I am willing to give up the priviledge of low-cost airfare (as prices will rise to make up the costs of hiring, training, and equipment) and quick boarding.
I am not willing to give up my rights to avoid unreasonable searches, especially those of my communications such as cell phone dialogues or e-mail.
An important concern to me is that fluctuations in the airline industry are economically dangerous. We were already in a time of profit loss and corporate consolidation/mergers.
I am unaware of exactly how elastic ticket demand is relative to price and/or service, and I am personally hesitant to personally promote any campaign which could rock the boat of an already struggling industry.
I remain thoroughly unconvinced that heightened airport security will achieve any benefit, and I don’t think it could have prevented these particular incidents at all. The only plan I have heard worth any merit IMO is the Sky Marshall plan, which I would prefer to pay through taxation in some way not related to the cost of an airline ticket.
I would love for many of the conveniences of air travel to be taken away. This whole thing seemed way to easy to pull off. Many people seem to have the attitude that “If we let take away our rights, then the terrorists have won.”
True. But when we confuse our conveniences for rights, they have also won. Shouldn’t we try to prevent this from happening again, if it’s possible? Not by violating random peoples’ privacy, but by making plane travel safer. Get better trained people to work scanners. Make it harder, or impossible, to get into a cockpit. Make it harder, or impossible, to bring a carry-on onto a plane.
I’d give up all these conveniences. I think that people who can’t distinguish between essential liberties and non-essential conveniences deserve neither liberty nor convenience.
I have no complaints.
The police can only search without a warrant if:
There is reasonable suspicion that the delay to obtain a warrant would result in destruction or loss of evidence of a crime.
There is visible evidence of a crime, e.g. giant marijuana plants on the windowsill.
There is a danger that the resident is actively armed.
Phone lines can only be tapped without recourse to a judge if the subject is a terrorist, a subversive person or a known criminal.
I believe that stop and search is subject to strict criteria, but I would agree these are probably open to interpretation and are abused.
I would willingly give up my temporary right to life to ensure an eternal right to freedom for everyone or anyone else. That is the only right I will ever give up.
You are mistaken if you think that you or anyone else can take a right, they must be given freely, like inviting a vampire into your home. Freely giving up my rights I refuse to do, by the authority of my government or anyone else.
Terrorists or no terrorists, I will not accept any curtailment of my inalienable rights. These rights have little to do with earthly events, and certainly do not depend on any person or government for their existence. If anyone thinks they can now take away my/our rights because madmen have chosen to commit evil, the Fedgoons will have another war to deal with.
I’m going to buy more ammo…
Those who sell their liberty for security are understandable, if pitiable, creatures. Those who sell the liberty of others for wealth, power, or even a moment’s respite deserve only the end of a rope. - - L.Neil Smith
Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. - Patrick Henry, of Virginia, Virginia’s U.S. Constitution ratification convention
“Those who trade essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety.” - Benjamin Franklin
In other words, 23skidoo, we should change our way of life out of fear of terrorist attacks and give up conveniences when there are means available to avoid terrorist attacks without removing convenience.
I disagree.
I have to agree with the majority of posters on this topic. I love my life in America, and I won’t give up any of my freedoms. I guess we’re not innocents anymore and I’ll have to be more vigilant and get through inconveniences, but I’ll still get out and go shopping, see movies, and do what I want, when I want. I do feel that the nation’s borders must be strictly enforced, and that the airlines be held firmly accountable for security. I also think that immigrants must be highly scrutinized before being granted citizenship. I can hardly believe that this great nation of ours trained these abominations who used our technology against us.
The problem is not so much training, but complacency. We haven’t had a hijacking in something like 10 years. That’s a long, long time to sit in front of a monitor and see nothing happen. Given that the vast, vast majority of passengers are law-abiding I-just-wanna-get-where-I’m-going citizens, it’s all too easy to become complacent unless you swing too far in the other direction (El Al).
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This has been my favorite solution, as it’s the only way currently feasible to prevent using aircraft as missiles. I heard a rumor that airlines are considering training the pilots not to give up control of the aircraft, no matter what the circumstances. That’s just rumor, but I do hope it’s true.
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This will not prevent getting weapons on board. There is no solution short of strip-searching that can garauntee no one will ever get a weapon on board. Not that carry-on baggage is a right, of course. The airline can make their own rules about baggage. But it would certainly be a tremendous inconvenience for minimal gain, if any. Thousands upon thousands of people may not take reading material or laptops onto the plane, yet you’ll still be able to get a weapon on board. Carry-on baggage may be a convenience, but I still don’t see the point is disallowing it. Deliberately making air travel inconvenient is not the answer, as I really don’t think these guys cared whether or not they could check their bags at the curb, or could bring a laptop on board.
