I remember a more innocent time almost three decades ago when my work involved frequent flying, such that I have been to most major airports in the United States repeatedly and have logged weeks above 30,000 feet of altitude. I have a photograph from those days showing me seated at the controls of a commercial airliner, which the crew of the airliner took after I boarded a flight early in the boarding process. In those days a business traveler could sit down to pose for a snapshot inside the aircraft cockpit, with the crew having no concerns about a person who was not an airline employee being there. That's the carefree ease of flying in the United States I remember from the beginning of my adulthood.
1329 days ago I wrote here on HN, in reponse to one of the recurring complaints about airport security procedures, "Hear. Hear. I was just on flights out of town over the weekend, and it occurred to me that the terrorists have won by making air travel so inconvenient and annoying for every American who ever flies domestically. 'Maybe Secure Flight is a good use of our money; maybe it isn't. But let's have debates like that in the open, as part of the budget process, where it belongs.' This is the general answer for review of current security procedures: we should check whether they are worthwhile for the amount of improved security they promise to provide."
334 days ago another participant, who came to the United States from another country, wrote,
It's also the only place that made me take my shoes off before the metal detector, which I found quite humiliating
This appears to have been one of the calculations of the terrorist group that put up the shoe bomber
to trying his failed attempt to blow up an airplane with a bomb hidden in his shoe. Some of the co-religionists of some of those terrorists consider it extremely degrading to be bare-footed in certain situations deemed to be "holy" situations (I know this from having been warned about how I oriented my feet in flip-flop sandals once when I was overseas in 1984), and thus they have probably been glad to humiliate Americans as Americans have reacted to the failed shoe bomb plot. My proposal is that United States airport security give up on requesting passengers to remove shoes. Yeah, maybe have chemical sensing devices with air intakes at floor level to screen for bombs on shoes, but let us all wear our shoes onto airplanes and throughout the insides of airports. The screening procedures at present appear to be an overreaction to the actual risk of a shoe bomb destroying a passenger airplane, especially in view of other countries not having the same screening procedure for airline passengers.
I've summed up my reaction to the past incidents of terrorism directed at Americans overseas or civilians in the United States in a more recent Hacker News comment: "It's important for all of us to remember the basic issue here. The basic issue is whether people in free countries, like most readers of Hacker News, are going to be able to enjoy the right of free speech throughout their country, on any subject, or whether any American or Dutch person or other person accustomed to free speech who happens to be within reach of attack by a crazy foreign person has to prepare for war just to continue to exercise free speech. On my part, I'm going to continue to comment on public policy based on verifiable facts and reason and logic, even if that seems offensive. I am not going to shrink from saying that people in backward, poorly governed countries that could never have invented the Internet have no right to kill and destroy just because someone in a free country laughs or scorns at their delusions. The people who are destroying diplomatic buildings and killing diplomats are declining to use thoughtful discussion to show that they are anything other than blights on humankind."
Allow me to reemphasize this point. The many participants on HN who criticize Transportation Security Agency "security theater" as a meaningless reduction in the freedom of people who travel to the United States are right on the basic point. If free citizens of free countries can't live in freedom because of fear of terrorists, the terrorists have already won. You and I should be able to speak our minds and express our opinions in the manner of all people in free countries--sometimes agreeing with one another, sometimes disagreeing, but always letting the other guy have his say. To engage in self-censorship because of fear of violent thugs is to be defeated by the thugs.
We should also be able to fly freely about the country with no more than strictly necessary security precautions. I want to be able to walk into an airport with my shoes on and walk calmly to an arrival gate to greet arriving passengers there. I used to do that. And I want to be able to carry a Swiss Army knife in an airline carry-on bag. Grandmothers and mothers and children should surely be able to board an airliner unmolested in a free country like the United States.
That said, I remember when conditions changed in the United States. I stood on top of the former World Trade Center in New York City twice while traveling with foreign visitors to the United States during my earlier frequent flyer days. Because I remember the peace and freedom I long enjoyed here to welcome visitors to the United States from around the world, I want the leaders and active participants in terrorist networks to identified through constant surveillance and intelligence, and I want terrorists to be attacked relentlessly where they live, so that they have to hide in caves while people all over the world who renounce their goals get to lead civilized, peaceful lives in the Twenty-First Century. Taliban delenda est. Al Qaeda delenda est.
AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several interesting comments. I think it is important to acknowledge that, yes, the United States government as a matter of official policy has engaged in assassination of foreign government leaders, and plotted the assassination of others, as well as committed and plotted break-ins in foreign embassies (but not random bomb attacks on foreign embassies, to the best of my recollection). I think the United States has been chastened by some of the results of those earlier policies. The movie Argo has been watched by many Americans, and it frankly acknowledges the assassination of an elected prime minister in Iran by the CIA back before I was born. I think now the United States is much more interested in information openness as a means to make sure that countries all around the world trade peacefully rather than waging war one one another, and I think that is the only long-term way to defeat terrorist networks. The current armed warfare strategy of drone attacks on specific terrorist leaders rather than mass bombing attacks on cities (as in World War II) is a step forward in war-fighting effectiveness and an improvement in reducing civilian casualties.
