosaic risks that are often the fault of the same corporations that hire the politicians. The Republicans in particular found it useful to pump up hysteria about terrorism. That strategy worked very well for two elections; now that it’s failed on the third try, they may choose to let terrorism dwindle from the public consciousness.

In any case the issue can’t dominate public debate forever. In the last five years, more people in the United States have been shot by Vice Presidents than blown up by Islamic terrorists.

12

[QUOTE=OtakuLokiHaving said that, I also believe that with respect to most of the additional safety measures that have been instituted lately that they’re mostly or all show, and no real substance. [/QUOTE]

I have to agree. Most of these measures seem designed to soothe the public by making it* look *like they’ve vamping security, in reality, the things which would make air travel really safer are sacrificed on the altar of cost. (Such as screening all checked baggage.)

13

Nope. I disagree. Actually, they have to be successful many times if a society approaches the problem of relatively infrequent acts of terrorism rationally. If terrorists only have to be successful once, it is because of the irrationally extreme reaction by society to their acts. Fearing fear itself, and all that.

I’ve often argued, and often gotten yelled at here for it, that the current state of security basically makes every single airline passenger a potential criminal, subject to denial of passage and arbitrary search and seizure of goods with little or no legal recourse. The fundamental concept of presumption of innocence has been thrown out the window, and now that it’s gone for the specific case of airline travel, it can be pointed to by the authoritarians among us as justification for being taken away everywhere else.

I’m thus highly in favor of rolling back airline gate security at least to pre-9/11 levels (oh, you can let the TSA keep doing the screening if you want).

My aplogies to anyone who takes this to mean I don’t care whether they live or die, as seems to be the case whenever I bring up this idea.

14

A couple months ago I was flying back from Midway, Chicago to Jackson, Mississippi.

While I was in Chicago I had the power supply go out on my laptop so I picked up some screwdrivers to try to fix it (successfully, though I took 110VAC at one point :rolleyes: ). Anyways, I had stuck the big screwdriver in my checked bag, or so I thought…

I’m going through security, they stop me after the xray and ask if I have anything questionable in there. Thinking that it was one of he precision screwdrivers that I had gotten, I say something like, “Shit, I must have left my screwdriver in there. Just toss it.” They guy refuses to ‘just toss it’, and calls his supervisor over to get me the okay to take a FULL-SIZED screwdriver onto the plane in my carry-on.

Now, I’m sure my being a white male with no feriner accent was the real reason…but let’s all remember this story the next time you have to give up your two-inch long nail scissors.

-Joe

15

You’re worried about the precedent and rights you’ve lost as an airline passenger? I’m furious about the precedent and rights lost to anyone who is trying to enter a court building these days. Why is the government so scared of the people? And why do court workers get a bye on screening, while air crew on airliners don’t? I’d think, given the history of workplace shootings, that there’s reason to think that the workers there are at least as much a potential threat as Joe Schmo.

16

Unhappily, this statistic can be widely broadcast to show that the current methods you working.

You know. Like the guy leaning against the corner lamppost and who is keeping lions off the street.

17

So, the fact that I’m a stinking liberal means I’m less likely to get shot by our bald Co-President who has all the heart attacks? Sweet!

-Joe

18

Yes, the same people who will cry “why didn’t they do more to prevent it!” when a terrorist attack actually happens.

I’m tired of people who live in the suburbs and nth tier cities and fly once a year adding their two cents of what they think adequate security measure should be. Basic common sense tells you that you need to take more security precations with an airplane than a bus or train for the simple fact that you can’t simply pull the aircraft over and let everyone off. If that means you have to wait in line to make sure that some moron doesn’t bring something dangerous on board, so be it. I fly frequently and it’s not like it’s that big a deal to wait 10 minutes to go through security.

Some things like turning in your nailclippers are stupid. But the basic idea is sound - every item carried on is scanned by some device for weapons, explosives and other items that don’t need to be on an aircraft. And it only takes a few minutes. The reality is that security cannot be 100% foolproof because you have to sacrifce some safety on the alter of not taking three hours to get to your flight.
The entire reasoning of the thread is flawed. Terrorist attacks are not like automobile accidents. Car accidents are distinct events that kill a handfull of people with each event. A single terrorist attack can kill hundreds or in some cases thousands. In the case of 9/11 it cost billions in terms of damage and economic loss.

19

I think the OP, and some of the follow on posts, are conflating different situations.

Security in airports is a reasonable intrusion because

A) the stakes are unusually high, since once person, undetected, can kill a large number of people with relative ease, more so than, say, on a Boston street.

B) It’s possible to actually prevent people from bringing weapons on board commercial airliners with existing safety measures, in 99.9% of cases, using methods that really aren’t as much of an inconvenience as is being suggested here, whereas it is not reasonably possible to prevent someone from bringing a weapon into the City of Boston.

C) Air travel is voluntary and airports aren’t a place where you have much of an expectation of privacy. In any event, nobody spends THAT much time in airports, unless you work there. Boston, on the other hand, is a place where people actually spend their lives.

As Lissa points out, the REALLY valuable process would be screening all checked baggage. Of course, that would cost big bux.

Not to bust too hard on what’s just an analogy, but that doesn’t actually make any sense. Measures to increase airline security have not involved reducing the speed of airliners or reducing their number, and there is essentially no security at all with regards to personal aircraft. The equivalent act would be to screen everyone who gets on a city bus for weapons and explosives.

For all the hoo-ha in this thread, is is REALLY that much harder to get on a plane? The main difference I’ve noticed is you usually have to take your shoes off, and for the last few months you’d had to check liquids, which I personally love because it’s meant slightly fewer idiots bringing huge suitcases on as “carry on.” You never WERE technically allowed to bring knives and that sort of shit on board. The security process was always dreary and slow.

20

The problem with airline security is one of (lack of) cost-benefit analysis. Is it really worth billions of dollars a year to keep one idiot per decade from hijacking a plane?

The risk is extremely low. It is not that there shouldn’t be any security, but why is the money spent on it so ridiculously far out of proportion to the risk?