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Well, then enlighten me. At what point does my right to be secure in my person, house, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures end for the convenience of proving to you that I don’t have a knife on me? Make no mistake about it, regulations set forth by the FAA are, in fact, federal law. They are acts of government, to which the constitution is applicable.
The original question had been: What rights would you be willing to give up to prevent “the possibility of events like [11 Septembers] recurring.” I have to ask, particularly given your position about rights vs. conveniences (and those who deserve niether), what exactly are you trying to prevent?
With current security measures, including the new curb-side checking, etc, it is still possible (and not even difficult) to bring deadly weapons onto aircraft. If the goal is, in fact, to prevent these events from occuring, then I suggest we examine possibilities that will have a meaningful effect. Policies of “no carry-ons” and “no curb-side checking” will not have this effect, regardless of whether these are conveniences or rights. So why waste our time arguing about what they are? I’d be willing to give up conveniences if, by doing so, some meaningful effect would be achieved.
And, of course, the question wasn’t what conveniences, but what rights. The answer, again, is still none.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Beelzebubba *
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I apprecite your opinions, but please do not continue to mistake the title for this thread for the question I asked, which I clearly set out in the first sentence of my OP, and reiterated in a subsequent response. My question was, and remains:
*what rights/freedoms/conveniences would you give up in the hopes that doing so would decrease the possibility of events like yesterday’s recurring? *
Since when is unsafe air travel part of what Americans hold dear? My point was that convenience is not a right. There already have been safeguards in place to try and make air travel more safe for a long time, out of fear that people will be bringing weapons onto planes. If the things I suggested are too “out there”, what about metal detectors? What about x-ray scanners? Aren’t these ideas in place because people are afraid of what might happen if they are not in place? Should we get rid of these ideas too, to show terrorists we aren’t afraid and because they are inconvenient?
I never suggested any searches of people or items. The convenience I spoke of was not “making it more convenient to randomly search people”. The convenience I spoke of was how easy it is to get aboard an airplane.
So, let’s say hypothetically, I’ll agree. I give up the convenience of how easy it is to get aboard an airplane.
What does that mean? What did I give up? What did I agree to?
The convenience you speak of is so broad as to be meaningless.
Dinsdale, sorry for misinterpereting. I’ll try to brush up on those reading comprehension skills…
You give me my constitutional rights, give yourself a metal detector, and I’ll get a razor blade through and hand it to you on the other side.
Terrorist attacks can be curtailed if not eliminated without changing the way we fly. It is really just that simple. It will make flying more expensive, probably.
Denying airlines the right to carry mail and cargo on passenger flights will triple the real cost of flying.
Does this affect anyone’s opinion?
None of them.
Not really. I specifically mentioned three things that would change how convenient it would be to get aboard an airplane. I wasn’t trying to be vague at all.
Please explain how to eliminate terrorist attacks.
I am a little disturbed and suurprised that so many folk proclaim an unwillingness to give up any “convenience”, however minor, if doing so were intended to avoid a recurrence of this week’s events.
I suspect that there is actually a continuum upon which each of us would decide where we were most comfortable. But I have been mistaken before.
People seem either unable or unwilling to distinguish between “needs” and “wants”. And they have infinite reservoirs of both. Moreover, they believe additional needs/wants should be met, without sacrificing anything they already have.
I am not certain that every aspect of our existing air travel system, which is unprecedented in human history in terms of convenience and inexpensiveness, necessarily addresses a “need.”
Let me be clear for you, then, Dinsdale. I will not willingly surrender any of my rights, nor any privilege which flows from those rights, in order to obtain the appearance of security.
It looks as though I will be unable to fly without facing the risk of being harassed by security personnel. As you may recall from another thread in which we have crossed swords, I am a preoperative transsexual. My government-issued identification has listed on it a sex which is inconsistent with my appearance. Should I try to board an airplane, I expect I would be challenged because of this, and likely subject to embarrassment, harassment, and humiliation, not because I pose a security risk (or in fact any risk at all), but merely because it is fashionable to embarrass, harass, or humiliate people such as me.
So, is my right to be free from harassment more valuable than the general right of people to fly with a sense of security? Or should I merely resign myself to being a second-class citizen, unable to freely engage in yet another activity which most of us take for granted?
I don’t know if I’m just a total pussy (like I’ve said in other threads) or if people aren’t being honest. But is no one afraid of being killed? hijacked? forced to jump from a 100 story building?
Take away anything, anything that will make me less afraid. Take away guns, search my house, register my name. They were saying this morning on the news that we may have to step up airline security to full body xrays to find any metal objects “but were afraid it was an invasion of privacy”. Who cares? Xray me. I don’t have a knife or a gun.
I just want to feel safe again. I don’t want to be afraid to go on the subway again. I don’t want to have nightmares. I’ll do anything anyone wants to be safe.
jarbaby