$48 million allocated to terrorism prevention – worthwhile?

[Flying Binghi]

Jabawocky, yeah, plus it might give somebody ideas ... but the bad guys have probably moved on from aviation - Any bets on it being Petrol tankers next... large public gatherings...

[PLovett]

Some years ago I did a charter into Mascot and while waiting for the pax return I had need to pay a penny. I was directed to a toilet that was just outside the security fence.

I asked how I was going to get back airside and advised to use the last code written on the back of the toilet door. There had to be something like 4 years worth of codes recorded on the back of that door, all but the current one neatly crossed out.

Admittedly, this was before the events of 11 September 2001.

Where I am now is a joke. Thousands have been spent on putting in new security cameras, lights, fences, keypad gates and electronic keyed gates. All that you need to do is walk through the terminal, none of the doors are locked, ever.

[mostlytossas]

It is not just the country airports that security is a joke. At Parafield they have just about finished fencing the place all with cyclone mesh ofcourse after about 3 years stuffing around. The gates are still not locked but I hear about to be! Great, if anyone wanted to get into the airside a simple pair of bulk cutters will do the job ( Bunnings have them next door do you believe). Thank God potential terrorists are honest and would never think of doing such a thing. In any event a truckload of explosive parked next to any major terminal building would do 10 times more damage than any GA aircraft on the other side of the terminal.
If ever in the history of aviation there has been a bigger waste of money.........

[Chimbu chuckles]

The ONLY place where security money should be spent is places like ASIO. Give the spooks whatever resources they need to identify potential terrorists and quietly slot those so proven...where ever in the world they happen to be.

Leave law abiding citizens going about there lives free from hassle and fear mongering political posturing.

It wouldn't matter a **** if you allocated 200 billion dollars to regional security if all it takes is a large paddock to land an aircraft and a shed to mix the bomb.

You will never stop these feckers building fences, installing key pads and making law abiding citizens wear silly plastic cards...you have a decent chance of stopping them via increased inteligence gathering/sharing among world wide security services like MI6/CIA/Mossad/NSA etc.

And block out the media from their efforts...I don't want to hear about their successes or their near misses or their mistaken assassinations.

[Jabawocky]

Chimbu chuckles for PM

[ForkTailedDrKiller]

Jaba, are you out of your frigging mind?

Given your Prime Ministerial nominee's passion for low flying - do you really want to give him access to the PM's B737?

Dr

[Flying Binghi]

Unforetunatly, I think the ASIC has made our security agencys look a bit incompetent - which is not the best outcome.

[Chimbu chuckles]

Mate if I were PM I wouldn't be riding around in a BBJ...Think F111 with a nice paint job and a coin free coke dispenser...and a seriously cute Nav.

[Jabawocky]

I think he just solved that problem!

[Mr Bomb]

I can't believe people here who are meant to be intelligent individuals are posing serious questions about security at (very) regional airports. The answer is there is NO security at regional airports. However a simple fence is a very visible response by the powers that be to the so called terrorist threat.

Now we all know it does nothing, but to the average punter who lives with their head up their arse and wants to feel good about the world they get the perception that something is being done. Do you guys really think that all that money that was allocated went to building fences and the other knee jerk schemes "thought" up by DOTARS? Have a think about it.

Guys govt is not about actually doing anything, it is simply about making the people believe something is being done. Perception is reality. If people think something is being done then they just go on happy in their own little sandpits that they are safe.

Please, as has been said $200B on security won't do anything. The ONLY thing that is effective in fighting terrorists like this is a very very strong intelligence force and then other direct action forces to act on that intelligence. But the govt can't let you know about those forces, those investigations and our intelligence services for obvious reasons and so they have to do something visible that gives nothing away to appease mum, dad and Denny ie you and me.

So to finish this little war and peace, yep the fence does nothing, but the other things are (hopefully?) being done that we will never know about. Just one example, do you think it was good luck that a terrorist cell was taken down in Melbourne, another in London etc.

Cheers
Mr B

[PyroTek]

Mr Bomb, with a name like that i'm not sure you are very fit to post .

Knowing the government, 90% of the money will go to many different consulants, and the rest gets spent building structures which really still have no security in the end.

[Flying Binghi]

London... isnt that where the police shoot inocent bus pasengers?

[Chimbu chuckles]

Bomb I have no doubt the other things are being done...and done well...but we DO NOT need ASIC cards and other similarly moronic measures to distract us.

