Nonexperts should be very cautious in offering assessments of airport security measures, or any complex policy issue. There is too much that we don’t understand. Thus, the following is at best a tentative analysis. That said, I suspect that many of the measures the TSA plans to take in reaction to the latest foiled terrorist plot are likely to be either ineffective or not worth their cost. There are three reasons for that suspicion.
First, as I pointed out in this post, many of the TSA’s most intrusive and annoying policies are not used by Israeli airport security, generally considered to be the best in the world; these include forcing people to take off their shoes and confiscating all liquids other than those in special containers. Interestingly, the measures used by the TSA, but not by the Israelis, tend to be highly visible and intrusive to the average traveler. That leads me to suspect that the TSA has adopted them for “security theater” reasons, so as to make it seem that they are making a great effort to combat terrorism, and make people feel more secure. If the public sees the TSA making a major visible effort, fear will perhaps decrease and the agency is less likely to be blamed for any security failures that may occur in the future. Thus, the agency engages in “political theater” measures despite the inevitable grumbling by passengers. The Israeli public, by contrast, may demand less in the way of security theater than American voters, because of the nation’s vastly greater experience in dealing with terrorist attacks.
Of course it’s possible that the TSA experts simply know better than the Israelis. Israeli security experts are far from infallible and they surely make mistakes. On the other hand, Israel has not had a single successful terrorist attack on one of its airliners in decades, and it’s not because the terrorists weren’t trying. So, on balance, I suspect that the Israelis are more likely to know what they are doing than the TSA.
Second, a large, generally free society offers an almost endless variety of good targets for terrorists. It is impossible to secure them all, or even come close. That makes it counterproductive for us to spend large amounts of effort and resources to secure any one particular target. Even if we make planes 100% secure, the terrorists can simply target trains, buses, tourist sites, football games, universities, and other locations where there are lots of people in one place and relatively modest security measures. Indeed, virtually all of the above types of targets have been attacked by terrorists in Europe, Israel, and elsewhere. It makes sense to secure a small number of high-value targets that really are of much greater importance than any other sites the terrorists can attack (e.g. — the White House, the Capitol, nuclear power plants, etc.). But we should not expend enormous resources or impose great inconvenience on people to better protect targets for which the terrorists can easily find alternatives that are almost equally attractive. That doesn’t mean that we should have no airplane security measures at all. But it does suggest that we should be very conservative about deciding what tactics to adopt, and be extremely skeptical of those that are highly intrusive, annoying, or costly.
Finally, the TSA’s new security measures since 2001 often have the air of “fighting the last war.” The 9/11 hijackers used knives and boxcutters to take over planes; so the TSA bans knives and box cutters. Richard Reid tried to put a bomb in his shoes, so now we must take off our shoes. And so on. Terrorists who are at all intelligent are likely to use new methods of attack that we don’t expect. Co-blogger Orin Kerr suggests that the TSA believes terrorists “will want to do the same thing over and over again if we let them.” Orin correctly points out that al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center a second time after the failed effort of 1993. But it’s worth nothing that they used a completely different method the second time around, one that we were not prepared for, despite (or perhaps even because of) the fact that precautions had been taken against a repeat of the 1993 attack. Nonetheless, it’s certainly possible that the terrorists will repeat effective tactics that worked well the first time. However, the last several attempted attacks (such as Reid’s and the one that just failed) don’t seem to have been well planned, and of course they failed despite the advantage of surprise. If anything, we should want the terrorists to try these dubious methods again, rather than giving them additional incentives to think of new and potentially better ones. On these issues as well, the Israelis have a very different approach that we might be able to learn from, though we probably should not copy every aspect of their system.
Ultimately, I lack the security expertise and access to intelligence information necessary to make specific recommendations on airport security policy. However, I hope that we keep the above three points in mind as we consider how to respond to the latest foiled attack.
George says:
Richard Reid tried to put a bomb in his shoes, so now we must take off our shoes.
Oh, God. Are we going to have to start taking off our pants now?
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December 27, 2009, 9:01 pmpc says:
It could be worse...
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December 27, 2009, 9:22 pmNeo says:
Just like AGW research, it often appears that the “facts” seem to fall to dogma of believers. While the events of the NorthWest flight seem to bring out the fear in many, I often wonder if the “facts” of the event are left on the sidelines. One passenger claims to have a perspective that seems relavent bu missing from the discussion.
Was this whole matter the result of poor judgement, rather than a breakdown of the system.
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December 27, 2009, 9:26 pmBlue says:
We’ll continue to add ever more intrusive methods of surveillance to ensure that a 65 year old grandmother from Haywarden is treated no differently than a 25 year old immigrant from Somalia.
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December 27, 2009, 9:27 pmChris Travers says:
There are two major red flags in these new policies, speaking as someone who does security assessments in other areas:
1) The emphasis on unpredictability. This breaks important rules on how you go about securing things as it makes the effectiveness somewhat unpredictable as we, and it opens up issues of weak links (the air travel is only as secure as the weakest security checkpoint in the nation).
2) The use of magic numbers which offer no practical obstacles for terrorists and which do not force more cooperation among terrorists in order to pull off an attack.
The thing I find concerning about these changes is that they will almost certainly render our air transportation less secure, and lead to greater loss of life (whether from terrorist attacks or health complications) than we would have had if we had done nothing.
