TSA - Pilots to be exempt from scanners & pat downs.
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Originally Posted by wiggy
Ah but then you'd need a second FAM in case the first FAM gets been "turned" and shoots the pilots...and then of course.........
Flight training for FAMs should be no problem - I think they already earn more money than many regional airline pilots? So you could just recruit FAMs from pilots rather than law enforcement.And no I am not joking. It just sickens me that someone believes that his holy profession is immune from terrorism. If you lower the screening standards for flight/cabin crew (and let it be known publicly!), you can as well lower the screening standards for everyone else.
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Milled Rumours.
All airline pilots in uniform, including non-U.S nationals, with airline identification, will now be subject to screening by walk-through metal detectors at all security checkpoints, as was the case before the new policy was adopted. They will not be required to be screened by AIT or intrusive physical ‘pat-downs’.
cockpitvisit
There are already FAMs in the main cabin.
Just remove cockpit doors altogether so that a terrorist (whoever that might be) cannot lock himself into the cockpit, and we are all set
I think Flight training for FAMs should be no problem
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A couple of interesting articles, showing that we have allies out there:
by Gene Healy
Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency.
This article appeared in the DC Examiner on November 23, 2010.
Last fall, flying out of Chicago O'Hare, I ran into that rarest of breeds: a Transportation Security Administration agent with a sense of humor. In her "Da Bears" accent, she moved the line along with a good-natured, "awright: who's my next victim?" At least they're allowed to joke about it. If a rubber-gloved fed cups your — er, I prefer the term "treasures" — just turn your head and cough politely. Don't dare try to ease the awkwardness with a wisecrack, lest you get arrested under the TSA's no-joking policy.
Sometimes, when I manage to pull my eyes away from my twinkly smartphone and look around, I think, "Wow, if you squint a little, this could be a sci-fi dystopia!" (It happened again just recently, as I was passing through the gates at my local Metro station, and Janet Napolitano's voice boomed ominously from the loudspeakers, ordering me to say something if I see something.)
Thankfully, the growing anti-TSA backlash shows that for many Americans, there isn't a Soma dose high enough to get them to grin and bear the bureaucratic feel-up.
Like it or not, we live in the world the alarmists have made.
In fact, even some of our most rabid terror-warriors, like former Sen. Rick Santorum and neocon stalwart Charles Krauthammer, now say they've had enough.
Santorum and Krauthammer blame a politically correct mentality that prevents profiling. But the Christmas bomber was Nigerian; the shoebomber, a Brit with a Jamaican father. Should we just give the "freedom fondle" to anyone vaguely swarthy?
I have a different explanation for how we got here.
For nearly a decade, Krauthammer, Santorum and too many others on the Right have relentlessly hyped and politicized the terrorist threat. But when every bungled attack — no matter how inept — gets the screeching siren treatment on Drudge, what do you expect that political dynamic to produce? Sober, sensible policy?
Conservatives could stand to think more clearly about ideas and consequences, cause and effect. Take last week's comments from Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., a congressional father of the agency: "When the TSA was established, it was never envisioned that it would become a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy."
Really, who could have known?
And when prominent conservatives brush off constitutional concerns with the bromide "the Constitution is not a suicide pact," (or, as Mitt Romney put it in 2007, "Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive") is it so surprising that liberty and dignity get sent to the back of the line?
Like it or not, we live in the world the alarmists have made.
Yet, in reality, we're remarkably safe. In 2009, terrorists caused just 25 U.S. noncombatant fatalities worldwide. That's 25 too many, but "existential," it's not.
My colleague Jim Harper points out that, since 9/11, "in 99 million domestic flights, transporting 7 billion people, precisely zero domestic travelers have snuck an underpants bomb onto a plane. (The one that we have seen — which did not work — came from overseas.)"
