Air Marshals Will Refuse Orders to Go to the Border, Prefer First Class Cabins
viewfromthewing.com
viewfromthewing.com
No, context can be important. If all context were important, you couldn't talk about one thing without talking about every other thing. If your argument about why context is important in this case rests on if a hypothetical fact that "people arrested by police have collectively prevented more crimes than they have committed" would be uninteresting or even unfair without context, I'd deeply disagree.
Whether that's problematic depends on a lot of things, including whether arresting people is actually the main benefit of them being present.
I have a few dogs. They bark at people walking by on the sidewalk a lot. I've never had someone break into my house. Are the dogs useless as a mechanism to prevent home invasion or burglary, or does knowledge of their presence prevent people from even attempting such? Now consider that I haven't noted whether those crimes are common in my area or not.
Maybe those dogs have growled at guests in my house, making them feel uncomfortable. Should my stance be that they've growled at more guests than intruders they've attacked? Do you feel comfortable making a definitive statement on the value of those dogs and whether the costs outweigh the benefits with the given information, or do you think additional information would be important to discerning that?
The whole point is that you can't tell whether that's happened with the data presented, regardless of what you compare it to, and no, once is not too many times given the actual thing we're discussing.
If the existence of Air Marshals prevented one more 9/11 type event from happening, or even a few failed attempts (which would be capitalized on by politicians to push their own agendas), then I would without reservation say they are worth it. We just haven't been presented with that data. In some cases it may not exist. Acting like the answer to that is irrelevant is not the correct way to go about it though, in my opinion.
Air marshals are almost certainly trained not to intervene in minor disturbances. Otherwise a team of hijackers could locate the air marshal by having one person act as an unruly passenger.
A lot of times, I feel like this whole concept was based on an inherit deterrent and seems to have worked, in conjunction with increased airport screening:
"The number of hijackings has dwindled in recent years. About 50 have been reported since Sept, 11, 2001, and none in the U.S., according to the Aviation Safety Network."
Before 9/11 you were a passenger/crewmember on a plane, you flew to Cuba, then got released, and all was well.
9/11 changed that. No longer were passengers and crew safe as long as they complied, no longer were planes allowed to fly around and even be refuelled safe in the knowledge that all it would take is some money to free them.
As such over the course of two hours the calculus changed. Hijacking the first 3 planes worked because nobody expected it. The fourth plane was also hijacked, but the goal (crashing into whatever building) wasn't met because the passengers and crew found out the rules had changed.
If you hvae 5 people willing to kill themselves for your cause, there are better ways to make a political statement now than the risk of hijacking a plane - not because of any potential air marshall, but because of the guarantee of the passengers.
The number of bear attacks in Springfield went to zero in 1996 when Homer started Bear Patrol. It's a case of life imitating art.
It is either are or are not. Almost certainly sounds like you have no clue.
For the last twenty years, hijackers (in flights originating from US) are probably always presumed to be suicidal and much less likely to succeed in a hijacking. To the point where I'd assume that they're rarely even attempted.
Perhaps we could end up needing air marshals in the future, a future where many passengers are not old enough to recall or be affected by the terrorist attacks on September 11.
[1] https://www.securitysolutionsmedia.com/2018/04/20/air-marsha...
You could play that game with anything. How much does our military cost?
Or maybe, what was the total cost of one 9/11 airplane running into a target?
And there is the hidden properties of deterrence
That depends on the deterrence of having air marshals.
The argument sounds like one that gets brought up here regularly, when executives lay off 90% of the sysadmins because "nothing ever goes wrong, so why are we paying for them?", and teams that are constantly running round looking like heroes for fixing broken stuff all the time get more kudos than the teams that keep things quietly humming along without any issues.
1. Would-be hijackers can no longer get into cockpits. Pilots would much rather a hijacker kill every passenger and crew member on the plane than gain control of the plane.
2. Passengers don't take shit anymore. They know that, if terrorists successfully take control of a plane, the most likely outcome is that they're all dead. So they'll attack -- and hopefully subdue -- the hijackers.
I expect the effects of #2 have lessened somewhat, given that 9/11 was over 20 years ago, and the memory of it is less raw (not to mention many adults who fly now were young children or not even born in 2001).
If air marshals really do act as a deterrence, there must be some evidence to back that up.
I don't think #2 actually goes away. It's a cultural shift. Prior to 9/11, the advice was always to just stay calm and let the authorities negotiate with the terrorist, because that had in the past generally led to passengers and plane surviving the incident. That level of passivity isn't coming back.
There is danger there with corrupt and immoral organizations. They might just start generating false incidents and then run to save the day to pad their stats "look how effective we are!".