This isn’t just security theater. This is worse than doing nothing.
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December 27, 2009, 9:29 pmKen Mitchell says:
9/11 was entirely predictable — in fact, was predicted. Every person who has ever read a book about WWII knows about the most potent weapon the Japanese ever fielded; suicide pilots. Take the Kamikaze of Japan plus the explosive belt of the palestinian and 9/11 practically wrote itself. (cf: “Debt of Honor” by Tom Clancy)
Jerry Pournelle calls it “security kabuki”; a highly stylized and ritualistic form of security theater.
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December 27, 2009, 9:35 pmPeteP says:
It is only common sense that first and forermost in any fight, you must find out who your enemy is, and be able to identify him / her / them.
Sadly, our left-wing liberals have convinced us that ‘profiling is wrong’. Well, ‘profiling’ is how you identify a group of people. There is a clear indicator at this time — young muslim men. Not that ‘they are all bad’ or ‘all terrorists’, but rather ‘the vast majority of terrorists to date have been young muslim men’. As long as we insist, societally, in pretending that 90 year old white women are equally suspect with 19 year old muslim men who attend radical mosques, we will never identify the enemy until after the atack.
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December 27, 2009, 9:41 pmJoe Kowalski says:
Aww heck, forget the dilly dallying with security. Just require everyone to strip down to their skivvies, don airline branded hospital gowns, perhaps with a bar code sticker indicating which flight to be boarded, and randomly select people to do full body cavity searches on... Lets face it, it is utterly unacceptable for the risk of dying in a terrorist attack aboard a plane to be any more than twenty times less than the risk of getting struck by lightning.
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December 27, 2009, 9:48 pmtarheel says:
Ilya -
As was pointed out in response to your previous post, any reference to Israeli air travel is largely irrelevant, since they have only a tiny fraction of the number of airports (one or two major ones) and fliers that the U.S. has. The measures employed in Israel are quite effective, and would also effectively shut down our air travel system (or require us to arrive 8 hours before our flights).
Have you ever flown out of Las Vegas on a Sunday midday? The individual interview with each flier (or some significant portion of fliers) is just not going to work here.
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December 27, 2009, 10:14 pmThe Drill SGT says:
Peter beat me to it. Profiling doesn’t mean you don’t ever search the 70 y/o apparently Irish Nun, but it does mean a more efficent allocation of scarce resources against the highest probability threats: Young Muslim males. Anything else is fatally stupid.
They’ll adapt.
And yes, AQ will then start recruiting 70 y/o apparently Irish Nuns. But they are a harder and more expensive group to recruit than cousin Abdul from the next village. And more Nuns will go double on you and turn your network in than will Abdul and his cousins.
We’ll adapt.
at this point, they are far more agile than we are. Offenses always are easier than defenses. They only need to get lucky once. We need to be good 24/7.
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December 27, 2009, 10:26 pmkeith clements - dea informant says:
Keith H. Clements in an informant (SNITCH) for the DEA! He setup his longtime friend and entrapped him into a federal drug conspiracy case! Keith Clements was paid over 15K for entrapping his friend! Keith screwed over his entire family and all of his friends! He is living in Barranquilla Colombia now setting up real drug dealers for the DEA! He is a drug addicted snitch and he will set you up and entrap you given the chance! Stay away from this asshole! He is a drug addicted idiot who screws over everyone he can! He is a criminal who pretends to be an honest man! He is the scum of the earth! Keith Clements has worked as a private investigator in Red Oak TX. as well as Aurora and Denver CO. He has been a reserve police officer in Red Oak, TX. Melissa, TX. Frisco, TX. as well as a deputy constable in Dallas County, TX. Keith is addicted to prescription medicine and has a gambling addiction as well. Keith has screwed his entire family over including his ex-wife and former step son and his step sons wife. He has filed fraudulent insurance claims for his alleged stolen rolex watch. Keith filed a fraudulent VA claim in an attempt to get VA benefits for PTSD which he did not suffer from. Keith is a dirty rat snitch and is currently living in Colombia. Keith will entrap or setup anyone he can in order to be paid money from the DEA. Do not trust this lying, miserable piece of sh*t! This guy will set anyone up he can! Keith Clements forced his ex-wife sell her own burial plot and made her give him the $150 she received for selling it! What a scum bag! Keith Clements stole the social security number of his former daughter in law and obtained several credit cards. He ran up the bills and never paid back a dime! Keith H. Clements is truly a piece of sh*t! BEWARE of Keith H. Clements! If he returns to the United States he will likely be living in or around Dallas Texas! BEWARE of Keith H. Clements! He will entrap you or your family in a federal drug conspiracy case!
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December 27, 2009, 10:27 pmMark N. says:
In addition to being perhaps not useful, are these measures, applied as broadly as they seem to be being applied, even constitutional?
On incoming international flights I can see them being permitted under the federal government’s fairly broad authority to control the national borders, but I can’t see how blanket federal-government searches of this sort can be constitutional as applied to U.S. citizens traveling domestically. I suppose it is possible that if a test case ever made it to the Supreme Court, it might find a way to extend one of its roadblock cases to this setting, but the argument seems weak, at least if we’re arguing from anything but an ends-justifies-means position.