Stupid security measures have one very important effect...they make the instigators look stupid...if we as a society reach the point (I have already) where we believe our/all elected officials are morons then that damages the basic fabric of our democracy.

Edit: Binghi...yup....and then there is Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan/ et al where 1000lb bombs go astray, kill dozens and create 1000s more suicide bombers.

Take your pick.

[Mr Bomb]

CC, maybe you and I don't need the window dressing, but less that 1% of our population are pilots and probably maybe 1 or 2% of the country understand that ASICS and fences do nothing. That leaves 98% who either perceive something is being done or alternatively couldn't really care. We are an apathetic nation and whilst individuals might be intelligent, as a group of citizens we are stupid and suck up everything the pollies say. (Note when I say we I mean the majority of people in Australia)

For example, who actually believes we went into East Timor to "help" the East Timorese? Who actually believes we (Coalition) are in Iraq for any other reason than oil? Who actually believes we went to Vietnam to fight the communists?

Cheers
Jards

[mostlytossas]

Mr Bomb,
I'm sure we are all well aware perception that some thing is being done is everything. Signs that the airport was constantly being patrolled, under closed circuit camera survailance etc would have done that ( even mount a few dummy cameras ). These actions would have done the job for a mere fraction of the cost and the money wasted on fences with razor wire tops, combination gates, ASIC's etc could have gone elsewhere more needed. Like more staff for ATC, real safety, or even to reduce landing fees. Furthermore do you really think the people that planned 9/11 would have been deterred by a cyclone fence? or applied for an ASIC ?

[Capt Wally]

..............pinky, perfect statement !, "it's not real money it's tax payers money"
We all know that security even at major airporst is a joke really. If fair dinkum nutters wanted to get in & cause havoc it wouldn't take too much.
9/11 showed just how it can be done & we ain't talking about slipping under some fence while the guard isn't watching either !

There are 'leaks' in our security boat everywhere, just like the rest of the world, hence we have terrorists using planes as weapons.
Like locked doors & windows at home, these are only for honest thieves!

Still we need to be 'seen' to be doing something at the most venerable points of entry/exit to this peaceful land, just can't see the sense in doing it way out west!

'Jaba' is that really the BDV pub???................haven't been there in yonks.........I guess it may stop the drunks from breaking into planes to sleep it off around late Aug !

The best security & it's totally free is for everyone involved in A/C movements in & around Oz is to be ALERT !

CW


CW

[Kev9]

Very fortunate that there has not been a terrorist attack in AUS.

Aviation Security must always be maintained to the highest level and in general the people that are responsible do a serviceable job around the major hubs, but as stated it isn't possible to sustain at the out-ports as is the case in the terrorized US.
But good on them for showing up at these out-ports.
Worth the show ($200 mil) if to just stop the nutters from getting into cockpits pretending to be crew......




On 9/11

For those who believe that what they saw on 9/11 was real as in it was a terrorist attack, it wasn't.
It was a 'FALSE FLAG' operation.

For those believers, you have the internet, do some research.

Capt Wally it might drive you mad....but you will enjoy it.........

[Capt Claret]

My son sent me a link to an article from the New York Times. It's quite appropriate and reproduced below. Blog number 156, also reproduced below, is priceless!

Originally Posted by The New York Times

December 28, 2007, 6:52 pm
The Airport Security Follies

By Patrick Smith

Six years after the terrorist attacks of 2001, airport security remains a theater of the absurd. The changes put in place following the September 11th catastrophe have been drastic, and largely of two kinds: those practical and effective, and those irrational, wasteful and pointless.

The first variety have taken place almost entirely behind the scenes. Explosives scanning for checked luggage, for instance, was long overdue and is perhaps the most welcome addition. Unfortunately, at concourse checkpoints all across America, the madness of passenger screening continues in plain view. It began with pat-downs and the senseless confiscation of pointy objects. Then came the mandatory shoe removal, followed in the summer of 2006 by the prohibition of liquids and gels. We can only imagine what is next.

To understand what makes these measures so absurd, we first need to revisit the morning of September 11th, and grasp exactly what it was the 19 hijackers so easily took advantage of. Conventional wisdom says the terrorists exploited a weakness in airport security by smuggling aboard box-cutters. What they actually exploited was a weakness in our mindset — a set of presumptions based on the decades-long track record of hijackings.