Surely the existence of the TSA — hapless and bureaucratic as they are — deters some potential bombers. Even so, the agency won't — likely can't — identify a single genuine terrorist they've caught, and it's not at all clear, according to the Government Accountability Office, that even the nude machine would have exposed the Christmas bomber.
We're safe — but not perfectly safe. Hyping and politicizing the terrorist threat won't deliver us perfect safety. Nothing can. But, as we're learning, it can put us on the path toward a society that no longer looks like America — one where you're endlessly prodded and poked — and ordered not to joke about the poking.
That's something worth being alarmed about.
Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency.
Body Scanners: The Naked Truth
by David Rittgers
David Rittgers is an attorney and legal policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
This article appeared in The New York Post on November 17, 2010.
The body scanners coming to your local airport provide marginal benefits — if any — in detecting weapons and explosives hidden on travelers. They aren't worth the cost in money — let alone in civil liberties.
The Transportation Security Administration has put these machines — X-ray and radio-wave booths that look beneath clothing to perform virtual strip searches — across the nation and around the world. Industry advocates claim the technology's needed to stop terrorists with explosives hidden under their clothes like Christmas bomber Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Yet the public is justifiably skeptical. Pilots and passengers are "opting out" and taking the alternative screening method — a run through a traditional metal detector and an all-too-intimate pat-down. Cell-phone videos of encounters with TSA screeners are going viral.
If the ineffectiveness of body scanners is not enough to give the public pause, the cost ought to be.
Air travelers now face a few bad choices: Submit to the body scanner, endure an invasive manual pat-down or accept an $11,000 civil fine. This is security theater at its finest. Congress needs to revisit these protocols completely — starting with a total halt to the obscenely expensive and jarringly ineffective full-body scanner.
Despite what their proponents would have us believe, body scanners are not some magical tool to find all weapons and explosives that can be hidden on the human body. Yes, the scanners work against high-density objects such as guns and knives — but so do traditional magnetometers.
And the scanners fare poorly against low-density materials such as thin plastics, gels and liquids. Care to guess what Abdulmutallab's bomb was made of? The Government Accountability Office reported in March that it's not clear that a scanner would've detected that device.
Even if the scanners did work against low-density materials, the same group linked to the Christmas bomb, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has already found another way to defeat the technology: hiding bombs inside the human body: A would-be AQAP assassin tried to kill a senior Saudi counterterrorism official with a bomb hidden where only a proctologist would find it.
That bomb wound up killing only its carrier. But a more enterprising terrorist could go to the plane bathroom to remove bomb components hidden in a body cavity, then place them against the aircraft hull — and the results would be far different.
Terrorists already know how to beat body scanners with low-tech (really, no-tech) techniques, but the federal government still spends billions on this gadget.
If the ineffectiveness of body scanners is not enough to give the public pause, the cost ought to be.
An army of executives for scanner-producing corporations — mostly former high-ranking Homeland Security officials — successfully lobbied Congress into spending $300 million in stimulus money to buy the scanners. But running them will cost another $340 million each year. Operating them means 5,000 added TSA personnel, growing the screener workforce by 10 percent. This, when the federal debt commission is saying that we must cut federal employment rolls, including some FBI agents, just to keep spending sustainable.
Why cut funding for the people who actually catch terrorists to add more pointless hassles at the airport? (Going through a body scanner also takes longer — the process is slower than magnetometers.)
Scanners clearly fail an honest cost-benefit analysis. Yet it's privacy that has the traveling public up in arms. Understandably so — the message the TSA is sending us is: "Be seen naked or get groped."
We tell our children not to talk to strangers, but now a government functionary gets to fondle away just because he has a badge?
Thanks, but no. Policymakers should rethink this move toward ineffective, expensive and unnecessarily intrusive aviation security.
David Rittgers is an attorney and legal policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
by Gene Healy
Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency.
This article appeared in the DC Examiner on November 23, 2010.