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December 27, 2009, 10:27 pmdfolds says:
There are a couple of good reasons to take immediate actions to prevent a repeated use of a recently-used tactic (a.k.a.“fighting the last war”). First, it would be rather foolish to fastiduously avoid defending against the recently-used tactic. Some tactics may be improvised by a lone actor; others may have been planned and disseminated by a network and thus there may be others poised to use the same tactic. Moreover, knowledge of an improvised tactic, especially if successful, can be rapidly adopted by others. Second, if the traveling public perceives that the recently-used tactic is still being allowed, general anxiety is likely to result, and in some cases people may panic merely because (for example) someone is injecting insulin underneath a blanket. So the security posture in the aftermath of an attack needs to act to prevent that same tactic from being re-used. The security measures can be relaxed after a time if they are judged to be unnecessary. (This is what happened with the stringent restrictions on passengers getting out of their seats within 30 minutes of takeoff or landing at Reagan National Airport.)
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December 27, 2009, 10:40 pmAndrew J. Lazarus says:
I’m having a hard time understanding how these rules would have stopped even the recent attack. The terrorist will not try to mix the chemicals (which he has brought on in a quantity small enough to be permitted, and small enough to pose little threat of successful destruction of the aircraft) because of a rule prohibiting him from reaching for his carry-on??
I’m reminded of a Perry Mason short story where the murderer went up to his cabin one day before fishing season opened in order to establish a false alibi. When Mason exposes the murderer the stupid police don’t get it, and Mason has to explain that a murderer wouldn’t mind facing an addition charge of poaching.
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December 27, 2009, 10:46 pmEric Rasmusen says:
A few points:
(1) As Andrew Lazarus points out, the new security measures wouldn’t have helped with this latest attacks. That’s true of pretty much everything, isn’t it? It’s NOT that we are always protecting against the last attack. Rather, as with Sarbanes-Oxley and Enron, a visible mistake is made, due to human error, not procedures, and we react by creating new visible and burdensome procedures that wouldn’t have helped anyway. If we’d really been reacting to the tactics of 9–11, for example, we’d issue every male passenger a dagger and tell him that he has to use it or die, if it turns out there is a terrorist on the plane.
(2) You haven’t learned from ClimateGate. Don’t be meek because you’re not an expert in the field. You’re twice as smart as the experts, and they’re not the ones making policy anyway.
(3) Good point about Israel. It doesn’t matter whether they have more than one flight a day out of Tel Aviv— we know that that one flight is the target of a million crazed Moslems.
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December 27, 2009, 10:54 pmSammy Finkelman says:
Nobody or almost nobody figured out tyhe combination, in the same incident, of the ideas of:
1) PILOT
2) HIJACKER
and
3) SUICIDE.
Suicide terrorists they anticipated. Suicide hijackers, or bombers, they anticipated. Suicide pilots, they anticipated. but assumed they would take off in their own plane.
But a hijacker who would pilot a plane they didn’t anticipate.
One who would try to direct the pilot, maybe.
» If the public sees the TSA making a major visible effort, fear will perhaps decrease ..
Nothing so semi-rational. It is, as you said, ‘fighting the last war’ It’s really been that way since 1968. The whole idea of protecting airplanes so much is itself “fighting the last war” ma
Maybe the terrorists are also doing that a little bit. Maybe theyt themselves are wary of inconvieniences. Mybe they don’t want to stop all world travel.
» ‘profiling’ is how you identify a group of people
Profiling isn’t so useful for identifying guilty people, as it is for eliminating innocent people from suspicion. Evven if you won’t have many falkse negatives, you are still going to have a lot of false positives. Now, when the percentage of false positives goes below about 5% of the population group, there is reason to worry that you’ll stop caring about what you are putting that 5% through, and maybe stop trying to narrow it down further. althhough if you get it down to 1/2 of percent, it could still be basd and unfair to some people.
It is only happenstance that they are all Moslems. You could build an ideology of terrorism on some other framework. It happened in Sri Lanka. Someone mentioned the Japanese pilots at the end of World War II. There was the Irish Republican Army, the Basque terrorists and the narco-terrorists of Columbia, who, if they survive, will become mere pawns of Hugo Chavez. That’s the nedxt danger point some kind of cooperation there between Katin americans or Mexicans and Iran. And there are Marxists or Maoists in India. The only thing still around though, or at leastall
out of proportion to the others, is Islamic terrorism, which comes in 3 varieties: anti-India or Hindu, anti-Israel, and anti-everybody else except China and some other totalitarian governments.
Even the secular Pan-Arab type of terrorism is fading away. What’s left s becoming more Islamic.
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December 27, 2009, 11:00 pmValentino Rossi says:
Well, earlier today TSA searched my book-bag, and the search confirmed that it contained an unopened roll of United States quarter dollars. This really restored my faith in the TSA (especially as they allowed me to keep my roll of quarters).
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December 27, 2009, 11:00 pmEH says:
Required reading: Bruce Schneier on security theater:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/beyond_security.html
“Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage. The more we undermine our own laws, the more we convert our buildings into fortresses, the more we reduce the freedoms and liberties at the foundation of our societies, the more we’re doing the terrorists’ job for them.”
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December 27, 2009, 11:04 pmyankee says:
I will grant you that it’s not particularly difficult to profile young men, but how is the TSA going to determine a passenger’s religion, or whether they attend “radical” services?