In years past, a takeover meant hostage negotiations and standoffs; crews were trained in the concept of “passive resistance.” All of that changed forever the instant American Airlines Flight 11 collided with the north tower. What weapons the 19 men possessed mattered little; the success of their plan relied fundamentally on the element of surprise. And in this respect, their scheme was all but guaranteed not to fail.

For several reasons — particularly the awareness of passengers and crew — just the opposite is true today. Any hijacker would face a planeload of angry and frightened people ready to fight back. Say what you want of terrorists, they cannot afford to waste time and resources on schemes with a high probability of failure. And thus the September 11th template is all but useless to potential hijackers.

No matter that a deadly sharp can be fashioned from virtually anything found on a plane, be it a broken wine bottle or a snapped-off length of plastic, we are content wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and untold hours of labor in a delusional attempt to thwart an attack that has already happened, asked to queue for absurd lengths of time, subject to embarrassing pat-downs and loss of our belongings.

The folly is much the same with respect to the liquids and gels restrictions, introduced two summers ago following the breakup of a London-based cabal that was planning to blow up jetliners using liquid explosives. Allegations surrounding the conspiracy were revealed to substantially embellished. In an August, 2006 article in the New York Times, British officials admitted that public statements made following the arrests were overcooked, inaccurate and “unfortunate.” The plot’s leaders were still in the process of recruiting and radicalizing would-be bombers. They lacked passports, airline tickets and, most critical of all, they had been unsuccessful in actually producing liquid explosives. Investigators later described the widely parroted report that up to ten U.S airliners had been targeted as “speculative” and “exaggerated.”

Among first to express serious skepticism about the bombers’ readiness was Thomas C. Greene, whose essay in The Register explored the extreme difficulty of mixing and deploying the types of binary explosives purportedly to be used. Green conferred with Professor Jimmie C. Oxley, an explosives specialist who has closely studied the type of deadly cocktail coveted by the London plotters.

“The notion that deadly explosives can be cooked up in an airplane lavatory is pure fiction,” Greene told me during an interview. “A handy gimmick for action movies and shows like ‘24.’ The reality proves disappointing: it’s rather awkward to do chemistry in an airplane toilet. Nevertheless, our official protectors and deciders respond to such notions instinctively, because they’re familiar to us: we’ve all seen scenarios on television and in the cinema. This, incredibly, is why you can no longer carry a bottle of water onto a plane.”

The threat of liquid explosives does exist, but it cannot be readily brewed from the kinds of liquids we have devoted most of our resources to keeping away from planes. Certain benign liquids, when combined under highly specific conditions, are indeed dangerous. However, creating those conditions poses enormous challenges for a saboteur.

“I would not hesitate to allow that liquid explosives can pose a danger,” Greene added, recalling Ramzi Yousef’s 1994 detonation of a small nitroglycerine bomb aboard Philippine Airlines Flight 434. The explosion was a test run for the so-called “Project Bojinka,” an Al Qaeda scheme to simultaneously destroy a dozen widebody airliners over the Pacific Ocean. “But the idea that confiscating someone’s toothpaste is going to keep us safe is too ridiculous to entertain.”

Yet that’s exactly what we’ve been doing. The three-ounce container rule is silly enough — after all, what’s to stop somebody from carrying several small bottles each full of the same substance — but consider for a moment the hypocrisy of T.S.A.’s confiscation policy. At every concourse checkpoint you’ll see a bin or barrel brimming with contraband containers taken from passengers for having exceeded the volume limit. Now, the assumption has to be that the materials in those containers are potentially hazardous. If not, why were they seized in the first place? But if so, why are they dumped unceremoniously into the trash? They are not quarantined or handed over to the bomb squad; they are simply thrown away. The agency seems to be saying that it knows these things are harmless. But it’s going to steal them anyway, and either you accept it or you don’t fly.

But of all the contradictions and self-defeating measures T.S.A. has come up with, possibly none is more blatantly ludicrous than the policy decreeing that pilots and flight attendants undergo the same x-ray and metal detector screening as passengers. What makes it ludicrous is that tens of thousands of other airport workers, from baggage loaders and fuelers to cabin cleaners and maintenance personnel, are subject only to occasional random screenings when they come to work.

These are individuals with full access to aircraft, inside and out. Some are airline employees, though a high percentage are contract staff belonging to outside companies. The fact that crew members, many of whom are former military fliers, and all of whom endured rigorous background checks prior to being hired, are required to take out their laptops and surrender their hobby knives, while a caterer or cabin cleaner sidesteps the entire process and walks onto a plane unimpeded, nullifies almost everything our T.S.A. minders have said and done since September 11th, 2001. If there is a more ringing let-me-get-this-straight scenario anywhere in the realm of airport security, I’d like to hear it.

