Laptops before 9/11

Absolutely agree.

This, unfortunately, is used constantly by the pro-TSAers. Don't you dare say we need to stop the gropings and NoSes...what about the people in the twin towers? I watched that plane smash into the tower on TV...don't you dare say we'd be OK with pre-9/11 airport security, which was directly responsible for 9/11!

Sadly (and other adjectives not appropriate for a family website), they correctly identify that there was a hole in security, which the hijackers exploited, and then proceed to completely misidentify that hole. The gap was a combination of (a) passenger/flight crew assumption that the safe approach during a hijacking is to cooperate, and (b) an accessible cockpit.

Item A was already gone halfway through the AM of 9/11 (UA 93), and B has been fixed for years. The problem was never at the checkpoint, but that's what all the effort has been on "fixing."

This bears repeating.

What also bears repeating: hardened cockpit doors and policies to resist hijackers, while completely effective against a 9/11 repeat, are passive. Unless there's an actual incident, people don't see any action being taken and "Durnit! We need to do everything we can to keep the terr'ists from repeating 9/11!".

So you get the TSA, which is the "actually doing something" layer of security.

Even the most ardent pro-TSAers will admit it:

You: The TSA fails over half of undercover tests, so it's obvious that if someone wants to get a gun or knife onto an airplane, they will. Given this fact, how do you explain that there has not been a single successful aircraft hijacking or bombing since 9/11?

Pro-TSAer: You have to layer security. If a terrorist manages to make it through the TSA checkpoint layer, the cockpit doors and policies to resist hijackers are the last line of defense.

You: But given the fact that terrorists have a greater than 50% chance of getting their guns and knives through the checkpoint, it's not even a remotely effective layer!

Pro-TSAer: I'm not talking about this.

No. No, we don't.

It's like saying that we should do everything we can to prevent rape - including pharaonic circumcision.

The TSA is a much bigger problem that what it is supposedly "fixing."

My point was that given motivation and opportunity, almost anything can be used as portable weapon that can be directed at ground targets, and all of those things are less secure than your typical airliner.

The fact that it is a commercial airliner in no way requires a greater surrender of liberty than is required for any other means of delivery. Yet, that is what have decided to do.

I am not against security. I am against forced security gained at the loss of liberty. Loss of life is a very serious matter. Protection of innocent life is likewise serious. However, neither is serious to the point that a total surrender of liberty is necessary to provide a reasonable means to mitigate the danger and potential of these losses. That is the all or nothing choice we are given. Surrender totally, or do not fly. It is this to which I disagree.

Now you tell us?

The most amazing comparison to today is that they let us continue to touch the item while it was being turned on.

I would argue that it wasn't even a gap in security back then, but was a rational decision. Before 9/11, cooperating with hijackers (to some degree obviously) was probably the right / smart thing to do, and saved lives in that terrible situation. The older-timers in this forum will also remember those tense days with TWA 847, and the Uli Derickson events.

If the passengers led a revolt on previous hijackings, the flight may have ended up like United 93 with everybody dead, instead of almost everybody ALIVE like most resolutions of pre-9/11 hijackings. Nevertheless, by the time of United 93, passenger revolt was the correct gamble to make, and likely will be that way for the foreseeable future.

But that was in large part due to the lack of action by the FAA; for years/decades. The resistant cockpit countermeasure should have been implemented when the first wave of hijackings (to Cuba) began, and was even more imperative after two flight crews had been shot and killed in flight.

What would have been the paradigm if non-suicidal hijackers had been unable to gain access ? I don't know, but I doubt that executing cabin crew or passengers would have brought the pilot out. It's not as if all hijacks ended without innocent murders.

Yes. Also experienced security guys who were baffled by a laptop not running a GUI operating system.

Yep, and revenue protection; the 1996-to-late-2001 ID checks (at check-in rather than security) used the TWA800 tragedy as an excuse to kill the reselling of non-transferable tickets.

360k was double-sided 5.25" -- I remember the ~160-180k single sided ones that Apple and Commodore used, where you had to flip them over to use the other side (sometimes having to cut an extra notch in them, too.)

I also used the rare 1MB-on-double-density Commodore drives, and the pretty common later 1.2MB "high density" 5 1/2 (they were ubiquitous on the IBM AT and various clones.) Also the 720-800k double-density 3.5". I am familiar with in principle, but never used, the 2.88MB "quad density" 3.5" ones IBM introduced with some of the late PS/2 systems.

The only 8" ones I used were very late 8" ones and held a lot more than 180k... around 1MB, I think.

Depends on your definition of "late" -- they came in around the same time 3.5" became ubiquitous in the PC world in the late 1980s, so they don't seem "late" to me, but someone used to the Mac/Atari/Amiga world where 720-800kb 3.5" disks were common might find them late.

In the early 1990's. I used 3.5" FD's in my Spectral Dynamics 385 spectrum analyzer. It was a modified TEAC drive that would get about 1Mb in a special SD format. When I would baseline a new press, I would store point by point data on these disks for later retrieval and review. I would buy them several hundred at a time. I still have them filed away. There are probably thousands of them. But, I still have the SD 385, and I may want to look at them some day.

It probably does not even work. It has been stored for at least ten years. I've still got the disks though.

I've heard of CBP agents seizing incoming laptops for running Linux, since, well, if you're using Linux, you're up to no good. I hope nobody ever finds out that's what I'm using to write this post...