I also wonder how you’re going to get your proposed religious and sexual profiling past the strict and intermediate scrutiny standards? Adding race into it (you refer to giving preference to “white” 90 year-olds over nonwhite ones) just makes the Constitutional problem worse.
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December 27, 2009, 11:08 pmpc says:
In this case would should also do cavity searches of the children of bankers.
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December 27, 2009, 11:14 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Israeli Airport Security Measures says:
[...] Archives « Assessing Airport Security Measures [...]
Ken Arromdee says:
Um, this particular banker’s child was a young Muslim male. He shares those traits with other terrorists; banker’s child, not so much.
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December 28, 2009, 12:15 amrpt says:
Don’t forget the “Lone Gunmen” episode broadcast on Fox TV in early 2001. A (remote controlled) hijacked airliner is flown into the World Trade Center; only a last second disconnect of the remote controller saved the guys and the WTC. Too bad the air defenses were down that day.
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December 28, 2009, 12:21 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » More on Israeli Airport Security Measures says:
[...] responds to my post on airport security by claiming that the Israeli system is, overall, more time-consuming and intrusive than the TSA. I [...]
Sammy Finkelman says:
And his father warned the United States (as well as Nigerian officials) six months ago that his might have become involved with terrorists.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,581180,00.html
“A source tells Fox News that the suspect was granted a “multi-entry” visa to the U.S. last year, meaning that he could essentially come and go as he pleases.
The source also says that Abdulmutallab has traveled to many European countries in the past year, possibly even Yemen.
Abdulmutallab’s father reportedly told a Nigerian news outlet that six months ago he alerted the U.S. Embassy to his son’s fanatical religious views, according to the New York Post.
The father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, allegedly told Nigerian newspaper This Day that he had informed both the U.S. Embassy and the Nigerian security services of his son’s activities six months ago, the Post reported.”
From the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (Dec. 26) — U.S. government officials tell The Associated Press that the Nigerian man charged with trying to destroy a jetliner came to the attention of U.S. intelligence in November when his father went to the U.S. embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, to express his concerns about his son.
A congressional official said Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, popped up in U.S. intelligence reports about four weeks ago as having a connection to both al-Qaida and Yemen.
Another government official said Abdulmutallab’s father, a prominent banker, went to the embassy in Abuja with his concerns, but did not have any specific information that would put him on the “no-fly list” or on the list for additional security checks at the airport.
Neither was the information sufficient to revoke his visa to visit the United States. His visa had been granted June 2008 and was valid through June 2010. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because neither was authorized to speak to the media.
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December 28, 2009, 12:39 amChris Travers says:
What’s scary about this analogy is where it leads. Pemberton v. Tallahassee Memorial Medical Center in part denied Pemberton any control over her desires not to have a C section on the grounds that it would put the baby at greater risk than an airline flight would.... Of course a C section is riskier than an airline flight too.....
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December 28, 2009, 12:42 amChris Travers says:
Just a quick note on securing other important pieces of infrastructure.
I have a friend who used to manage security at a major hydro dam (this was well after 9/11) and we talked a bit about security measures they used. It would be wrong to think that power plants are not well protected generally.
The big issue though for air travel is that, if you assume that each flier might be a terrorist, you are essentially packing a very critical but fragile, highly pressurized tube full of untrusted people. This means that you have security problems you don’t have at power plants. Stadiums, schools, etc. make sense as targets, but they are harder to attack. Busses and subway trains are easier though and they have very little security if any. Furthermore if we started requiring high security issues on all commercial interstate travel across the board, one might run into right-to-travel problems.
Airlines are unique.
I would leave folks with one other important thought though. Crashes and other catastrophic mishaps are much more common than terrorist attacks. Indeed the worst air travel disaster in history (the Tenerife Disaster) involved two fully-loaded 747’s crashing into eachother on the ground. While terrorism was an indirect factor to that crash (air travel had been diverted to Tenerife due to a bomb threat at another airport) it wasn’t specifically applicable to the incident.
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December 28, 2009, 1:40 amandrew graham says:
It’s going to take a lot more to show that this isn’t a remarkably good thing. The feeling of security is precisely the only thing that can squash attempted terrorism because terrorists seek to change behavior by enabling feelings of debilitating insecurity by using whatever means are available. If removing my shoes and sitting still for a bit puts other passengers at ease, then I’m reasonable enough to be happy to do it.
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December 28, 2009, 2:11 amVermando says:
The only argument I read on this blog this year that was so implausible that I broke out laughing when I read it.
I think your initial analysis is the correct one.
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TruePath says:
Your analysis misses a couple important points.
1) After 9/11 the assumption by passengers and crew is that Hijacking = Suicidal Crash. Thus, as this incident and flight 53 proved, the passengers will do whatever it takes to subdue the terrorists making it impossible (regardless of cockpick doors) for the airliner to be effectively used as a weapon against other targets.
Thus the only likely casualties from a future airline terrorism incidence in the US are the airline passengers.