Luckily, that only happens with deeply corrupt organizations. Like for instance FBI [1], when they were sending their informants to mosques in US looking to recruit terrorists. Up until the the members of the mosque ended up reporting the FBI agents to the FBI.
--- Niazi and another mosque member had reported Monteilh to the FBI, claiming that Monteilh was espousing terrorist rhetoric and trying to draw them into a plot to blow up shopping malls ---
[1] https://www.ocweekly.com/news-the-fbi-the-islamic-center-of-...
I am not saying what FBI does is good, but this reminds me now that the only way to deal with constant threat of phishing is actually to create false fishing attacks all the time, so that people would be aware of the thread. Could be generally a good approach if the methods employed were more public rather than clandestine.
Spending a few billion of taxpayer money is fine if the cost is your political career or a hit to your political party.
It's not really "unheard of". Air traffic controllers, employed by the FAA, famously went on strike in the early 80s and were subsequently all fired by the Reagan administration.
In this case, honestly I'd be like "fine, go ahead and try insubordination, and then get fired." As this article makes exceedingly clear, it will be much easier to continue air travel without air marshals than without air traffic controllers, and the US govt still managed that situation pretty decently.
But I'm assuming at least some percentage would be OK with it, and the ones who aren't would have to find new jobs. Very similar to when companies downsize one department, but try to find jobs for existing employees by giving them jobs in other departments. Some will take it, some will reject it, but it's a pretty fair outcome for all.
Be like all the FBI agents refusing to suppress minority groups or something.
FTFY.
The FBI is a political organization and chooses who they will persecute based on the political leanings of FBI leadership.
That's seems like quite a broad generalization.
Here are there press releases with regards to developments towards cases: https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/press-releases
Crimes that involve politics will always have some individuals stating they did things for political reasons, but without examples or more context to what you are referring to, that statement seems particularly broad stating that FBI is a political organization.
I think the US would be better having a clearer line between civilian and military branches. It feels really weird to me that they are (self) describing this as a mutiny and talking about refusing to "deploy". But they are just employees right? Not soldiers?
In my view, it's fair to consider anybody who carries a gun for the state as a soldier, in an informal sense.
One's subject to military tribunals[1], while the other is subject to regular courts, which from all evidence seem to be incredibly biased in their favour.
[1] Of which I know next to nothing.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/01/obama-contin...
> So-called “signature strikes”, targeting people whose behavior is assessed to be similar enough to those of terrorists to mark them for death, will continue, according to senior US officials.
> Human-rights groups have long denounced the practice – whose criteria can be as vague as killing “military-aged males” in regions where terrorists operate – as anonymous killing.
Not that the American military doesn't indiscriminately kill people, but you're free to look up RoE for ground troops and discussions thereof yourself.
Soldiers tooting their own horns; this self-aggrandizement is not to be taken seriously. There is evidence that police with military backgrounds are more likely to be involved in shootings. Police who are combat veterans are even more likely to be involved in shootings. Soldier training does not make good police.
https://academic.oup.com/jpubhealth/article/41/3/e245/511435...
>There is evidence that police with military backgrounds are more likely to be involved in shootings.
Ah, but that's not the claim being made. You've quite adroitly shown proof that former soldiers make shooty LEOs. I'm relating that soldiers suggest that if all cops were trained as soldiers were with respect to not firing their weapons until some situational conditions were met, shootings would fall.
I'd imagine that the sort of soldier who comes home and seeks out the experience of being a cop, immersed in "killology" [0] as they are (a philosophy that suggests firing your weapons), would indeed become the sort of cop to wind up being involved in a shooting.
...and I'm aware that "killology"'s founder and chief proselytizer is a former soldier. Note, however, that he does not advise cops that they must be strictly bound by any RoE before being willing to fire their weapons; he advises quite the opposite.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/08/11/police-trai...
Besides the evidence to the contrary which I have already posted, I think you need to be more skeptical of the claims American soldiers make about their conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. Talk about rules of engagement is cheap, what matters is the actual execution of those rules. American soldiers were made to behave as police in those countries, and in neither case were they good at it.
American police are bad enough already, the last thing they need is even more military training.
You haven't presented evidence to the contrary, you've presented evidence that former soldiers make shooty LEOs. You should re-read the above comment chain, regarding what's being claimed and why, or admit that you're not here to argue a point but grind an axe. Sure, I have no evidence that training cops like soldiers regarding not firing their weapons until some situational conditions were met would reduce shootings, and I'm neither a cop, a soldier, nor an American. That said, there certainly seems to be evidence that training cops to view civilians as enemy combatants, and to be quick to shoot them, encourages cops to shoot people. I mean, it's called "killology" (I just can't get over that). It seems to me that if cops were trained to not fire their weapons until some situational conditions were met, it might discourage cops from shooting people. Maybe I'm being ridiculous!
