Originally Posted by
Global_Hi_Flyer
A terminal (or pick your other venue) dump becomes so predictable that it's almost fodder for someone that wants to disrupt and inconvenience others. And that means they achieve their goals - without violence or the trouble of hijacking a plane.
I dunno, I been around people after *actual* violence (you know, blood, ambulances, etc) and I been around people after a terminal dump. Mostly you can tell which is which.
I wonder if some researcher would add up all the costs of the unreasonable parts of the ongoing response to 9/11, we'd find that the costs outweigh the damage done in those attacks. Even though the Feds fund a lot of research (even some questionable stuff), I'd bet this one would never see the light of day.
You'd have to define reasonable. If the Spanish police had dumped the public transport system, if the Brits had dumped the tube, etc - sure would have saved a lot of dough.
So, the US TSA is full of cowardly idiots under the mind thrall of Kip Hawley when he's not eting babies or whatever - let's assume Spiff is right.
But the *best* response the Brits could come up with in twenty years of tube bombings was to freeze the trains and dump the stops. (I been caught twice almost in sight of Oxford Circus. In the summer. During rush hour. Not nice.) It's not like they didn't have time and political will to try other solutions. They removed mailboxes and trashcans and parking zones and put up CCTV and infiltrated and whooped some serious *ss up in Belfast, and etc, etc.
And still, when there was a threat over a threshold, they froze the trains and tubes and dumped the platforms.
So, like CPR and beer (not together) I think you gotta go with what works unless you can figure better.
There's a security breach or a credible threat to Airport_Z - what do you do? Complaining about Kip or whatever doesn't do anything - what do you do? If you're wrong and an airplane falls out of the sky, or some disaffected "urban youth" shoots up the place - what do you say that you should have done?
You stop everything, dump the terminal, and take another look at everyone coming back in. Because there is nothing else that quite works so well.