I’m not suggesting that the rules be tightened for non-crew members so much as relaxed for all accredited workers. Which perhaps urges us to reconsider the entire purpose of airport security:

The truth is, regardless of how many pointy tools and shampoo bottles we confiscate, there shall remain an unlimited number of ways to smuggle dangerous items onto a plane. The precise shape, form and substance of those items is irrelevant. We are not fighting materials, we are fighting the imagination and cleverness of the would-be saboteur.

Thus, what most people fail to grasp is that the nuts and bolts of keeping terrorists away from planes is not really the job of airport security at all. Rather, it’s the job of government agencies and law enforcement. It’s not very glamorous, but the grunt work of hunting down terrorists takes place far off stage, relying on the diligent work of cops, spies and intelligence officers. Air crimes need to be stopped at the planning stages. By the time a terrorist gets to the airport, chances are it’s too late.

In the end, I’m not sure which is more troubling, the inanity of the existing regulations, or the average American’s acceptance of them and willingness to be humiliated. These wasteful and tedious protocols have solidified into what appears to be indefinite policy, with little or no opposition. There ought to be a tide of protest rising up against this mania. Where is it? At its loudest, the voice of the traveling public is one of grumbled resignation. The op-ed pages are silent, the pundits have nothing meaningful to say.

The airlines, for their part, are in something of a bind. The willingness of our carriers to allow flying to become an increasingly unpleasant experience suggests a business sense of masochistic capitulation. On the other hand, imagine the outrage among security zealots should airlines be caught lobbying for what is perceived to be a dangerous abrogation of security and responsibility — even if it’s not. Carriers caught plenty of flack, almost all of it unfair, in the aftermath of September 11th. Understandably, they no longer want that liability.

As for Americans themselves, I suppose that it’s less than realistic to expect street protests or airport sit-ins from citizen fliers, and maybe we shouldn’t expect too much from a press and media that have had no trouble letting countless other injustices slip to the wayside. And rather than rethink our policies, the best we’ve come up with is a way to skirt them — for a fee, naturally — via schemes like Registered Traveler. Americans can now pay to have their personal information put on file just to avoid the hassle of airport security. As cynical as George Orwell ever was, I doubt he imagined the idea of citizens offering up money for their own subjugation.

How we got to this point is an interesting study in reactionary politics, fear-mongering and a disconcerting willingness of the American public to accept almost anything in the name of “security.” Conned and frightened, our nation demands not actual security, but security spectacle. And although a reasonable percentage of passengers, along with most security experts, would concur such theater serves no useful purpose, there has been surprisingly little outrage. In that regard, maybe we’ve gotten exactly the system we deserve.

Originally Posted by Blog 156

About two years after 9/11 I was selected at random by a TSA agent for additional security screening at an airport checkpoint. I was asked to remove my hat, shoes, belt and jacket, after which I was told to spread my arms and legs for electronic ‘wanding’.

When I asked why I had been chosen for the extra attention, two more agents quickly appeared and their unsmiling faces emphasized that airport security was, indeed, very serious business. “We need to be sure you don’t have anything you can use to take control of an aircraft”, the screener told me. I will never forget the absurdity of his words.

You see, I was, in fact, about to take control of an aircraft, an Airbus A320 to be precise, and fly it up the Potomac River to LaGuardia. That’s what airline Captains like me get paid to do. That’s why I had showed up at the airport in full uniform, properly credentialed and ready to go.

Security was then, and remains now, largely a sham. It’s all about politics and the appearance of vigilance. It’s about collecting pocket knives from forgetful, but otherwise law-abiding people.

We have been lead to believe that we now have the best secured aviation system in the world. And if success is measured with flow-charts, color codes and administrative name changes, maybe we do.

In truth, we have all been let down by the very people in charge. They would have us believe that they are actually addressing security issues when in fact they are doing little more than staging public relations theater.

[Miraz]

It is not just the country airports that security is a joke

I flew into YBCG over the weekend to pick up a couple of passengers, and found them waiting on the tarmac airside as I taxied in, they had managed to get there without showing any ID, or even being challenged.

But then again, so had I...

[Flying Binghi]

Thought provoking post Capt Claret