Originally Posted by
RadioGirl
In 2011, therefore, someone on an aircraft who threatens someone else with a boxcutter or pocket knife is no different than someone in a cinema, library, bus, office building, school, or supermarket who threatens someone else with a knife. We don't screen people entering those places to ensure they don't attack others with a knife; why should we worry about it on a plane? I'm willing to take my chances with unscreened, potentially knife-carrying people at the shopping mall, the train, my office; why not on a plane?
Further, if someone with a knife threatens someone else, the other passengers will pile on and beat the snot out of him.
Actually, there are very great differences between an aircraft and an office building.
An aircraft is a confined space, there is nowhere to run, no escape and no help available. Your
assumption that other pax "will pile on and beat the snot out of him" is simply an assumption, and for those at the receiving end of the knife, might be too late to matter.
You are also wrong about people not being screened in various places you mention: quite a few office building, including most civic/governmental building screen people, many schools do as well.
Originally Posted by GoingAway
The paranoia continues to spread .... If you read more on FT and in other places, you'll see that many people slip things into their pocket to avoid the possible confiscation of their property (part of the reason the screening lacks effectiveness, and irradiating all passengers doesn't address it as there are still anamolies - really a body cavity search is the only answer and I'll pass, thanks!)
I'm curious what you think the value of taking that bottle and putting it through an x-ray machine that cannot detect anything of the contents really is? What did that accomplish? NOTHING different from walking through the WTMD with it in the back pocket ... if you see something that truly can be a threat, eg a GUN behind security, go ahead and mention it but take your general paranoia elsewhere.
Despite what they want you to believe, it is extremely unlikely the bogey man got in line ahead of you. Are they out there, sure - but you're still much more likely to be in a car accident or have a heart attack than run into a terrorist at your local airport. (and your recognizing them as such is even less likely)
Clearly you didn't understand my point.
What I was addressing was the suspect behavior of the pax hiding the bottle. By concealing it, he was preventing it from being examined by any means at all. You are willing to assume that someone who does something which is clearly a violation of security regulations has a benign motivation such as protecting his own property which he wishes to take on board the aircraft even though said property may violate airline or security rules. Maybe the guy has a shiny shoe fetish and maybe it really was just an oversized bottle of shoe polish. But, it could just as easily be something else not so harmless that might have been detected by examination. Shoe polish is usually dark colored, what if the contents of the bottle weren't the right color and that could have been detected by visual examination? I'm in the medical field and have been reading lately about some of the possible biological weapons; using one of those in a shoe polish sized bottle, you could easily kill off most of the pax on a large plane.
Just because many people on FT find it acceptable to circumvent security for their own personal reasons doesn't mean that those who consider such behavior to be dangerous to the general welfare are paranoid. Ad hominem attacks are usually used by those who know that their own argument is either weak or irrelevant, like making an analogy between having a heart attack and observing someone trying to smuggle something illicit through security.