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?

#281

Post by MrGilbert » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

macintux wrote: post #241

MrGilbert wrote: post #228

Totally unrelated, but I still remember what I did on 9/11. I was in my teens. I know the date, I know the weekday, I know everything I did in the 24 hours it happened. However, despite being the much "fresher" events, I don't know the weekday my grandparents and parents passed away, let alone what I did back then. My memory is... interesting.

Memory in general is very capricious, but world-changing, emotional events tend to do that. Before 9/11 the most common one I heard people talking about was JFK's assassination. For me, it's the Challenger disaster, 9/11, Columbia.

Yes.. Thinking about it, before 9/11 I had the TV pictures of the Berlin Wall being torn down by an excavator in my mind. But I was way too young at this age to understand it.

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

#282

Post by mrtksn » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:51 PM UTC

duxup wrote: post #222

So much security that not sense. I attend college football games. Everyone goes through security. Outside security we pack up in masses of humanity outside the gates waiting to get through the inevitably slow security. It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude to the density of humanity there where there is no security ... than in the stadium where people are actually more spread out. If someon…

> It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude to the density of humanity

Maybe it is about shifting the blame. If something happens outside, it's the police failure but if something happens inside it is venue management failure.

Anyway, I completely agree that we have given up way too much in the name of security. If it's not the terrorist, then it is "think of the children" scare and we are about to get our personal devices scanning our personal files and report us to the authorities. For now it is CSAM material but I don't see any reason why the same devices wouldn't be scanning for other stuff once the system is in place.

I totally expect our devices to start checking on us for "betrayal" patterns once the conflict with China intensifies, for example. Once you become a "human resource" and nothing more in the eyes of the political structures, you will need to be managed and in 2020s the tools for it are plenty and powerful.

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

#283

Post by spoonjim » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #246

spoonjim wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That security isn’t necessarily to stop terrorism. It’s also to stop people from bringing in weapons and then using them in drunken brawls.

That is amazing reasoning. Assuming drunken brawls were a problem, instead of banning alcohol, the solution was the current TSA protocol.

Alcohol makes money, outside weapons don’t. If they could get away with selling you knives in the stadium they probably would.

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

#284

Post by dustintrex » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

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.

The intersection of COVID and air travel is particularly bad.

https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/08/14/most-covid-19-t...

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

#285

Post by bserge » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

switch007 wrote: post #214

JoshTko wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

4.5 million deaths from Covid so far.

From Covid or with covid (edit: I’m merely asking which stat you’re citing. Source?)? Ie the disease killed them or they tested positive while dying from something else?

Methodologies vary, but comparing deaths to any of the previous years, it is clear that they've increased. And the only major change was the new virus.

But of course, never let a good chance go to waste. We'll see an increase in restrictions because of Covid, they're not going away anytime soon.

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

#286

Post by spoonjim » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

spamizbad wrote: post #254

spoonjim wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That security isn’t necessarily to stop terrorism. It’s also to stop people from bringing in weapons and then using them in drunken brawls.

Most airline passengers would trade dry flights for pre-9/11 security screenings.

I’m talking about college football games.

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

#287

Post by tylersmith » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:52 PM UTC

titzer wrote: post #235

bedhead wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mass loss of life. Novel way in which people died. People dying randomly (hard to avoid). General hysteria. Paranoia over a minority group. Moral outrage against anyone not falling inline politically. Overreaching government plans to keep people safe. Petty symbolism (freedom fries/masks) to sort the moral from the immoral. Should I go on?

You think masks are petty symbolism? I think that kind of trolling just raises the temperature here, which I'd like to avoid, so no, please, do not go on.

It's not trolling just because you disagree with it.

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

#288

Post by jdavis703 » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

bserge wrote: post #248

duxup wrote: post #222

So much security that not sense. I attend college football games. Everyone goes through security. Outside security we pack up in masses of humanity outside the gates waiting to get through the inevitably slow security. It would be far more effective to do something at the gates dude to the density of humanity there where there is no security ... than in the stadium where people are actually more spread out. If someon…

The goal of terrorism is to scare people into restricting their own freedoms. It has worked amazingly well so far. To any motivated anti-society organization or person, this is huge leverage. A few deaths leading to a noticeably more authoritarian state? What's not to love? It doesn't even matter if the authorities do their job and punish those responsible, the people will still choose to restrict their own freedoms…

This actually isn’t the goal of terrorism. I’ve studied terrorism and the definition is essentially non-state actors using violence for political means.

Now we can go in to various conspiracies from “Bush planned 9.11 as a false flag” to “Bush ignored intelligence reports so he could launch the war on terror,” but those are mostly just unproven conspiracies unrelated to what al-Qaeda wanted.

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

#289

Post by nradov » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

newswasboring wrote: post #268

CountDrewku wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok then what's the target? Eradication of the virus is not achievable and neither is full vaccination of the entire population. I have yet to hear any hard numbers for removal of "safety" measures from any politician when enacting lockdowns/mandates. I think you're fooling yourself if you believe there's some hard target.

The target is to save lives. If the threat is still there, we need to keep the safety measures. And covid measures have always been dynamic. Safety measures have been removed or reintroduced based up on very hard statistics man. I don't know how you don't see that. edit: My first sentence was a bit garbage. The target is to save lives from covid and avoid its spread. Hospital utilization and mortality rate from the d…

The threat will never go away, but fortunately vaccination cuts the risk of death to virtually zero. SARS-CoV-2 is now endemic in the worldwide human population, plus several animal species, so unlike smallpox or polio it can never be eradicated. Obviously we can't keep the safety measures in place forever, so what are the quantitative exit criteria?

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

#290

Post by tomjen3 » Wed, Sep 08, 2021, 2:53 PM UTC

the_snooze wrote: post #22

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…

Absolutely. It's not a 9/11-style attack we need to be worried about. No one will let a plane get commandeered ever again. The 9/11 terrorists took advantage of the "comply with the hijackers" policy in place at the time. That opportunity ended the moment the second plane hit the towers. 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 tha…

That attack was overhyped by the media, which suggest a way to stop them.

Personally I am far more concerned by the rent/steal truck and mow down pedestrians mode that we have seen in France and Germany. You might be able to do more about gun safety. You can't really prevent a madman from driving up on the sidewalk deliberately and almost any person can rent a van.