http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx8hlrpDh8I

This concept that we need an existential threat before taking serious action is a remarkably dumb one.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

in 1998 and 1999, the commission report said, the F.A.A.’s intelligence unit produced reports about the hijacking threat posed by Al Qaeda, “including the possibility that the terrorist group might try to hijack a commercial jet and slam it into a U.S. landmark.”

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.

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).

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.

Chris Travers:
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.

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).

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.

pc:
It could be worse…

Complement of the season
http://naija-konnect.com/hots-on-the-web/

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.

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.

John Moore: 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.

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.

When did Timothy McVeigh,Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski become Muslims?

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.

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).

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…

JK:
When did Timothy McVeigh,Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski become Muslims?

9/11/2001. Next question?

The fact is, that the current crop of terrorists are 100% moslims.

When did Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols and Ted Kaczynski become Muslims?

shmujew: 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

So liberals are the lunatics, eh?

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.

TruePath: 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.

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 ;-)

TruePath: 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.

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.

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. … the government damn well understood these kind of attacks were possible.

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.

with the exception of 9/11 itself these incidents weren’t unexpected

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).

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.

Sammy Finkelman:
It is only happenstance that they are all Moslems. You could build an ideology of terrorism on some other framework.

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.

Kurt and Lori Haskell are attorneys with Haskell Law Firm in Taylor. Their expertise includes bankruptcy, family law and estate planning.

Chris Travers: 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.

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.

This post was mentioned on Reddit by malcontent: Israel does much worse if they don’t like your race, color, religion or nationality.

…