20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports? • Hacker News Board

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#141

Post by BobbyJo » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

COGlory wrote: post #105

wycy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact attack that paralyzed an entire metro region for nearly a month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks Considering how many crazy, extremely radicalized people are out there, I'm surprised attacks like this aren't much more common.

Perhaps people are less truly radicalized, and substantially more negotiable, than we've been lead to believe. It certainly benefits both the media and politicians to sell us a story that there are an extreme number of radicalized people out there. I've certainly never met any neo-Nazis. Not to say they don't exist, but if they are truly as common as I've been told, I think I'd have encountered some.

Throwing your average Joe on screen garners much fewer eyeballs and therefore isn't profitable.

As some who had been lucky enough to live many years in both rural Florida and urban California, I can tell you beyond a doubt people are mostly (99%) reasonable, and mostly the same, they are just acting on different priorities, beliefs, and data :)

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#142

Post by nickthemagicman » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

ridaj wrote: post #85

bedhead wrote: post #40

Things like this are why I'm so cynical about COVID stuff. We have an unconditional commitment to stupid reactive policies that elevate symbolism far above sensibility, and boy does it have a lot of inertia. The parallels between COVID and our post-9/11 reaction are eerie.

Except many, many more deaths in the case of Covid, and we don't have, thankfully, a federal Covid Corps to enforce any of the related policies...

Many deaths in a certain age group above 65 y.o.. Most age groups had very few deaths.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#143

Post by cloche » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #127

cloche wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a suddenly chaotic situation how does the distributed security communicate and know they're on the same side and not treat each other as the enemy?

They teach you this in the course you need to take to concealed carry. If someone is doing massive damage...cornered people in a restaurant and is shooting them one by one. Someone can respond to that. Youre going to hear it and see it. Not every scenario is going to play out perfectly but at least theres mitigation on the table.

Doesn't really answer the question

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#144

Post by docdeek » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

GDC7 wrote: post #60

And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter. Also the 10000+ souls at the departing and arrival train station also don't matter. Not to mention the 4000 souls aboard cruise ships. It ain't about safety from ill-intentioned people...it's about protecting the POTUS from having to give the order to open fire on an hijacked civilian plane. That's th…

Some years ago I wrote a conference paper [0] pointing to the clear difference in security screening for a flight from Lyon to Paris, and the same journey taken by TGV. The train would have more people on board but no screening of passengers, and only a friendly warning that you had to have a ticket to ride the train (in practice, you could buy one on the way or not buy one at all if you got lucky). The ticket could be bought from a machine or counter without ever showing an ID, and anyone could load baggage onto the train even without later boarding. It seemed to me to be an obvious target for a terrorist who wanted to cause some havoc in the French transport sector, and a compelling one now that the flights were so locked down and difficult to board with ill intentions.

0: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1621509

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#145

Post by refactor_master » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #70

baktubi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the nation should make military training/civil service mandatory. The reality is that random attacks will happen in random places and everyone needs to be equipped to handle accordingly. Basic combat training and paramedic abilities, disaster recovery and such associated procedures. This would create a tighter bond between citizens and improve communities ability to look after one-another. If everyone handles…

Im in favor of people concealed carrying for this exact reason...distributed security works better than slow centralized security and a vulnerable public. Obviously this doesnt work for a plane though. Fully expect to get downvoted for this on HN...because its HN.

Or because the numbers are unequivocally against you?

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#146

Post by InitialLastName » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

MattGaiser wrote: post #10

reidjs wrote: post #6

Get TSA precheck

Cheapest way is with a Nexus card I believe. Great program.

Remember back in the day when the one good thing about the airport security line was not having anyone use it as a stick for the hard sell?

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#147

Post by mschuster91 » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

GDC7 wrote: post #60

And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter. Also the 10000+ souls at the departing and arrival train station also don't matter. Not to mention the 4000 souls aboard cruise ships. It ain't about safety from ill-intentioned people...it's about protecting the POTUS from having to give the order to open fire on an hijacked civilian plane. That's th…

> And of course everybody ignores trains, they don't even look at you...like the 300 souls aboard a train don't matter.

