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Comment by sreevisakh | Hacker News Reader

The ill-fated Boeing 747 flight AI182 (Kanishka) was carrying an extra engine just like this, when it was destroyed over Atlantic ocean by a terrorist bomb attack in June 1985. The presence of the extra engine was investigated as a possible cause of the disaster before conclusive evidence of a bomb explosion was found. (That and another explosion on the ground at Narita, Japan in a container destined for another Air India flight).

[1] https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19850623-...

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Wow, "Canadian Sikh terrorists" was not something I was expecting to read about today.

It was the biggest incident of aviation terrorism prior to 9-11. World was very different back then - not a surprise it sounds improbable today.

I had a similar reaction when I first read about it. kind of crazy how no one was ever really held responsible and then 9-11 just kind of pushed it out of most of the public's collective memory, or at least that's how it seems to me.

There has been a lot of terrorist activity continuously in europe since the 60s. In the 60s/70s it was mostly far left terrorism (red brigade, baader-meinhof gang, etc) and some independence movements (FLN or the opposite like OAS). In the 70s/80s independence movements (palestinians, IRA, ETA, etc), and state sponsored terrorism (Iran, Libya). In the 90s it became islamists. The far right committed continuously rare but large attacks (like Oklahoma city, Breivik). If you go further back in history the anarchists were doing a lot of bombings at the end of the XIX early XX.

The point is that islamist terrorism isn’t a large uptick in terror activity, both in term of number of incidents and number of victims. They do more spectacular attacks though. But the reaction it created is kind of curious (security in airports, army in the street, state surveillance), particularly in countries with an otherwise large tolerance to crime like the US (tough laws but very high level of crime) and Europe (lax law enforcement) where terrorism is a drop in the ocean of regular crime.

I think the response is a bit different because previously the attacks relied on the attacker not staying at the scene of the attack plus the attacker wanted to survive the attack.

With Islamic terrorism came more sophisticated attacks that required more logistical planning. These were only possible because the people carrying out the attacks were simultaneously committing suicide in the process.

Previous attacks did affect procedures it’s just that they weren’t as noticeable and the type of surveillance we have now was not possible at the time due to the technology being used. For instance bags were unloaded if the passenger didn’t board[0] or flight observation decks were enclosed to stop RPG’s being fired at airplanes[1].

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103?wprov=sfti1

[1] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_Orly_Airport_attacks

I'd posit that's because a growing Islamic movement allows power to rapidly shift outside the established political structure. Just like with papistry in Europe in the past, if you're using people's faith to manipulate them then someone coming in and 'stealing' those people's adherence means your power is depleted.

Islam was arguably designed by Mohammed to cede power from the establishment of his time. Joseph Smith's (Mormonism) very obvious deceptions lead to a new global power structure; Ron Hubbard's (Scientology) even more obvious deceptions are used to target individuals in powerful positions and gain leverage over them.

Those who truly believe will always have a negative reaction to religious ideas that challenge their truth; those who use religion to bolster power will be even more against new religious ideas.

> But the reaction it created is kind of curious (security in airports, army in the street, state surveillance)

Not sure about the other examples, but the "Red Brigades" (Brigate Rosse) and other terrorist acts in Italy lead to special laws that extended considerably the powers of police (you can be searched without a warrant if there's the suspicion you have a weapon, you would potentially be arrested for wearing a helmet or other face cover without legitimate need, e.g. in a demonstration) and the use of force, the creation of new "swat-like" police forces. And of course, there was considerably more police on the street in those years...

Fun fact, all I know about Germany is that they proposed (and too slowly deployed) a new font for car plates after the Baader-Meinhof gang successfully altered with black tape a plate.

For Germany, the Munich massacre at the 1972 Summer Olympics was a turning point. A few days later, the federal anti-terror squadron GSG 9 was formed. Since 1974 the German states established their own special commands (SEK).

The most famous operation of GSG 9 was the storming of the hijacked Lufthansa aircraft "Landshut" at Mogadishu airport (Somalia) in 1977, freeing all 86 passengers. (The crew's captain had been executed by the terrorists before.)[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_Flight_181

Right-wing terrorism must not be forgotten. There are indications that people involved in NATO's "stay behind" forces, designed for guerilla warfare behind Russian lines, turned terrorist and were responsible for terror attacks in Italy and Germany in the 1980s. The crimes were never fully solved, though. There was also a neo-Nazi terrorist group (NSU) active in Germany in the 2000s.

There is a lot of depth and history here.

* the US had the anti-communist McCarthy hearings.

Canada had secret shunning commitees. See a book/video called "The UnCanadians".