2) Given the power of explosives the airplane passengers are, with only the most minimal of pre 9/11 screening regimes, far harder to kill than people in office buildings, stadiums, buses, and subways. If you can correctly make 20 pounds of explosive you can probably make 100 or 1000 and carry/drive it into these other targets without ANY risk of being caught by screening. Moreover, even if you only use guns on the ground you can kill more people simply because they aren’t cornered. Heck, even if we abandoned screening entirely it may NOW be harder to kill people
3) Even if you think that that airplanes are easier to attack you have to multiply by the extent of the damage. Nerve gas in a subway or office building, core breach at a reactor or large toxic gas leak will have orders of magnitude more harm than just killing those on one airliner.
—-
BTW re: 9/11 being predictable it is my understanding that the secret service stopped a plot to use a hijacked airliner to kill Nixon by flying it into the whitehouse. Sure, the guy who they caught (in the plane) may have had a psychiatric illness but the government damn well understood these kind of attacks were possible.
Also before the liquids incident the US government had know for many months that some terrorist groups had considered liquid based explosives. Also it’s totally absurd to think that not one government security professional raised the possibility that liquid explosives might be used against planes. I’m also sure people had thought about the possibility of hiding bombs in your shoes before the shoe bomber.
The pattern of only implementing security measures after widely publicized attacks, even when the risk is already known is irrefutable proof that airline security is not the result of balancing public costs (time/annoyance) against public safety needs. In every one of these situations the risks posed by that attack vector are decreased by the publicly visible attempt (screeners/passengers/etc are aware of threat and terrorists should think it more likely unrevealed security precautions have been taken). Moreover, with the exception of 9/11 itself these incidents weren’t unexpected even by those parts of the government with the power and responsibility to set security policies.
The only plausible explanation is that the government decisions makers are letting either the political unpopularity of extra security restrictions before a major incident or the personal danger to their career not implementing them after a major incident override a reasoned analysis of the tradeoffs. So no matter what you believe you simply can’t take the ‘expert’ decisions of the government as credible evidence of necessity.
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December 28, 2009, 5:34 amNeo says:
Kurt Haskell of Newport, Mich., who posted an earlier comment about his experience, talked exclusively with MLive.com and confirmed he was on the flight by sending a picture of his boarding pass. He and his wife, Lori, were returning from a safari in Uganda when they boarded the NWA flight on Friday.
Kurt HaskellLori and Kurt Haskell
Haskell said he and his wife were sitting on the ground near their boarding gate in Amsterdam, which is when they saw Mutallab approach the gate with an unidentified man.
Kurt and Lori Haskell are attorneys with Haskell Law Firm in Taylor. Their expertise includes bankruptcy, family law and estate planning.
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December 28, 2009, 9:26 amMonday Morning News and Views « The Confluence says:
[...] the conservative legal blog, The Volkh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin argues that most of the new TSA restrictions and security techniques are likely to be ine... …many of the TSA’s most intrusive and annoying policies are not used by Israeli airport [...]
Dennis N says:
You could postulate anything. The fact is, that the current crop of terrorists are 100% moslims. Yes, we need to be aware of Lapp Separatists and Radical Grannies, but to refuse to accept that we have a moslim problem, is putting one’s head in the sand.
Kamikazi pilots are an unusual,case. They were uniformed military officers attacking combatant vessels of the enemy, mostly by using aircraft that were known to be those of the Japanese military, and even properly marked. The Japanese did many evil things, Kamikazi was not one of them.
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December 28, 2009, 9:50 amThe failed airline bombing and our reaction « Muse Free says:
[...] hassle, fear and security clampdown is too much? Is it worth going through so much TSA tyranny, much of it a charade, and give up so much of our convenience, liberty and well-being in an attempt to make our [...]
Sammy Finkelman says:
True Path: Thus the only likely casualties from a future airline terrorism incidence in the US are the airline passengers.
You know that, and all the people reading this know and understand that, but do the people in charge of aviation security understand that?? This is true, with a small caveat, that any crash can alwaays kill a few people on the ground. Once the cockpit doors are locked, we are really back to September 10, with the biggest worry being a bomb. We were there already on September 12. In fact theere was pronbably no time when aviation weas safer than September 12 or the next week, because before September 11th, Al Qaeda evacuated all its operatives from the United States, as well sas some in other parts of the world, with the exception of those who were going to take part in the attacks and the two people who were already under arrest, and they STILL don’t have any cell here, or else this attempt would not have been made on an incoming flight. There could be a stray individual or two, whom they really really trust, but not a cell.
True Path:
BTW re: 9/11 being predictable it is my understanding that the secret service stopped a plot to use a hijacked airliner to kill Nixon by flying it into the whitehouse.
Samuel Joseph Byck (January 30, 1930 – February 22, 1974) — spelled Bicke in the 2004 movie — was not a pilot.
He would not actually have been able to persuade a pilot to crash the plane, let alone into an occupied target. To my knowledge, that has NEVER happened. And on the other hand, had he been a pilot, he would have stolen a plane.
What happened here, according to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Byck
...is that first, Byck, stole a .22 caliber revolver from a friend (because he was already known to the Secret Service and didn’t want to alert anyone by attempting to buy a gun) as well as making a bomb out of 2 gallon jugs of gasoline and an igniter, which was real.
He also made a number of tape recordings explaining what he was doing and sent one to Jack Anderson. (who did not run the story after the event)
He bypassed security by shooting and killing a Maryland Aviation administration police officer and stormed aboard Delta Air Lines Flight 523 from Baltimore/Washington airport in Linthicum, Maryland to Atlanta. He chose that plane simply because it wa s the nearest flight that was ready to take off.