Last fall, flying out of Chicago O'Hare, I ran into that rarest of breeds: a Transportation Security Administration agent with a sense of humor. In her "Da Bears" accent, she moved the line along with a good-natured, "awright: who's my next victim?" At least they're allowed to joke about it. If a rubber-gloved fed cups your — er, I prefer the term "treasures" — just turn your head and cough politely. Don't dare try to ease the awkwardness with a wisecrack, lest you get arrested under the TSA's no-joking policy.
Sometimes, when I manage to pull my eyes away from my twinkly smartphone and look around, I think, "Wow, if you squint a little, this could be a sci-fi dystopia!" (It happened again just recently, as I was passing through the gates at my local Metro station, and Janet Napolitano's voice boomed ominously from the loudspeakers, ordering me to say something if I see something.)
Thankfully, the growing anti-TSA backlash shows that for many Americans, there isn't a Soma dose high enough to get them to grin and bear the bureaucratic feel-up.
Like it or not, we live in the world the alarmists have made.
In fact, even some of our most rabid terror-warriors, like former Sen. Rick Santorum and neocon stalwart Charles Krauthammer, now say they've had enough.
Santorum and Krauthammer blame a politically correct mentality that prevents profiling. But the Christmas bomber was Nigerian; the shoebomber, a Brit with a Jamaican father. Should we just give the "freedom fondle" to anyone vaguely swarthy?
I have a different explanation for how we got here.
For nearly a decade, Krauthammer, Santorum and too many others on the Right have relentlessly hyped and politicized the terrorist threat. But when every bungled attack — no matter how inept — gets the screeching siren treatment on Drudge, what do you expect that political dynamic to produce? Sober, sensible policy?
Conservatives could stand to think more clearly about ideas and consequences, cause and effect. Take last week's comments from Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., a congressional father of the agency: "When the TSA was established, it was never envisioned that it would become a huge, unwieldy bureaucracy."
Really, who could have known?
And when prominent conservatives brush off constitutional concerns with the bromide "the Constitution is not a suicide pact," (or, as Mitt Romney put it in 2007, "Our most basic civil liberty is the right to be kept alive") is it so surprising that liberty and dignity get sent to the back of the line?
Like it or not, we live in the world the alarmists have made.
Yet, in reality, we're remarkably safe. In 2009, terrorists caused just 25 U.S. noncombatant fatalities worldwide. That's 25 too many, but "existential," it's not.
My colleague Jim Harper points out that, since 9/11, "in 99 million domestic flights, transporting 7 billion people, precisely zero domestic travelers have snuck an underpants bomb onto a plane. (The one that we have seen — which did not work — came from overseas.)"
Surely the existence of the TSA — hapless and bureaucratic as they are — deters some potential bombers. Even so, the agency won't — likely can't — identify a single genuine terrorist they've caught, and it's not at all clear, according to the Government Accountability Office, that even the nude machine would have exposed the Christmas bomber.
We're safe — but not perfectly safe. Hyping and politicizing the terrorist threat won't deliver us perfect safety. Nothing can. But, as we're learning, it can put us on the path toward a society that no longer looks like America — one where you're endlessly prodded and poked — and ordered not to joke about the poking.
That's something worth being alarmed about.
Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and the author of The Cult of the Presidency.
Body Scanners: The Naked Truth
by David Rittgers
David Rittgers is an attorney and legal policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
This article appeared in The New York Post on November 17, 2010.
The body scanners coming to your local airport provide marginal benefits — if any — in detecting weapons and explosives hidden on travelers. They aren't worth the cost in money — let alone in civil liberties.
The Transportation Security Administration has put these machines — X-ray and radio-wave booths that look beneath clothing to perform virtual strip searches — across the nation and around the world. Industry advocates claim the technology's needed to stop terrorists with explosives hidden under their clothes like Christmas bomber Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Yet the public is justifiably skeptical. Pilots and passengers are "opting out" and taking the alternative screening method — a run through a traditional metal detector and an all-too-intimate pat-down. Cell-phone videos of encounters with TSA screeners are going viral.