In trains with a separate locomotive, passengers cannot even get to the driver compartment. In any electrified rail scenario, a runaway/commandeered train can be stopped by removing the power supply and then diverting the train onto catch points. Not to mention that running a red light triggers an automated immediate brake in many rail systems.

Of course, breaking into a parked locomotive, starting it and overriding the safety systems (deadman switch, red light detector) is possible, but it requires a lot of training you won't find online, and without the cooperation of someone at the control center all you're going to do is to derail the engine (as usually, there is a catch point switch at the entry of every branch onto the main track, that is by default pointing to the catch point).

> Also the 10000+ souls at the departing and arrival train station also don't matter.

Agreed, but bomb/poison threat is a risk at every large building.

> Not to mention the 4000 souls aboard cruise ships.

It's incredibly difficult to pull off a fatal attack using a commandeered (cruise) ship as a weapon - wannabe pirates would need to control the entire bridge and the machine room as well as any auxiliary control points (e.g. for guides) that allow a remote shutdown of the engines. And even assuming attackers do gain control of a ship... a ship is slow, and cost guard will intervene if they notice you on a dangerous collision course.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#148

Post by xxxtentachyon » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

sandworm101 wrote: post #82

baktubi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the nation should make military training/civil service mandatory. The reality is that random attacks will happen in random places and everyone needs to be equipped to handle accordingly. Basic combat training and paramedic abilities, disaster recovery and such associated procedures. This would create a tighter bond between citizens and improve communities ability to look after one-another. If everyone handles…

>> military training/civil service mandatory. >> Basic combat training and paramedic abilities Those are very different things. Not every soldier is taught hand-to-hand combat. Not every civil service volunteer is taught to handle a weapon. And basic first aid training is almost universal already. More lives could probably be saves by everyone being trained in basic mental health and de-escalation techniques.

Among what populations is it near universal? I grew up in an upper-middle class bedroom community, and I only had to get first aid certified in order to be a lifeguard at a local pool. That was just about a decade ago, and I’d be hard-pressed to do anything other than apply a cold compress and perform the Heinrich maneuver now. My father-in-law was a trained physician overseas but became a pharmaceutical researcher when he came to the US, and the last time he was in a situation where he had to perform CPR, he had no idea what to do. I doubt more than 20% of American adults would be useful in a serious casualty situation.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#149

Post by monkeynotes » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

moss2 wrote: post #101

tyingq wrote: post #8

The interesting part to me is that the mode of attack for 9/11 can't easily be repeated. It depended on passengers assuming the plane was being hijacked, and that they would eventually be released. That stopped working on the 3rd (edit: 4th) plane. I don't see how it would work again. Passengers now default to assuming there's no path to live other than fighting back. Meaning many of the measures we still take aren't…

Wishful thinking. Even if passengers assumed there's not path to survive other than fight -- and you're not in a position to say that they assume this -- most people will not do anything about the hijack anyway.

It doesn't take 'most' passengers to overpower some people. All it takes is one hero to move and others will pile on, just one person to break the bystander effect. This is scientifically proven with crowd modelling.

Re: 20 years after 9/11: Will we ever stop taking our shoes off at airports?

#150

Post by sidlls » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:17 PM UTC

murgindrag wrote: post #36

alexfromapex wrote: post #14

I try not to fly and this is one of the major reasons I find flying so annoying. I've been through airports where they just use bomb sniffing dogs, why can't that be the norm?

Allergies. You end up with a large segment of the population who sneezes a little bit, which is sort of annoying but sort of okay. You end up with a small segment of the population with asthma attacks, anaphylaxis, and other life-threatening conditions. Universal use of dogs would mean that there would be people who simple cannot travel, ever, anywhere beyond driving distance. There's a small war between extremist do…

I have never heard of any life-threatening allergic reaction to any drug or bomb sniffing dog. Has that actually happened? If so...how, when, and where?