Once on board, he told the pilots to take off. When they refused, telling him that they couldn’t take off until the wheel blocks were removed, he shot them both, one fatally. He then grabbed a female passenger and ordered her to fly the plane. He told the flight attendant to close the door or else he woulkd blow up the plane.
The Anne Arundel County police tried to shoot out the tires to prevent the plane from taking off, but failed because their .38 caliber bullets weren’t good enough, and the bullets instead bounced off the tires, some hitting the wing of the aircraft.
Then another police officer stormed through the plane and fired 4 shots through the thick window in the aircraft door, using the revolver taken from the murdered police officer. Two shots wounded Byck, maye not too seriously, but he then shot himself in the head. The briefcase containing the gasoline bomb wass found under his body.
The news media did not report what he intended to do with the plane once he had commandeered it, so that’s why this is little known. But the secret service at that point (it is beleived as a direct result of this incident) acquired MANPADS to shoot down any hostile aircraft that might be heading toward the White house or other protecteed place, which they have never used.
There is another thing I recall, Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771 on December 7, 1987. This is a hijacking where the hijacker did cause a crash.
This is descrinbed hefre on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Southwest_Airlines_Flight_177
Davd Burke, a former USAir employee (US had recently purchased by Pacific Southwest but hadn’t fully absorbed it yet) who had been fired for stealing $69 in petty cash, but still had his credentials, boarded the same flight that his supervisor, who had refused to reinstate him, regularly flew, taking a revolver with him.
What exactly happened isn’t known, but they found an air-sickness bag after the crash with the following note on it,
in Burke’s handwriting:
“Hi Ray. I think it’s sort of ironical that we ended up like this. I asked for some leniency for my family. Remember? Well, I got none and you’ll get none.”
The cockpit voice recorder recorded the sound of two shots being fired in the cabin. The cockpit door was opened and a female, presumed to be a flight attendant, told the cockpit crew “We have a problem”. The captain replied, “What kind of problem?” Burke then announced “I’m the problem”, then fired three more shots that incapacitated the pilots.
Several seconds later the pane pitched down and began to accelerate. A final gunshot was heard and it is speculated that that was Burke shooting himself before it hit the ground.
This was actually a murder-suicide, except that person doing
it killed 41 other people in the process. Actually if he shot his supervisor first, I would say he probably crashed the plane with the intention of his family collecting life insurance on himself, expecting the true cause of the crash not to be determined.
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December 28, 2009, 10:37 amjukeboxgrad says:
TruePath:
Indeed. There are a number of persistent myths regarding 9/11. One of them is that no one anticipated such an attack. Rice said this: “I don’t think anybody could have predicted that these people would … try to use an airplane as a missile.” Her claim was false.
Maybe I misunderstand you, but you seem to be contradicting yourself.
Another persistent myth: that box cutters were used. This claim is often repeated (including recently, by VC bloggers), even though there is little or no evidence to support it. See here (there is a dead link in that comment, but the relevant text can be found via here).
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December 28, 2009, 10:54 amShelbyC says:
Anybody wonder why the terrorists don’t go to the can to set off their explosives? I suspect a foiled plot is more valueable to the terrorists than a successful one.
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December 28, 2009, 11:33 amChris Travers says:
Nerve gas on a subway turns out to be remakrkably ineffective compared to traditional explosives.
Note that sarin is almost the perfect terrorist nerve gas– almost as deadly as VX and a LOT easier to deploy. In the Tokyo attacks, only 12 people were killed but many more were hospitalized (and made full recoveries). The 7/7 bombings were substantially more dangerous.
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December 28, 2009, 1:27 pmChris Travers says:
Also I would not doubt this. However I base this on looking at the details of the security directives. I do think one can give the government some benefit of the doubt, and I do think that in some cases, actual ideas of the measures are good. But in general even the measures implemented are full of holes in implementation.
The TSA is about as good at building secure airports as Microsoft is at building secure software ;-)
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December 28, 2009, 1:35 pmshmujew says:
FUCK IT ALL WERE ALL FUCKED BY THESE LUNATIC LIB NAZIS.....I SAY WE NEED TO RISE UP AND REVOLT AGAINST THIS INSANITY.....FUCK AIRPORT SECURITY ..IF YOU SEE A RAGHEAD STANSING NEXT TO YOU IN LINE ......CHECK HIM YOURSELF....FUCK AIRPORT SECURITY , THEY WORK FOR THE ENEMY
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December 28, 2009, 1:43 pmalittlesense says:
Hmm...so....according to the new TSA regulations, if we have to used the restroom 45 minutes before arrival, we must just sit tight, spoil our pantaloons, and possibly the seat.
I can see it now. The airlines will mandate Depends for all passengers.
Ticket prices will go up, because of increased cleaning costs, and re-upholstery costs.
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December 28, 2009, 3:26 pmBleh says:
So liberals are the lunatics, eh?
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December 28, 2009, 3:27 pmJK says:
When did Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski become Muslims?
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December 28, 2009, 6:39 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Tradeoffs in Airport Security says:
[...] important related point is that we should not impose severe burdens on air travelers whose main effect is simply to divert terrorists to other, “softer.... Even if costly and intrusive measures succeed in providing perfect security for airline [...]