Yes, the United States is still second only to France as a country destination for foreign tourists (and rather more of the tourists to France can drive cars or ride trains to France than can many visitors to the United States). So as obnoxious as current TSA security procedures are to me and to many, they are not so obnoxious that people have stopped visiting the United States for fun.
Oh, yes, and my "half-Asian" children look very Central Asian, as one might expect, and my oldest son with his full black beard looks like someone from the latest news story about Al Qaeda. I'm not sure what his experience has been traveling around the country for his study and work. He barely remembers the old days before the TSA. Certainly we should also make sure not to harass citizens or visitors who happen to have the wrong name or the wrong pattern of physical appearance, but identify threats on the basis of more relevant information. Another top-level comment in this thread says that Israel succeeds in doing that for the most part.
> If free citizens of free countries can't live in freedom because of fear of terrorists, the terrorists have already won
As a dark-skinned man who oftentimes sports a beard, I'm treated like a terrorist every single time I walk through security. To them, I'm a second-class citizen - no question about it.
I avoid flying like the plague; I'd gladly take a 12 hour train ride over a 2 hour flight just to avoid this treatment.
It's been 12 years, and I still haven't gotten used to the degradation. I hope I never do.
> Because I remember the peace and freedom I long enjoyed here to welcome visitors to the United States from around the world, I want the leaders and active participants in terrorist networks to identified through constant surveillance and intelligence, and I want terrorists to be attacked relentlessly where they live, so that they have to hide in caves while people all over the world who renounce their goals get to lead civilized, peaceful lives in the Twenty-First Century.
There's a certain degree of irony in that statement; the Beirut bombing, the (first) World Trade Center bombing attack, and 9/11 were, at least in large part, a response to the destruction that the US has been wreaking on foreign soil for years.
> The people who are destroying diplomatic buildings and killing diplomats are declining to use thoughtful discussion to show that they are anything other than blights on humankind
This same line of reasoning could be applied to the US - we're a little bit better at disguising it, but we've been responsible for terrorism abroad (and domestically!) for decades.
I'm a white guy (as white as wonder bread and twinkies, only thing missing is the blond hair, and blue eyes) but with an very common first and last name and a Persian middle name.
For 5 years every time I flew, I was subjected to 'random' extra inspection, and was unable to check in online. When I questioned this, I was absolutely assured it was random, and there was nothing I could do about it. I don't plan on living the rest of my life in fear of the unknown, planes crash, people die, these things happen, its statistically less likely to die from terrorism then it is from a normal plane crash, consider that.
I feel your pain, and its absolutely not right, and I hope in my lifetime, we come to our senses or I fear it may eventually result in a revolution.
I think it could be as something as a keyword match, and its either my middle name, or the fact that I have such a common first and last name that matches me to someone, somewhere who may or may not have done something, at some point in time.
It's probably the second one. My little brother used to be on some sort of list that caused us some problems, and he has a very generic American name. This was when he was ~12.
> its statistically less likely to die from terrorism then it is from a normal plane crash, consider that.
From a purely passenger point of view this might be true, but if you include the total deaths from WTC/Pentagon I bet it comes out in a wash. Normal plane crashes do not occur that frequently in the US, I doubt the total deaths from commercial flights is much higher than ~3000
985 fatalities in the 1980s, 1277 in the 1990s, and (excluding 9/11) 512 in the 2000s. This adds up to 2774.
I started to include the pre-1980 numbers, but it became too tedious. From what I got so far, there have been 3606 commercial aviation related fatalities since 1970, and over 4656 fatalities total in US-located commercial aviation history.
Pan Am Flight 830 had 1 fatality due to a terrorist bomb, which I put in the non-9/11 column. I put EgyptAir Flight 990 as a suicide+murder (or accident) and not due to terrorism.
However, this excludes accidents from US carriers not in the US (Pan Am 1736 in Tenerife; 583 fatalities in 1977), and includes accidents from non-US carriers which took place in the US (Air Canada 797; 23 fatalities in 1983). I did it this way because you qualified it as "in the US."
Just under 3,000 fatalities occurred due to 9/11. The full statistical analysis would decrease the chance of death slightly to remove the 19 hijackers and observe that the same person could not be on all flights at the same time, reducing the count by about 150. These minor details don't affect the overall analysis.