If the ineffectiveness of body scanners is not enough to give the public pause, the cost ought to be.
Air travelers now face a few bad choices: Submit to the body scanner, endure an invasive manual pat-down or accept an $11,000 civil fine. This is security theater at its finest. Congress needs to revisit these protocols completely — starting with a total halt to the obscenely expensive and jarringly ineffective full-body scanner.
Despite what their proponents would have us believe, body scanners are not some magical tool to find all weapons and explosives that can be hidden on the human body. Yes, the scanners work against high-density objects such as guns and knives — but so do traditional magnetometers.
And the scanners fare poorly against low-density materials such as thin plastics, gels and liquids. Care to guess what Abdulmutallab's bomb was made of? The Government Accountability Office reported in March that it's not clear that a scanner would've detected that device.
Even if the scanners did work against low-density materials, the same group linked to the Christmas bomb, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, has already found another way to defeat the technology: hiding bombs inside the human body: A would-be AQAP assassin tried to kill a senior Saudi counterterrorism official with a bomb hidden where only a proctologist would find it.
That bomb wound up killing only its carrier. But a more enterprising terrorist could go to the plane bathroom to remove bomb components hidden in a body cavity, then place them against the aircraft hull — and the results would be far different.
Terrorists already know how to beat body scanners with low-tech (really, no-tech) techniques, but the federal government still spends billions on this gadget.
If the ineffectiveness of body scanners is not enough to give the public pause, the cost ought to be.
An army of executives for scanner-producing corporations — mostly former high-ranking Homeland Security officials — successfully lobbied Congress into spending $300 million in stimulus money to buy the scanners. But running them will cost another $340 million each year. Operating them means 5,000 added TSA personnel, growing the screener workforce by 10 percent. This, when the federal debt commission is saying that we must cut federal employment rolls, including some FBI agents, just to keep spending sustainable.
Why cut funding for the people who actually catch terrorists to add more pointless hassles at the airport? (Going through a body scanner also takes longer — the process is slower than magnetometers.)
Scanners clearly fail an honest cost-benefit analysis. Yet it's privacy that has the traveling public up in arms. Understandably so — the message the TSA is sending us is: "Be seen naked or get groped."
We tell our children not to talk to strangers, but now a government functionary gets to fondle away just because he has a badge?
Thanks, but no. Policymakers should rethink this move toward ineffective, expensive and unnecessarily intrusive aviation security.
David Rittgers is an attorney and legal policy analyst at the Cato Institute.
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Just read this thread all the way through.
Am I to believe that airside staff are NOT screened in the USA? Only pilots, cabin crew and passengers?
If that's true its' nuts and I can see why ya'll are getting hot under the collar.
For what it's worth, in UK at least, we're all screened. Random checks, boots off X-ray, the lot.
If we have to have this cr'p then it's all or nothing. No half measures. If I, with access to bits of the aeroplane that many pilots have never even heard of, bits of the aeroplane that can be 'encouraged' to fail in flight, have to be screened then i'm afraid so should everyone else.
Am I to believe that airside staff are NOT screened in the USA? Only pilots, cabin crew and passengers?
If that's true its' nuts and I can see why ya'll are getting hot under the collar.
For what it's worth, in UK at least, we're all screened. Random checks, boots off X-ray, the lot.
If we have to have this cr'p then it's all or nothing. No half measures. If I, with access to bits of the aeroplane that many pilots have never even heard of, bits of the aeroplane that can be 'encouraged' to fail in flight, have to be screened then i'm afraid so should everyone else.
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Touching Someones Ass with the same gloves we just used to touch someone elses...
What kind of organisation doesn't employ anyone bright enough to see a problem with that ?
God help these guys if they ever actually find a real terrorist - they'll never manage to prevent evidence contamination if they can't manage basic hygiene.