Chris Travers says:
9/11/2001. Next question?
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December 28, 2009, 9:19 pmJohn Moore says:
Chris Travers says:
That’s a pretty odd observation. In general, you can make things less predictable for the adversary while maintaining relatively more predictability for yourself. Hence the use of unpredictability is an important security tool.
In fact, I would say unpredictability is essential. If the enemy knows your procedures in detail, they can do their best planning. The less predictable those procedures, the harder their planning.
We might as well just release the TSA manual for them to read.
Oh wait...
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December 28, 2009, 11:35 pmjukeboxgrad says:
That list is a good start, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg (link, link, link). And it’s particularly helpful to notice when these acts are treated as heroic.
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December 28, 2009, 11:46 pmChris Travers says:
That’s a nice idea but it doesn’t work in practice. Or rather the idea should be put into practice differently.
The experience of people building secure solutions which have to minimize risk is that openness of strategy and peer review of implementation get you many miles beyond where obscurity and obfuscation get you.
There’s a solid reason for this. Terrorist attacks tend to cause damage to property and loss of life in direct proportion to the amount of planning that goes into them. An attack like 9/11, which was daring in scope and complexity, took many months to plan and orchestrate, and the bad guys mapped out security measures carefully in that time, determined what to do to circumvent them etc and put the plan into place.
We can contrast it with the semi-regular bombings of the US embassy in Indonesia (usually limited to someone throwing a grenade over the wall in the middle of the night) or the Jakarta airport bombings during ABB’s trial. In these cases, little planning went into things, very little damage is done, and nobody is killed. This is much like the present case.
We can then contrast that to the serious terrorist attacks in a place like Indonesia (the Marriott bombings, the Bali nightclub and consulate bombings, the Australian Embassy bombings) and see what difference preparation can make. Each of these bombings killed many people, involved careful use of explosives, good timing (for the terrorists), and a high degree of organization.
So, the basic thing is that generally, you have to figure you have months or even years to catch and address problems before they become attacks. Aside from a known multiple attack IN PROGRESS, I think even emergency measures should get a decent level of review.
So look at this one: The approach to explosives was evidently not tested. The question of when to detonate the explosives was probably not thought through well, and the force of the explosion was not well calculated. If it was AQ, the coordination was probably limited to some training videos and propaganda.
So, with that in mind.....
The goal shouldn’t be to provide an unpredictable target. It should be to incrementally increase security by addressing known problems one at a time as quickly as practical. This means high and ever increasing standards for security (meaning high and ever increasing standards for unintrusive security measures and an attempt to replace more intrusive measures where possible). But it also means that a few other things that airports need to have containment strategies.
Just think of what a dozen people, stationed without tickets at the busiest airports in the country could do by running through the security checkpoints the wrong way while shouting Islamist slogans. No bombs needed, no knives needed (though dropping them might be a good way to increase paranoia). Any bet that airspace would be temporarily closed?
In this method, the security at a given airport WOULD likely change in the time it would take to plan and orchestrate a terrorist attack. It WOULD be predictable for travellers and security personnel, but unpredictable for terrorists because of the different timeframes involved.
Short-term unpredictability though is asking for problems. It means that people may not have sufficient training, important security measures might be unevenly applied, and that the specific setup at each airport is less likely to be properly reviewed.
Hope this helps.
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December 29, 2009, 12:35 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Bruce Schneier on Airport Security says:
[...] scholar in the field, and in this interview, he makes some of the same points as I did here and here: Air travel survived decades of terrorism, including attacks which resulted in the deaths of [...]
John Moore says:
This has long been the mantra of civilian cryptographers. It is almost a chant “security by obscurity is not secure.” It is correct, when applied to the very narrow domain of civilian cryptography.
However, when we look at how the most serious security folks operate — military and NSA — we see that they do in fact use a lot of obscurity (and hence, uncertainty as seen by an opponent).
Furthermore, game theory recognizes the value of uncertainty.
I suspect the “no security through obscurity” mantra is a result of the culture of civilian academic cryptography. A cipher (specifically) is not even interesting, after all, if you can’t publish how it works. Nobody can try to break the system. Hence, the whole field would be sort of dull if everyone kept things secret.
Furthermore, cryptographic systems which rely on a pseudo-random algorithm and a key, which is to say, almost any modern crypto system, are appropriately testable with their algorithms in the public. The security of the system, by definition, lies in the difficulty of decryption — usually, by deriving the key. Such a system is at its strongest when it is public.
However, the real world has lots of security problems that do not fit this model, including airport security. Here, one is dealing with a system which cannot be turned into an algorithm; one is dealing with complex challenges; one has people inside the system. Furthermore, although not all possible attacks are known or can be deduced, certain major vulnerabilities are well known (with aircraft operations especially),
These systems, which the military (and NSA) have vast experience with, work best with a whole range of security measures, including layering and yes, secrecy (obscurity).
Finally, let me suggest that peer review and secrecy (and randomness) are not mutually exclusive. One uses cleared peers (as few as practical, for obvious reasons). One uses red teams who are given the information. Just because we are making things unpredictable for the terrorists doesn’t mean they are hidden from reviewers.