The worldwide numbers are listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_accidents_and_incident... . From 2002 to 2011 there were 11,068 aviation fatalities. This likely includes fatalities on the ground because it lists 4,140 fatalities for all of 2001, which is about 3000+(11068/10). I don't know how many of those other fatalities are due to terrorism.
Worldwide then, if you pick any period of three or more years, you are more likely to die by a plane accident than by terrorist attack. In the US, if you look at the last 40 years of flights, you are still more likely to die by accident than by terrorist attack.
For the usual sense of scale for these matters, there were 32,367 automobile deaths in the US in 2011, or 1.10 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled. Airlines have about 1 death for each 2,000 million miles traveled. (Neither of these statistics include non-traveler fatalities.)
> In the US, if you look at the last 40 years of flights, you are still more likely to die by accident than by terrorist attack.
Alright so not a complete wash, but fairly close. I might go so far as to say the difference between ~4000-5000 vs ~3000 out of ~250-300 million is statistically insignificant. I know using the total U.S. population in this instance isn't fantastic statistical analysis, but there isn't a great metric to use for a comparison between the total number of passengers on U.S. flights and the population exposed to 9/11 type terrorist fatalities. The best sources for total airline passengers include both U.S. and international to U.S. passenger total (~800 million[1]), and while it's unlikely someone in Montana is going to be killed in a 9/11 type terrorist attack it's still a possibility.
Anyway you put some effort in and clearly there is a slightly higher chance of dying from a normal plane crash than a terrorism induced one. So I'll admit you win this bet.
However if I want to argue the point (which I'm bored and do), I might say that looking at the trend in the data we might find those numbers evening out. We should expect air traffic control and safety to improve as newer technologies are implemented, people are trained better, etc. We can already see fewer deaths after the 1990's and I'd expect it to remain at that lower threshold. Now the terrorism number is harder to comment on, because presumably with all the extra safety measure another 9/11 won't happen. And even without the TSA around, it's still rather unlikely an event of that magnitude would occur again. I don't doubt the next hijacked airplanes that go close to an urban area will be intercepted and shot down. But for (my)arguments sake lets say without the extra security measures we could expect the same rate of terrorism related deaths, though perhaps not all in the same event. Given all of that, my statement about it all coming out in a wash will be true within the next couple decades :D
(Yes, I know all of that is nonsense speculative crap, but I already typed it all out so I'm just going to hit the reply button anyway.)
Dude, a comparison with plane accidents does injustice to how irrational the fear of terrorism is.
In the US alone, over 40,000 people die each year of flu. In 2011 about 32,000 people died in car accidents, which is actually good because that number is down from over 40,000 per year in the last decade (but it's probably due to the raised gas prices, it isn't like car travelling got all of a sudden safer). About 600,000 people per year die of heart disease, another 600,000 die of cancer, another 130,000 die of respiratory diseases, another 120,000 die of stroke ... many of them are old people and I don't have any stats now, but I bet the number of young people dying from such chronic diseases are on the rise and in the tens of thousands at least.
Compared to such numbers, the number of deaths related to terrorism that occurred in the first world countries in the last 50 years is completely insignificant and saying that these measures are the reason for why no more terrorist attacks happened is complete bullshit ... the only reason for why you don't see any more 9/11 scenarios is because existing terrorist networks have been drained of resources and that's it.
What TSA does to you on the other hand is just security theatre. I have a cousin that boarded on a flight from Romania to Spain with a pack of old-fashioned razor blades in his backpack. Razor blades are not allowed, mind you, but he forgot them there and they somehow passed through the airport's scanner and airport personnel is really not that careful. If the invasive procedures in the US would actually work, if they prevented anything, then where are the 9/11 events from Europe?
And if the US is a more popular target for terrorists, then maybe, just maybe, the right solution would be to improve your foreign policies and abstain from invading countries like Irak based on assumptions ;-)
That's a time window that is just small enough to include the single most lethal terrorist attack in the past 150+ years[0]. That's a bit too number massagey for my liking.
I think you've misunderstood, and that you're actually in agreement with Aloha.
Aloha's statement is that even in the window from 10 Sept. 2001 to 10 years forward, worldwide air travel-based fatalities due to non-terrorist events is higher than due to terrorism.
In other words, even massaging the numbers to include the worst case, Aloha's statement "its statistically less likely to die from terrorism then it is from a normal plane crash" is true.
My own research shows that if the window is 3 years wide or wider then there's no way for Aloha's statement to be false. Further, I showed that even if restricted to the US commercial aviation, that statement is true if you talk about the last 40 years. (Include general aviation and it's about a 5-6 year window.)
I'm a white American with a Persian first name, and while I don't get the 'random' pull-out every time, it's quite often. (Maybe a third of the time? Just offering another data point.)
>>There's a certain degree of irony in that statement; the Beirut bombing, the (first) World Trade Center bombing attack, and 9/11 were, at least in large part, a response to the destruction that the US has been wreaking on foreign soil for years.