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First....let me say it's about D@MN time pilots were able to bypass this CR@P!!
However.....I would REALLY recommend that the various pilot/flight crew unions make D@MN sure you "spread the word" to the general public about all the background checks you all go through as part of your job. Otherwise, I CAN see another 'backlash' from you guys bypassing the 'security' screening the rest have to 'endure'.
The entire process in the U.S. is a total crock as far as I'm concerned and simply gives the 'illusion' of security. The terrorists have already won in my opinion. 
Operation 'hemorrhage' indeed!!
However.....I would REALLY recommend that the various pilot/flight crew unions make D@MN sure you "spread the word" to the general public about all the background checks you all go through as part of your job. Otherwise, I CAN see another 'backlash' from you guys bypassing the 'security' screening the rest have to 'endure'.
The entire process in the U.S. is a total crock as far as I'm concerned and simply gives the 'illusion' of security. The terrorists have already won in my opinion.
Operation 'hemorrhage' indeed!!
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If they ever caught one. Imagine a bad guy being caught. He would just put his hands up and say "Fair cop, Gov!"
Or the lone lawman, usually a fat, slow local cop (and I am not exaggerating) with a 9mm pistol would have to take him down.
If this guy was armed, guess who is in the crossfire?
You!!!
What will the TSA do then; have security set up for people to go through so that they could go through security?
Or the lone lawman, usually a fat, slow local cop (and I am not exaggerating) with a 9mm pistol would have to take him down.
If this guy was armed, guess who is in the crossfire?
You!!!
What will the TSA do then; have security set up for people to go through so that they could go through security?
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Report as a Sexual Assault
All the process takes to stop the rot is for people to start reporting pat downs as a sexual assault. Better Still if a child did so, then one conviction would bar the security gaurd from that type of work. Wouldnt take many before they got a lot more relaxed about it.
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Originally Posted by PA-28-180
the various pilot/flight crew unions make D@MN sure you "spread the word" to the general public about all the background checks you all go through as part of your job.
And does the cabin crew submit to background checks too?
Right now at least my perception as part of the flying "general public" is that instead of opposing the new intrusive security policies, pilots actually support them and only want an exception for their own holy asses.
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Understand the concerns.
In the medical field TSA should be changing these gloves after ever passenger they check, just as the medical pros do in the hospitals to prevent spreading of viruses and bacteria.
Yet they claim to be the experts and want to take operating cockpit crews shampoo and after shave if it over the amount.
I just would like to know here, why any TSA worker would not complain about his or her job when these new rules came out having to grope people such as this?
It has to be the most disgusting job on the planet, why no complaints from them?
In the medical field TSA should be changing these gloves after ever passenger they check, just as the medical pros do in the hospitals to prevent spreading of viruses and bacteria.
Yet they claim to be the experts and want to take operating cockpit crews shampoo and after shave if it over the amount.
I just would like to know here, why any TSA worker would not complain about his or her job when these new rules came out having to grope people such as this?
It has to be the most disgusting job on the planet, why no complaints from them?
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Many SLF have been through even greater background checks
Several prior postings have touched on one of the issues that, if carefully considered, would show the unreasonableness and ineffectiveness of the airport security process vis-à-vis the countrywide security process.
It is obvious that flight deck and cabin crew on commercial aircraft are a special case for TSA to consider. But, many of we SLF are regularly in a position of authority or responsibility to cause as much or more immediate physical, psychological, and social damage to the US than are aircraft crew. On a daily basis we are given unlimited, due to extensive screening similar to what you pilots experience, access to equipment that could cause grave injury to hundreds or thousands of persons. We are trusted every day of our working lives yet we must endure intrusive screening just to get on an airplane.
I used to fly as SLF many times a week and had done so for many years. During that time I held many high level US security clearances which gave me unlimited physical and logical access to computer and control systems at military, airport, and utility facilities all over the US – yet I had to be poked, prodded, and x-rayed every time I wanted to fly to work on those systems.