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December 29, 2009, 7:16 pmThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Public Ignorance and the Political Economy of Airport Security: Why Governments Don’t Take Enough Precautions Before Attacks and Engage in “Security Theater” Afterwards says:
[...] A closely related problem is that, in the immediate aftermath of an attack, governments have strong incentives to target the specific methods used in that attack, even though this “fighting the last war” strategy probably won’t foil terrorists who are smart enough to u.... [...]
The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Public Ignorance and the Political Economy of Airport Security: Why Governments Don’t Take Enough Precautions Before Attacks and Engage in “Security Theater” Afterwards says:
[...] A closely related problem is that, in the immediate aftermath of an attack, governments have strong incentives to target the specific methods used in that attack, even though this “fighting the last war” strategy probably won’t foil terrorists who are smart enough to u.... [...]
Watcher of Weasels » Watcher’s Council Nominations – This Was The Year That Was says:
[...] Submitted By: Soccer Dad – The Volokh Conspiracy — Assessing Airport Security Measures [...]
dare says:
Complement of the season
http://naija-konnect.com/hots-on-the-web/
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December 30, 2009, 3:58 amProactive Helplessness | Lexington Universal Circuit says:
[...] Somin, Ilya. “Assessing Airport Security Measures.” Web log post. The Volokh Conspiracy. 27 Dec. 2009. Web. 29 Dec. 2009. <http://volokh.com/2009/12/27/assessing-airport-security-measures/>. [...]
Bookworm Room » The Watcher’s Council sees out the old year says:
[...] Submitted By: Soccer Dad – The Volokh Conspiracy — Assessing Airport Security Measures [...]
TruePath says:
Sammy Finkelman:
I wasn’t suggesting that Samuel Joseph Byck posed a credible threat. Only that this incident surely alerted some people in the government to the possibility of airliners being used as weapons.
jukeboxgrad:
I was unclear in my post. Yes, I was arguing that some part of the government clearly had contemplated airliners as weapons. However, I was leaving open the reasonable counterargument that this information had not been passed along to those people with the authority and influence to change airplane safety procedures.
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January 1, 2010, 1:07 amTruePath says:
My understanding is that this attack failed as the result of poor sythesis of the nerve agent and failure to properly distribute (turn into aerosol).
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January 1, 2010, 1:10 amjukeboxgrad says:
I don’t see how that perspective is “reasonable,” because there were quite a few prior incidents (including attempts, or reports of planned attempts). For example, if this was known to “the F.A.A.‘s intelligence unit,” should we assume that “this information had … been passed along to those people with the authority and influence to change airplane safety procedures?” I think we should. Therefore, it’s relevant to notice this:
And there was another report which “warned the executive branch.” And there was yet another report which “was circulated throughout the Pentagon, the Justice Department, and to FEMA.” So to promote the idea that “this information had not been passed along to those people with the authority and influence to change airplane safety procedures” is contrary to reality.
I think that’s the whole point: that it’s not particularly easy to mount an effective nerve gas attack. Just like it’s not particularly easy to make an large airplane fall out of the sky with an explosive device so small that it fits inside your pants, or your shoes. Likewise, it’s not particularly easy to fit a nuclear bomb inside a suitcase. It’s also not particularly easy to kill a lot of people with a dirty bomb. It’s also not particularly easy to kill a lot of people with a biological weapon.
Do you see the common thread? All these threats have been exaggerated, by fear-mongering war profiteers (link, link) who have turned us into a nation of bed-wetters. They share a common interest with the terrorists: keeping us afraid.
And it’s quite remarkable how afraid we have become. This particular enemy has gotten lucky a few times, but they are mostly inept. Nevertheless, we treat them as if they are an existential threat, even though they are not. It’s tragic that many people died when two large buildings were knocked down, but our nation has survived much worse. In the Civil War, roughly 2% of Americans were killed. The equivalent casualty figure today would be six million; the Civil War was the equivalent of 2,000 9/11s. Imagine having a 9/11 every day for five years. That was the proportional casualty impact of the Civil War.
Only a nation of bed-wetters could spend more on weapons than the rest of the world combined and nevertheless be this afraid of a group this small and ineffective.
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January 1, 2010, 9:41 amJohn Moore says:
And we could have said this in 1993 (and did), resulting in 2001. Their goals escalate, their determination seems eternal, and they are not always inept (witness Bali, Madrid, London, etc).
But hey, let’s just wait until they kill 2% and then we should take them seriously, right?
This concept that we need an existential threat before taking serious action is a remarkably dumb one. A government which fails to defend its citizens against the depradations of others loses its legitimacy. It isn’t just a cost-benefit analysis.
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January 2, 2010, 4:07 pmjukeboxgrad says:
moore:
Are you and your little straw man having lots of fun together? No one has said we shouldn’t take “serious action.” But what’s “remarkably dumb” is adopting a concept of “serious action” that includes invading a country that wasn’t involved in 9/11.
And what I said about existential threats is that we shouldn’t treat something as an existential threat when it’s not an existential threat. You seem to be acknowledging that we don’t face an existential threat. Therefore this would be a good moment for you to condemn the various Republicans (e.g., Cheney, Rice, Frist et al) who have explicitly claimed that we do face an existential threat.
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January 2, 2010, 4:47 pmpaul f renda says:
body scanner counter measure open link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx8hlrpDh8I
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March 19, 2010, 5:36 pm