Yep. It's actually funny because that's exactly what George Soros's General Theory of Reflexivity says: in any given situation, thinking participants have partial and biased views, and the actions they base upon those views, while inappropriate, end up influencing the situation to become more congruent with those views.
Basically, by treating the Middle East as a terrorist haven, the USA has turned it into one.
Can you provide some examples of terrorism in the middle-east for the 500 years in-between the downfall of the assassins and the creation of the US? The GP was talking about a terrorist haven - you've pointed out a single order.
Incidentally, Europe has historically been awash with terrorism, and up until 9/11, there have been plenty of Americans happy to financially and socially support terrorism in the form of things like the IRA. Terrorism has been often featured in the history of Africa and central, south, and east Asia.
So tell me more about how this single species of extinct terrorist made the middle east some innate sort of special, super-terror playground for all eternity.
EDIT: Also, if we're playing the 'once upon a time' game, then I'd like to point out that historically, the US was one of the greatest users of slaves, and through the wonders of Manifest Destiny, engaged in genocide, terrorism, and straight-out wars of conquest.
"Also, if we're playing the 'once upon a time' game, then I'd like to point out that historically, the US was one of the greatest users of slaves"
Nonsense. Slavery (or near-equivalents, such as serfdom) existed practically everywhere on the planet until quite recently in historical terms. Also, the number of slaves imported into the United States was dwarfed by the number imported into European colonies in Central and South America.
The Euros have had large-scale genocide and wars of conquest rather more recently than the U.S., too.
You were the one characterising a region based on what happened there in previous centuries, not me. Don't get huffy with me for using your own argument against you.
To paint it even more clearly: I was pointing out that shit happens everywhere - you know, the main part of my comment before the 'edit'. Trying to spread the shit around as you are, the "you know, they do it too" that you're doing, that's exactly what I'm trying to say.
So, the question of my comment that you neatly avoided: show us some real reasoning behind calling the middle-east a 'terrorist haven' over the centures, given your implication that other areas didn't have it as bad.
> As a dark-skinned man who oftentimes sports a beard, I'm treated like a terrorist every single time I walk through security. To them, I'm a second-class citizen - no question about it.
As another (very) dark-skinned man who has also donned something close to a beard, I've noticed that (a) I've been treated the same as everyone else at all of the major hubs and (b) Everyone else gets treated like cattle.
Same for when I've travelled with my family, and my Mom and Dad are dark.
I've definitely had my fair share of stupid racists (okay, maybe less than my fair share; I got lucky somehow); going through airport security hasn't been it.
> As a dark-skinned man who oftentimes sports a beard, I'm treated like a terrorist every single time I walk through security. To them, I'm a second-class citizen - no question about it.
As a dark-skinned, long-haired main who (usually) doesn't sport a beard when flying, I've learned to stick very close to my (fairer) wife and daughters whenever I can when going through security/immigration/customs.
On 9/11, I had a job where I racked up the frequent-flier miles. I still remember my friends and co-workers urging me to cut my hair to avoid hassles at the airport (among other things). While it has been an inconvenience from time to time, I'm still glad I didn't.
> I'd gladly take a 12 hour train ride over a 2 hour flight just to avoid this treatment.
To add to that, three times now I have driven straight across the country (3 thousand miles) instead of fly. I can't say TSA harassment was the only factor (fun and desire to have a car on the other side factored in), but I would be lying if I said it wasn't a major point of consideration.
For what it's worth I'm a brown man with the occasional beard and I've never felt singled out or degraded when flying. I've been selected for pat downs and further screening surprisingly infrequently, and the TSA have been nothing but professional. I miss the pre-TSA days as well, but I'm no more hassled by it than the average non-brown guy.
As a dark-skinned man who oftentimes sports a beard, I'm treated like a terrorist every single time I walk through security. To them, I'm a second-class citizen - no question about it.
I travel frequently and I'm on the other side of the spectrum. I'm younger, caucasian, dress professionally when I travel and have never been searched and haven't seen anyone get through customs faster than I do. I'm practically invisible to airport security. I don't think I do anything differently than anyone else other than I'm probably a little more hurried than others because I've been through it many times so I want to be efficient. But I've heard and witnessed others having troubles many times. They must be profiling people on some scale that I just don't register on.
I'm not sure how much value this comment adds to the discussion other than perhaps adding a point to validate your comment from a different perspective.
>This same line of reasoning could be applied to the US - we're a little bit better at disguising it, but we've been responsible for terrorism abroad (and domestically!) for decades.<
I'm going to have to argue with your moral relativism here.
I would challenge you to provide examples of US gov't supported terrorist actions. Note, I'll ask you stick to the commonly held definition of terrorism which is the intentional targeting of innocent civilians in order to incite terror.
