saulblum

In discussing the CNN article about VIPR, I had the following thoughts.

Suppose all four hijacked flights on 9/11 ended like Flight 93: the hijackers could not get full control of the planes and all four planes crashed into the ground. The only casualties were those on the planes -- around 250 people, about the same as the Lockerbie bombing -- and there was no property damage on the ground, and there was no video footage of any of the four crashes.

With locked cockpits and an unwillingness to cooperate, it is unlikely that a commercial plane will ever again be turned into a missile. That attack approach no longer worked even on 9/11 itself, as shown with Flight 93. And of course the TSA had nothing to do with that.

Short of a nuclear bomb, a new terrorist attack will never reach the casualty count of 9/11. Al Qaeda put all its eggs into one spectacular basket of an attack, and will not be able to replicate such casualty counts.

Getting back to my imagined scenario: what would have been the government reaction? Would the TSA have been formed?

I ask because the Lockerbie bombing didn't lead to a new federal agency. Neither did the Oklahoma City bombing, whose toll was the same order of magnitude.

Suppose 9/11 didn't happen, but the Madrid and London train attacks still did. Would we be seeing VIPR at WAS and on the T and MTA? Terrorists bombed the Paris Metro and gassed the Tokyo trains in 1995 with no US federal response.

Every TSA action is to "prevent another 9/11". But Al Qaeda already accomplished that: one spectacular attack that will not be able to be replicated, short of the type of attack that checking backpacks at 14th St ain't gonna stop.

Food for thought ...

Caradoc

What the TSA says and what the TSA does are so wildly different that it's clear to any observer that this is not the case.

saulblum

You mean any observer on the TS/S forum.

It's pretty clear that despite the many Americans who are speaking out against the TSA, I'd venture that a majority believe that the TSA is all that stands between us and "another 9/11".

mahohmei

If the only casualties of 9/11 were the passengers themselves, airport security would still be 9/10, there would be no "War on Terror", and GWB would have been a one-term repeat of his dad, complete with an unpopular invasion of Iraq.

The 9/11 attacks will never happen again and were particularly horrific in death toll, not to mention spectacular in method of attack. Combine this with a catchy-sounding attack nickname (nine-eleven), and 9/11 will, for the rest of our lives, be a "Where were you..." event. Congress knows they can ride it for all it's worth, and can use "9/11" as an excuse for anything and everything.

The voters are even in on the game: "I watched the towers collapse on TV; Ben Franklin never knew that would happen! The Constitution doesn't apply to terrorists!"

Caradoc

No, I mean anyone who passes through a TSA checkpoint more than twice a year and actually pays any attention to anything going on around them.

They're pretty rare these days.

patom

No, anyone who has been subjected to the sham security of TSA.

saulblum

I'm as anti-TSA as they come, but I honestly believe that the majority of Americans do not have a problem with the TSA's presence at airports, train and bus stations, subways and on the highways. Way too many Americans believe that their "right" to feel safe from vague terror attacks trumps any right to be free of warrantless and suspicionless searches.

Does this attitude stem from a lack of education about the Constitution and basic civics in the nation's schools? Does it stem from our seemingly innate inability to calculate risk?

I don't know. But it's the reality.

mahohmei

+infinity

"I'd rather be felt up than blown up."

"9/11!"

"The full-body scanner was fun! I got to put my arms up in the air!"

"Nobody's getting through those full-body scanners with a bomb!"

"Stories about their ineffectiveness are only on your conspiracy boards!"

cestmoi123

I think it's because the vast majority of people aren't, fundamentally, that concerned about bad things that don't affect them personally, particularly if there's some theoretical upside to them personally. So, if someone very very rarely flies, then the fact that fliers are being hassled/irradiated/etc is actually a good thing, because it means that, in theory, the risk of another 9/11 is reduced, at no cost to that person.

If you don't fly much or at all, it's not a balance between "feeling safe" and "freedom from unconstitutional searches," it's a balance between "feeling safe" and OTHER PEOPLE'S "freedom from unconstitutional searches."

greentips

There is some truth to this. It is not the first time it's happened, it's just the first time we've so completely thrown out our fundamental constitutional philosophies.

Consider the last "9/11" in our lifetime: 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Fallout shelters became very popular. People built them or modified their basements. Today we hear very little about these.

With the kamikaze al qaida folks, we now have the TSA, who are public, in your face, constant reminders of our failures to uphold our constitution adn the government's willingness to take advantage of this.

Hopefully, like fallout shelters, we will move beyond the "terrorist war" andTSA/DHS as we did these likely ineffective "do something" relics of the cold war.

But it will take time for enough to come to their senses.

mahohmei

...and it's nothing more than feeling safe. I have a feeling that even Americans who never fly are well aware of the TSA's inability to stop WEIs. Even the "rather be felt up than blown up" types, when confronted with the TSA's 90% gun failure rate, will admit that the passengers would never allow a hijacking to happen.

So it's all about feeling safe, not actually being safe. I hate to say it, but if a plane ever crashes because a TS"O" broke the TAT probe and nobody found out until it was too late, then maybe we'd see some real dialog. Or it would be chalked up to the "cost of security", because "freedom isn't free".

RatherBeOnATrain

I disagree. I can think of a couple hypothetical attacks that could equal (or exceed) the casualty count of 9/11 without the "bad guys" needing nuclear materials.

saulblum

My original post was in reference to the CNN piece about VIPR operations on buses and subways and trains.

I doubt any of your high-casualty scenarios are going to be thwarted by ETD swabs of backpacks on the downtown 6 train or 9 a.m. Acela.

mahohmei

Now we're talking about what Bruce Schneier likes to call a "movie plot attack". And you're right--ETD swabs on the downtown 6 or the 0900 Acela will not prevent a repeat of London or Madrid. Of course, if it provides zero security benefit, don't do it.

Not counting 9/11 (which wasn't a bombing), the only successful bombing I can recall in NYC was the 1993 WTC bombing, which killed 6 people.

I have a feeling that if the 1993 WTC bombing somehow managed to topple the twin towers, the rebuild would _not_ have included underground parking, and we'd see a future of urban high-rises simply not having underground parking for that very reason.

saulblum

There's actually a history of several deadly bombings in NYC.

Two others are listed here --

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0001454.html

Also in 1975 was the LaGuardia Airport bomb (that I learned about on this board).

And in 1976 there was a bomb at Grand Central --

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_C...rminal#Bombing

And in 1994 a deranged guy firebombed a 4 train in Lower Manhattan (blocks from the WTC), severely burning several. A year earlier a shooting on the Long Island Railroad killed six.

Which is why if I hear "a post-9/11" world one more time ...

The world was not so innocent prior to 2001. In fact it would seem the mid-'70s were a much more dangerous time.

So why did the country not respond then by having federal officers search train passengers?

Of course it was the wave of hijackings in the '70s that gave rise to airport checkpoints in the first place.

http://savvytraveler.publicradio.org...security.shtml

(Looks like this piece was written in 2001. It sounds so quaint now.)