Now I am retired and am entrusted with yet more precious cargo. I regularly transport hundreds of school age children all over the western US, Canada, and Mexico as a charter bus/school bus operator. I am certified to operate large buses for any school district in my home state and regularly do so by showing only my ID and drivers license.
I just present myself at a school district transportation office, show my IDs and am given the keys to a bus and hundreds of children’s lives. I could cause far greater psychological and social damage to the US while driving my bus than I could by damaging an airplane as a passenger. Yet I am still poked, prodded, and x-rayed every time I want to fly.
I regularly drive heavy military trucks and buses around the US West. Those vehicles frequently contain weapons and often dozens of military personnel. Again, I present my credentials at a military motor pool, where no one knows me, and I am given full access to the vehicles, weapons, and military base. I am trusted on a daily basis by the US Army and Air Force yet I am still poked, prodded, and x-rayed every time I want to fly.
There is nothing unusual about my work situation; millions of Americans are trusted to do similar work with similar security clearances yet none of us are trusted to board an airplane as a passenger.
It is obvious that flight deck and cabin crew on commercial aircraft are a special case for TSA to consider. But, many of we SLF are regularly in a position of authority or responsibility to cause as much or more immediate physical, psychological, and social damage to the US than are aircraft crew. On a daily basis we are given unlimited, due to extensive screening similar to what you pilots experience, access to equipment that could cause grave injury to hundreds or thousands of persons. We are trusted every day of our working lives yet we must endure intrusive screening just to get on an airplane.
I used to fly as SLF many times a week and had done so for many years. During that time I held many high level US security clearances which gave me unlimited physical and logical access to computer and control systems at military, airport, and utility facilities all over the US – yet I had to be poked, prodded, and x-rayed every time I wanted to fly to work on those systems.
Now I am retired and am entrusted with yet more precious cargo. I regularly transport hundreds of school age children all over the western US, Canada, and Mexico as a charter bus/school bus operator. I am certified to operate large buses for any school district in my home state and regularly do so by showing only my ID and drivers license.
I just present myself at a school district transportation office, show my IDs and am given the keys to a bus and hundreds of children’s lives. I could cause far greater psychological and social damage to the US while driving my bus than I could by damaging an airplane as a passenger. Yet I am still poked, prodded, and x-rayed every time I want to fly.
I regularly drive heavy military trucks and buses around the US West. Those vehicles frequently contain weapons and often dozens of military personnel. Again, I present my credentials at a military motor pool, where no one knows me, and I am given full access to the vehicles, weapons, and military base. I am trusted on a daily basis by the US Army and Air Force yet I am still poked, prodded, and x-rayed every time I want to fly.
There is nothing unusual about my work situation; millions of Americans are trusted to do similar work with similar security clearances yet none of us are trusted to board an airplane as a passenger.
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TSA workers face verbal abuse from travelers - Travel - News - msnbc.com
Now 'abused' TSA staff vent their anger at security patdown searches | Mail Online
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what a load of crap!
cockpitvisit wants himself put through a background check so he doesn't have to go through the whole security thing...FINE.
at your expense, and you pay a fee to maintain the system...oh yeah, and the rigors of checking you out include retinal scan so that no one could impersonate you.
by the time you get to the cockpit as a pilot, you can ''smell'' if someone isn't who they say they are. And once you are on a trip, you are with the same pilot for 2,3,4, or more days.
The big thing about the issue of school bus versus airliners are this. If you killed all the kids on a school bus, that is a tragedy. but if you drive a school bus into the Sears Tower (willis tower or whatever)...you break a little glass.
If you fly a 747 into it...well, disaster on an epic proportion.