I would challenge you to provide examples of US gov't supported terrorist actions. Note, I'll ask you stick to the commonly held definition of terrorism which is the intentional targeting of innocent civilians in order to incite terror.
I think this hinges somewhat on the meaning of the word "innocent". What I think you mean is innocent in the sense of "uninvolved", rather than in the moral sense.
It's no secret that the CIA (among other US agencies) captures, kills, and torturers people in other countries. But it's my understanding, at least, that the US does not purposefully do so to "uninvolved" citizens of those countries. These actions are done against violent members of the ruling class actively opposing US interests, and their allies. None of these people are "uninvolved" in the sense that charges of "terrorism" would require.
To put it more bluntly: the US does not attempt to incite "terror" in uninvolved citizens in any country, ever. It just not how our government works to achieve US goals abroad.
Whether the US policy of intervention abroad is good or bad is certainly open to debate, and the reality of "collateral damage" is ever present. But I don't think that US intervention abroad counts as "terrorism", under the standard definition of the word, which is why arguments that try and equate the two tend to fall on deaf ears.
There is some evidence that terrorist activity has been a CIA modus operandi since its inception. Operation Gladio was a post-war communist resistance network composed of 'stay-behind' fascists in various European countries. The CIA was formed in part to manage the operation, which according to some of its members went on to orchestrate false flag terrorist attacks across Western Europe in the decades that followed. The stated aim was to drive voters into the arms of more authoritarian, neo-fascist governments. See below for a fascinating BBC documentary from 1992.
Similar stories emerge from Latin America in the 1980s. And the notorious Operation Northwoods proposal from the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 suggested domestic false flag attacks to drive support for an invasion of Cuba. An argument can be made that the CIA is the primary terrorist organisation of the post WWII era.
I don't argue that it doesn't happen, but "if it quacks like a duck"?
Intent is usually a huge factor in determining the seriousness of a crime. If someone shoots and kills someone who is attempting to murder them, that's ok. If, while attempting to shoot and kill that person, they kill an innocent bystander, that's not OK and usually punishable (manslaughter).
Am I right to infer that your argument is that those two situations are morally identical?
To the village that lost 50 people to the omnipresent invaders, it may just be morally identical. "Oh, hey, we thought you were terrorists - our bad" probably won't cut it as 'understandable', given that 40 of the victims were women and children, which aren't generally part of the insurgent personnel in Afghanistan. Keep in mind that this wasn't a wayward bomb - the innocent bystander in your story - but a target hit three times across several minutes.
I think I-C was a proxy war. In any given war there are acts of terrorism in that either side in this case (the local proxies of the US) and the adversarial proxy (in the case Cuban/soviet) engaged in some terrorism against the people either side saw as supporters of the opposition. The contras were a coalition of both deposed affiliates and disaffected revolutionaries who switched sides.
I knew someone who was once an optimistic 'internationalist', as they called themselves.
Anyhow, I suppose you could argue that all the soviet-US proxy wars resulted in some terrorism by the local proxies. But we could go further and say that most major wars involved some form of terrorism.
"the Beirut bombing, the (first) World Trade Center bombing attack, and 9/11 were, at least in large part, a response to the destruction that the US has been wreaking on foreign soil for years"
Because nothing says "retaliation" better than deliberately attacking innocents with zero culpability for whatever it may be that is pissing you off.
By your thinking, we could have gotten bin Laden by announcing that, until he was turned over to us, we'd drop a 1000lb bomb on some occupied point in Afghanistan every day. There would be logic, right? They had harbored a known murderer and killer, who had gone and killed thousands of people. The Afghans were responsible, in some sense, for the safety from which he operated, and culpable by knowledge of his aims. They should have settled him a long time ago. So let them settle the problem now, or pay the price.
By _your_ logic. Which is stupid. If everyone behaved that way the world would be completely unlivable. The US is by no means perfect but it is, by and large, a nation of laws. That means very little to those innocents killed in its mistakes and evils, but means an enormous amount to the very many people who are not killed by its adherence to some standard of humanity. And to all of us, living in a world where the mighty hold themselves in some manner accountable to something looking like justice.
Here is a thought experiment on the difference between the likes of the US and bin Laden. Imagine what bin Laden would have done if he got ahold of, say, a single nuclear missile submarine. Or any of the destructive powers of this country. That is the difference between an imperfectly ethical power, and a murdering piece of crap. For me, I think it is a really, really important difference.
We are a nation of the people, by the people, for the people. Bin Laden wrote a letter to the American people and published it after 9/11 wherein he explains the motivation behind his attacks. Other than the obligatory fundie religious crap, his reasoning was thus: your government has been fucking with us for decades, and we're sick of it, yet we cannot attack your government because it is too powerful. Because your government represents you, that makes you culpable, hence the attack.