(Millions of Canadian households had files on them, at a time when Canada had < 16M people.)

* Due to this, and the RCMP going bananas in other ways (eg, burning down barns on private property because bikers were legally meeting there....), parliament disbanded the RCMP's domestic and international "spy" departments.

CSIS, CSEC and other agencies were formed.

* During the transition from the RCMP handling terrorism reports, to CSIS, there was bad blood, and a desire to make a clean break, eg, bad RCMP culture was to be replaced with a new agency new culture.

* the Air India disaster had multiple people call in, all reporting, with details, to the RCMP that it was going to happen

* due to all of the above, these reports never made it to CSIS, and the RCMP was at that point forbidden to investigate on their own.

* in 2006? 8? A report was published detailing this disconnect, and more.

I believe that some US agencies are exdeeding their power, and one day, may need to be disbanded and replaced.

To all those, in any country considering the same? Do it right.

Do not let the transition, mess up ongoing dilligence.

The Air India disaster is a poster child for what can happen.

> * Due to this, and the RCMP going bananas in other ways (eg, burning down barns on private property because bikers were legally meeting there....), parliament disbanded the RCMP's domestic and international "spy" departments.

So one of the five eyes activities I found which involved the RCMP (I'm based in the UK), was putting a tiny picture of a full stop (period/dot/whatever you want to call it), at the end of sentences in various web forums. If your broadband was slow, like in the dialup days, before the image had downloaded, web browsers would put a placeholder square or rectangle where the image would eventually appear. I saw this on some forums, so naturally I traced the image back to Canadian webservers. It was their way of tracking who was reading what threads on a forum, but not the only way!

You will find the security services sacrifice many innocent members of the public even kids, in the 5eyes countries, its how the security services effect change when they cant manipulate or blackmail the politicians. There is also a lot of collusion between the Police and the security services, its totally criminal!

Tracking pixels may violate your privacy, but they are not a government plot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_beacon

The whole thing is fascinating. I only just read about it because of the long slog that was Neal Stephenson's Termination Shock, which spends basically half the book talking about the China/India Line of Actual Control, and dips into Sikhism a bit.

I had no idea that Indira Ghandi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards, after she insisted they be reinstated to her protective detail, Intelligence Bureau having removed them after Operation Bluestar. The same operation is what lead to the Air India 182 plane bombing. Quite the blowback, only to then be met with the killing of over 8,000 Sikhs in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.

Whats more interesting is that the terror group which carried out the plane hijacking is still active in Canada. In fact the group was not prosecuted for the hijack and other attacks.

https://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ians/us-decla...

It’s funny because the Canadian leader of the federal NDP was pretty reluctant to blame the terrorists who did this…

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/article-the-stra...

Every time I read the term "security theater", I remember how frequent plane hijackings and bombings were pre-9/11.

Schneier's argument (in 2007, quoting https://www.schneier.com/news/archives/2007/08/everything_we...) was that:

> “There have been exactly two things since 9/11 that have made air travel safer,” Schneier said recently over spring rolls at a favorite Vietnamese restaurant on Nicollet Avenue. “Reinforcing the cockpit door and telling people to fight back in the event of an attack.” After a brief pause, half-devoured roll in hand, he reconsidered. “Well, maybe three,” he said. “I’m on the fence about sky marshals.”

Those two or three are not security theater, a term he uses for 'new measures that conveyed safety but accomplished little.'

He gives an example of security theater - requiring people to throw out their cigarette lighters. When they could buy cigarette lighters once they pass through security.

If those two or three things alone indeed caused the decrease in plane hijackings and bombings that you commented about, then the rest - dumping out water, taking shoes off, etc. - is very likely security theater.

> requiring people to throw out their cigarette lighters. When they could buy cigarette lighters once they pass through security.

I thought that the reason for banning outside cigarette lighters was that the TSA folk could not distinguish a lighter with "improved/better" fuel from one with ordinary fuel.

What would such an '"improved/better" fuel' be used for, where a regular lighter or matches (not banned) couldn't already be used? Add scrapings from a magnesium firestarter for a higher temperature.

If there is something, why not put the fuel in a 3oz bottle instead of a lighter?

The significant increases in security were in place long before 9/11. There was a small increase in the effectiveness of security measures post 9/11 but it is difficult to measure the effectiveness of them as most of the attack vectors used post Lockerbie have had to be quite unusual to evade the existing security checks.

Hijacking used to be common in the early days of commercial aviation and the airlines resisted the idea of security screening as it didn't fit the experience they wanted their customers to have. The occasional inconvenience of hijacking was a price they considered worth paying. That changed once the hijackers started killing people and planes were bombed mid-air.

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