Avoiding all that airport bureaucracy is one reason why I have an aeroplane of my own. It's also why the charter and air taxi market is booming. If you knew anything about security you would know that the criminals' documentation will be in apple pie order, though completely fraudulent
I'm not disagreeing with you but it's clear that the authorities are not going to let this continue just because the GA community says 'we're smashing chaps don't you know', you can either work with them or against them, your choice. I choose to listen and support, you may not. The parts of GA you describe have clearly been found to be lacking in oversight, what you are able to purchase to circumnavigate those processes is part of the problem identified. Unfortunate perhaps but that's the way it is, I cannot understand why it's so hard for people to get their head around the notion of potential because that's all that has been identified. No-one has addressed my points about the other aspects of this issue, the potential to traffick individuals to do harm (any harm), the potential to engage in logistical flights in support of something dastardly, recon, delivery systems, et al.
I suspect anyone working against them is simply engaging in a futile struggle that will not carry one iota of public support. Your last point about documentation is interesting however, scrutiny and
credibility based questioning is the key to dealing with such issues yet everyone says here that more scrutiny is not needed. All law enforcement investigative questioning techniques are based around the notion of credibility. So, immediately, we are in conflict with conventional investigative techniques.
GA of my sort is not an effective threat in any conceivable way. Someone wanting to fly out of a farm strip would have to have completed the NPPL at least and then worked on strip flying for a bit - that is not the way that terrorists work.
But effective monitoring and engagement reveals the bad eggs, the bad eggs then can be dealt with. GA has a much responsibility here as the authorities, engaging with them is the key IMO. These issue driven agendas drive me mad because they ignore the greater principle of our responsibility to one another and the community around us. GA is a vulnerability like it or not and it's up to us to work with those charged with protecting us, in our little bit of the 'security' world, to mitigate those dangers. The key to this is that 'the powers that be' should be getting out and talking to aviators and getting them onboard. I totally support that idea and it's clearly something they try to do when the summer comes and SB's and Customs staff go out to airfields to speak with the community. Yet then they do this, the same old nonsense comes up in here that all they are doing is wasting taxpayers money on a jolly on a hot day. FFS!! Clearly not the case then as they appear to have been writing reports which were fed back to inform this current proposal.
So, we've already missed one opportunity to inform and engage it would seem.
In my opinion.
It seems to me that the issue is rather overblown, there is no apparent intelligence but there is a vulnerability, I think we all agree on that point. And having identified a vulnerability, it should be discussed and dealt with. How it's dealt with is the issue now. Intractability on our side will not deal with this and all that will happen is something will be imposed upon us that we had no say over. I suspect that why the proposal came up in the first place and I most certainly do not believe that now the 'cat's out of the bag' as it were, the best GA can come up with is 'leave us alone because we're self policing and self regulating and we all know each other'. This will undo GA.
As for tubes and cars, I completely agree with these points.
Cheers,
QP