The easy conclusion is that all 'terrorist' are vile, murderous, evil people with not a drop of decency in their bodies. However, the reality is that 'terrorists' are usually just normal people who have frustratingly little recourse against that which they are opposed to.
I think that you're making a mistake in taking what Bin Laden said at face value. He was trying to goad us into invading Afghanistan, and he was successful. He wanted a "War on Terror" because he knew that it would be unwinable.
Painting his justification for the attack in a way that Americans would read as an attack on the people and the government encouraged the jingoism that gave us the Patriot Act and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's how Bin Laden won the war on terror.
Congratulations, you've justified a world where everyone is a hostage to the aggrieved. How do you think that will work out for the not-rich / not-strong / not-smart / not-popular?
It's opinions like this that hold us back from progressing socially - the idea that understanding the motives of a nemesis is functionally the same as justifying them.
"'terrorists' are usually just normal people who have frustratingly little recourse"
is a _value_ assessment.
It is literally a normalization of terrorist motivation.
And, the idea that al Qaeda is motivated by outrage at American or Western injustice is at best a huge oversimplification. And at worst, a credulous acceptance of their propaganda.
Al Qaeda is not a monolithic entity with a single soul. The senior figures certainly have more complex motives, but the junior figures are going to have simple motives similar to the swathes of young US southerners who signed up to defend their country. The GP was talking about 'terrorists' as individual people, not as a theory.
There's a difference between analyzing terrorist motives and using terms like irony or implied hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. -- this is where the line crosses from understanding to justification.
I did not justify terrorism, nor was I attempting to. I am merely pointing out that even a 'terrorist' has reasons for his actions, and we ignore those reasons at our own peril. The CIA has a term for what amounts to retaliation in response to US actions overseas: blowback. It is obvious that if you fuck with a beehive long enough, you are eventually going to be stung. Is the bee wrong? Are we wrong? Who cares? The sensible course of action would be to just stop fucking with the damn beehive.
Unfortunately, it seems that we've allowed our government to get us caught in a feedback loop of retaliation - they sting us, we smash something of theirs. When does it stop? Must we eradicate all of the bees in order to see peace?
> "I am not going to shrink from saying that people in backward, poorly governed countries that could never have invented the Internet have no right to kill and destroy just because someone in a free country laughs or scorns at their delusions."
You have no clue what you are talking about. You think you live in a black and white world where the terrorists simply hate Americans by default, and because they are envious of what USA have they just start sending suicide bombers and hijacking planes? Out of envy? Stop reading Mickey Mouse and get some actual information. The terrorists hate USA because USA did something (well, a lot of things actually) that generated the terrorist acts in response.
Ex nihilo nihil fit, ok? Obviously USA has an external policy and they can't just abandon it, so the risk of terrorist attacks will remain a fact of life. But don't assume that things happen for no reason.
I hope they learn that Al Qaeda's next plot involves explosives stuffed up his tukhis. I'm sure people will finally revolt when they insist on anal probes.
Reminds me of the saying: "If you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump out. If you place a frog in a pot of cold water and slowly turn up the heat, it will boil to death."
I'm one of the whitest, blond-haired, blue-eyed crackers you'll ever meet and when I had a large beard, even I got profiled. For a while, I understood it, just kind of shrugged it off. In 2013, it's getting a lot harder to do so when it's so clear the security apparatus largely exists as a way to get administration insiders like Mike Chertoff super rich without actually providing security. The failure rates of the scanners were actually SEALED largely I assume because they were so poor, or at least that was the public implication made in Congress when Napolitano was asked about this. The Congressman (no not looking it up) said "well, these rates are sealed, but do you really think these sorts of failure rates are acceptable?" Napolitano basically refused to address it.
"I have a photograph from those days showing me seated at the controls of a commercial airliner, which the crew of the airliner took after I boarded a flight early in the boarding process."
I remember when I was a kid in the 60s-70s, the flight crews would let us into the cockpit to have a look when we were getting on or off the plane. It's sad that kids growing up today might never have that experience.
The TSA is there to make people feel secure, not to be secure.
Tourism is a trillion dollar industry; even if you hate jumping through hoops you are infinitely more likely to take a flight if you know everyone is being molested.
you are infinitely more likely to take a flight if you know everyone is being molested.
Speak for yourself; I for one don't like being treated badly. It's security theater at best, and runaway government power at worst, and either way it's at the cost of human dignity.
Not even the TSA believes that. That's why they have "TSA Precheck" - pay $100 and submit to a "background check" and you will almost always skip the molestation.
TSA Precheck is a program explicitly designed to placate the people with enough influence to get the system changed. You can be sure that every member of congress and their staffs are in the Precheck program, along with anyone who flies on business or is otherwise wealthy. Pretty soon the only people getting molested on a regular basis any more are the lower classes.