Me, I am for profiling...but until then...make the best of it.
cockpitvisit wants himself put through a background check so he doesn't have to go through the whole security thing...FINE.
at your expense, and you pay a fee to maintain the system...oh yeah, and the rigors of checking you out include retinal scan so that no one could impersonate you.
by the time you get to the cockpit as a pilot, you can ''smell'' if someone isn't who they say they are. And once you are on a trip, you are with the same pilot for 2,3,4, or more days.
The big thing about the issue of school bus versus airliners are this. If you killed all the kids on a school bus, that is a tragedy. but if you drive a school bus into the Sears Tower (willis tower or whatever)...you break a little glass.
If you fly a 747 into it...well, disaster on an epic proportion.
Me, I am for profiling...but until then...make the best of it.
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Back on thread.
ln 2007 l passed though one of London`s satelite airports after parking an aircraft and positioning internationally to operate my last flight of the day.
l had a full paid ticket of course, and holding my boarding card in my uniformed hand was told in security to remove my I.D. from display.
3 channels were available, l noted that shoes, belts, etc., were not being removed in any of them.
Until my turn, wearing a known company`s captains` uniform.
You`ve probably guessed.
As l was getting dressed at the bench at the back, a business type - earlier at the back of me in the queue - came over too ask why they had done that.
" because they are a bunch of c**** "
l thought so, he said as he left.
Profiling ?
Common bl*eding sense would be a start.
l had a full paid ticket of course, and holding my boarding card in my uniformed hand was told in security to remove my I.D. from display.
3 channels were available, l noted that shoes, belts, etc., were not being removed in any of them.
Until my turn, wearing a known company`s captains` uniform.
You`ve probably guessed.
As l was getting dressed at the bench at the back, a business type - earlier at the back of me in the queue - came over too ask why they had done that.
" because they are a bunch of c**** "
l thought so, he said as he left.
Profiling ?
Common bl*eding sense would be a start.
The rules have changed?
Before 911 I think a sufficiently ruthless bunch of karate experts could have taken over an aircraft without any weapons at all. In those days people thought that their best chance of survival was to co-operate with hijackers - if the guy wants to go to Cuba OK we are going to Cuba.
But now even if someone gets an AK47 on board it is still worth fighting because if you don't you are going to die anyway - so why go over the top searching for weapons? What am I missing here?
As for suicide guys, as has been noted, anyone prepared to board with a device in his rectum is not going to be detected.
As has also been noted, the people gaining access to an aircraft without flying, including cleaners, loaders, engineers; are probably better placed to do damage at no risk to themselves.
So maybe we should say that to get anywhere near an aircraft for the first time - even as a passenger, you need to give six months notice and undergo a background check. If you fail it you don't get told why. Review cleared people as and when necessary. As Tacomasailor noted, some people are already security cleared, and credit should be given for this.
Of course it would not work every time, nothing would. And of course some people would still need to be checked on boarding. These people should be told it is a random check, but it would of course be anything but random.
But now even if someone gets an AK47 on board it is still worth fighting because if you don't you are going to die anyway - so why go over the top searching for weapons? What am I missing here?
As for suicide guys, as has been noted, anyone prepared to board with a device in his rectum is not going to be detected.
As has also been noted, the people gaining access to an aircraft without flying, including cleaners, loaders, engineers; are probably better placed to do damage at no risk to themselves.
So maybe we should say that to get anywhere near an aircraft for the first time - even as a passenger, you need to give six months notice and undergo a background check. If you fail it you don't get told why. Review cleared people as and when necessary. As Tacomasailor noted, some people are already security cleared, and credit should be given for this.
Of course it would not work every time, nothing would. And of course some people would still need to be checked on boarding. These people should be told it is a random check, but it would of course be anything but random.
Last edited by 911slf; 29th Nov 2010 at 09:19. Reason: to ackowledge tacomasailor
As has also been noted, the people gaining access to an aircraft without flying, including cleaners, loaders, engineers; are probably better placed to do damage at no risk to themselves.
Doesn't stop tools etc being brought on board though.