I'd wager most of the people in the program aren't rich, they just have jobs that require them to travel a lot. We're talking Accenture consultants, not bank execs.
It isn't that most of the people in the program are or are not rich, it is that most of the rich in the country are in the program. In other words -- anyone who is (a) likely to be annoyed by the inconvenience AND (b) powerful enough to do something about the inconvenience has been co-opted by PreCheck.
Not quite. As a counter-example I give you http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randal_L._Schwartz. Due to his past felon status (now exonerated so not a felon), he is not eligible for TSA Precheck.
But he flies business a lot, and has made it clear that he'd love to be in TSA Precheck. He's simply not eligible.
I think there is probably a finite number, and one that is calculable if you have the right data. My totally ignorant speculation is that it's a small percentage.
I believe it also serves as a public works program of sorts. 50,000 decently paying jobs with great benefits and plenty of opportunities to steal passenger's possessions for people who, quite frankly, aren't qualified to do much else.
The point of the TSA is that its use is in providing the charade of security because it is the only tangible proof of increased security that most people will see/experience.
There are numerous other measures in place to actually increase security, i.e., fortified cabin doors, armed air marshals on all domestic flights, anti-hijacking procedures, terrorist-wary passengers, crew training, etc., all of which have prevented terrorist activities to some degree or another.
The cabin door fortification has been the most effective thing so far. Passenger awareness and quick thinking has actually prevented several incidents, making them the best line of defense.
> The point of the TSA is that its use is in providing the charade of security because it is the only tangible proof of increased security that most people will see/experience.
I think at this point it has overplayed it's hand.
> The TSA is there to make people feel secure, not to be secure.
Security theatre is part of it but they do make planes more secure.
I (and the majority of people) don't want people bringing pocket knives, guns, samurai swords, lighters or whatever other crazy thing people feel they "have a right" to bring. Because when disagreements happen we don't need people escalating situations into life/death scenarios that require planes to make unscheduled and riskier landings.
Most of those things were not allowed on airplanes before 2001 as well. Not sure what you are getting at really if this is an attempt to justify what TSA does.
Not to mention the "pocket knives" and "lighters" plots are foiled by the new policy of "beat the shit out of terrorists and then sit on them, or you all die".
This is one aspect of the security situation that I haven't been able to wrap my mind around: if someone were to attempt to hijack a plane with a pen knife/nail clipper/etc in any year past 2001, they'd get their shit stomped in. The public is well aware of the fact that terrorists don't always merely force landings and take hostages like they did before 9/11. Why do we continue to ban the most trivial shit?
Before September 2001, I routinely flew with my Leatherman on my person. I'd simply remove it from its sheath and drop it in the little plastic basket for your keys and change and such, or hand it to the uniformed person manning the metal detector before passing through. I was never once questioned, or even looked at twice for doing this, and I flew fairly regularly.
That's the one thing I really miss. It's almost inevitable that I find myself needing a Leatherman at my destination (after all, you're away from all your other tools).
I've even resorted to buying one at my destination and giving it to someone as a gift when I leave.
I once bought a cheap soldering iron, hookup wire, and solder in Cambridge, MA and left it behind in the hotel room 'cause I didn't want the security hassle of taking it home on the plane.
A pocket knife is a rather absurd weapon anyways to anyone with common sense. Sure it could be used as a weapon, but it's not something that would keep passengers from stopping a terrorist in 2013. I don't know if pocket knives were technically allowed or just overlooked because of the above reason. My reference was in regards to the obvious (guns, swords, explosives, etc). I was at Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix in the late 90s and the entire airport was shut down when someone went through security with a gun.
Pedantics aside, airport security used to have common sense. Now, it's been tossed out the window for zero tolerance "no need to think" policy. It doesn't mean we should return exactly to the laws of the 1990s for airport security in the US, but the "security theater" for the sake of making people think they're safer by inconveniencing at best and harassment/theft/groping at worse is ridiculous.
That would all depend on the model in question[1]. 2-3" blade is pocket knife size. If going by wiki[2], it defines pocket knife as 2-6". 6" is pretty big for a what one would define as a pocket knife though.
1329 days ago I wrote here on HN, in reponse to one of the recurring complaints about airport security procedures, "Hear. Hear. I was just on flights out of town over the weekend, and it occurred to me that the terrorists have won by making air travel so inconvenient and annoying for every American who ever flies domestically. 'Maybe Secure Flight is a good use of our money; maybe it isn't. But let's have debates like that in the open, as part of the budget process, where it belongs.' This is the general answer for review of current security procedures: we should check whether they are worthwhile for the amount of improved security they promise to provide."
334 days ago another participant, who came to the United States from another country, wrote,
It's also the only place that made me take my shoes off before the metal detector, which I found quite humiliating
This appears to have been one of the calculations of the terrorist group that put up the shoe bomber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_shoe_bomb_plot
to trying his failed attempt to blow up an airplane with a bomb hidden in his shoe. Some of the co-religionists of some of those terrorists consider it extremely degrading to be bare-footed in certain situations deemed to be "holy" situations (I know this from having been warned about how I oriented my feet in flip-flop sandals once when I was overseas in 1984), and thus they have probably been glad to humiliate Americans as Americans have reacted to the failed shoe bomb plot. My proposal is that United States airport security give up on requesting passengers to remove shoes. Yeah, maybe have chemical sensing devices with air intakes at floor level to screen for bombs on shoes, but let us all wear our shoes onto airplanes and throughout the insides of airports. The screening procedures at present appear to be an overreaction to the actual risk of a shoe bomb destroying a passenger airplane, especially in view of other countries not having the same screening procedure for airline passengers.
I've summed up my reaction to the past incidents of terrorism directed at Americans overseas or civilians in the United States in a more recent Hacker News comment: "It's important for all of us to remember the basic issue here. The basic issue is whether people in free countries, like most readers of Hacker News, are going to be able to enjoy the right of free speech throughout their country, on any subject, or whether any American or Dutch person or other person accustomed to free speech who happens to be within reach of attack by a crazy foreign person has to prepare for war just to continue to exercise free speech. On my part, I'm going to continue to comment on public policy based on verifiable facts and reason and logic, even if that seems offensive. I am not going to shrink from saying that people in backward, poorly governed countries that could never have invented the Internet have no right to kill and destroy just because someone in a free country laughs or scorns at their delusions. The people who are destroying diplomatic buildings and killing diplomats are declining to use thoughtful discussion to show that they are anything other than blights on humankind."
Allow me to reemphasize this point. The many participants on HN who criticize Transportation Security Agency "security theater" as a meaningless reduction in the freedom of people who travel to the United States are right on the basic point. If free citizens of free countries can't live in freedom because of fear of terrorists, the terrorists have already won. You and I should be able to speak our minds and express our opinions in the manner of all people in free countries--sometimes agreeing with one another, sometimes disagreeing, but always letting the other guy have his say. To engage in self-censorship because of fear of violent thugs is to be defeated by the thugs.
We should also be able to fly freely about the country with no more than strictly necessary security precautions. I want to be able to walk into an airport with my shoes on and walk calmly to an arrival gate to greet arriving passengers there. I used to do that. And I want to be able to carry a Swiss Army knife in an airline carry-on bag. Grandmothers and mothers and children should surely be able to board an airliner unmolested in a free country like the United States.
That said, I remember when conditions changed in the United States. I stood on top of the former World Trade Center in New York City twice while traveling with foreign visitors to the United States during my earlier frequent flyer days. Because I remember the peace and freedom I long enjoyed here to welcome visitors to the United States from around the world, I want the leaders and active participants in terrorist networks to identified through constant surveillance and intelligence, and I want terrorists to be attacked relentlessly where they live, so that they have to hide in caves while people all over the world who renounce their goals get to lead civilized, peaceful lives in the Twenty-First Century. Taliban delenda est. Al Qaeda delenda est.
AFTER EDIT: Thanks for the several interesting comments. I think it is important to acknowledge that, yes, the United States government as a matter of official policy has engaged in assassination of foreign government leaders, and plotted the assassination of others, as well as committed and plotted break-ins in foreign embassies (but not random bomb attacks on foreign embassies, to the best of my recollection). I think the United States has been chastened by some of the results of those earlier policies. The movie Argo has been watched by many Americans, and it frankly acknowledges the assassination of an elected prime minister in Iran by the CIA back before I was born. I think now the United States is much more interested in information openness as a means to make sure that countries all around the world trade peacefully rather than waging war one one another, and I think that is the only long-term way to defeat terrorist networks. The current armed warfare strategy of drone attacks on specific terrorist leaders rather than mass bombing attacks on cities (as in World War II) is a step forward in war-fighting effectiveness and an improvement in reducing civilian casualties.
Yes, the United States is still second only to France as a country destination for foreign tourists (and rather more of the tourists to France can drive cars or ride trains to France than can many visitors to the United States). So as obnoxious as current TSA security procedures are to me and to many, they are not so obnoxious that people have stopped visiting the United States for fun.
Oh, yes, and my "half-Asian" children look very Central Asian, as one might expect, and my oldest son with his full black beard looks like someone from the latest news story about Al Qaeda. I'm not sure what his experience has been traveling around the country for his study and work. He barely remembers the old days before the TSA. Certainly we should also make sure not to harass citizens or visitors who happen to have the wrong name or the wrong pattern of physical appearance, but identify threats on the basis of more relevant information. Another top-level comment in this thread says that Israel succeeds in doing that for the most part.