"RoE, or specific claims about the implementation and efficacy of RoE, is/are bullshit" is a different point, which I'm totally willing to concede. Again, maybe I'm being ridiculous, but I figure reality of American policing is that it'd be easier to hoodwink cops into something approaching military discipline than, like, de-escalation training, actually barring crazies from the profession rather than allowing them to get jobs a few counties over, and handing back the Pentagon-surplus APCs.
I'm no particular fan of the US military (much less the police), but the practical and historical distinctions between the two are substantial: one is the professional military of a country, and the other is a professionalization of antebellum slave catching posses.
To me it seems the air marshals we have now are just in it for the free vacations. If airlines want their own security they should be able to employ their own in flight guards.
And doesn't needing air marshals prove that TSA is a joke?
The TSA _is_ a joke, but this is not evidence of that. It's typically to have multiple layers of security in case any of them fail.
I have wondered what kind of punishment is likely for someone who ends up diverting a flight.
Big penalties. Looks like getting a few years in prison isn't uncommon for fairly moderate physical interactions (spitting, pushing).
Both cases were just drunks not knowing how to act in public, and oddly both were on flights to Orlando.
Anyone attempting to hijack a flight full of Americans is going to be attacked every single time, and terrorists surely know this, and that's the real deterrent. Hijackers might think they can overpower a single armed officer but they know they can't overpower dozens of passengers that feel forced to fight or die.
It might even be a good idea for pre-flight training videos to explicitly tell passengers to immediately attack anyone attempting to hijack the plane. Though this is probably unnecessary, it could act as a strong additional deterrent and help coordinate people in the event.
You'll have a lot of passengers attacking each other for no reason. This is a remarkably bad idea.
Fact is: plane hijackings isn't really a problem anywhere. Low-tech solutions like locking the cockpit goes very far.
Stopping those really determined is probably hard/impossible, the best tools is probably old school humint.
But it's probably best to accept that attacks are not impossible. Spend the money on something else.
Why are people going to attack each other for no reason? Hijackers typically do very obvious things, like try to break into the cockpit and make announcements/threats to the passengers.
The training video could tell passengers to attack anyone trying to break into the cockpit or to wait to attack until the pilot instructs them to, etc. It would take a bit of thought for sure.
> Fact is: plane hijackings isn't really a problem anywhere. Low-tech solutions like locking the cockpit goes very far.
They're not a problem since 9/11 when passengers attacked the hijackers and then cockpit doors were reinforced. I believe the deterrent is the combination of these two changes.
Woah, that's... a bad idea.
In order words, its not safe to assume a team of intelligent and motivated hijackers couldn't break into a cockpit given sufficient time. But it is safe to assume that the reinforced cockpit door will slow hijackers enough that passengers have time to stop them.
Even if attackers could get to supplemental oxygen in time, those little bottles don't last forever, and there'd be an opportunity for crew and passengers to regain control.
I think there are other last-resort actions pilots could take to thwart a takeover, like engaging in extreme attitude/altitude changes in order to knock out the attackers.
Remember, we're operating under the assumption that if the hijackers win, everyone on the plane is likely dead anyway, so putting passengers at risk to stop them should be considered acceptable. The only way attackers can realistically win is if a pilot is duped into letting them into the cockpit. Not impossible, but that reduces the possibilities quite a lot.
Yep. Pre-9/11, if your plane was hijacked, odds were that you would get out alive. Once 9/11 introduced the world to the suicide hijacker, that basically stopped hijackings. Passengers will simply overwhelm anyone trying to take over the plane because everyone assumes it's a suicide mission.
Given that passengers have suspected terrorism from such things as speaking Arabic [1] and doing math [2] I wouldn't recommend gambling on the smarts of the dumbest person on a given flight.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/16/southwest-ai... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/rampage/wp/2016/05/07/iv...
Tens of millions of people have flown without incident and you can point to two people panicking over stupid things? That seems like strong evidence against what you're claiming. People are simply not as stupid as you seem to think.
I'd say that's worse. Mobs are usually way dumber than individuals.
And if you're right, why aren't mobs of Americans attacking suspected hijackers already? Why didn't passengers attack the guy speaking Arabic or doing math? The evidence, based on millions of successful flights, seems conclusive: people are just not this stupid.
That flight crashed killing everyone on board.
Anyway, the door isn't a panacea.
I've been especially interested in aviation recently, but I think I will pick up the hijacking dangers portion down the road.
Nobody on that flight made it to their intended destination, including the hijackers. Now that it is known that passengers will attack would be hijackers and that cockpit doors will be locked, making it hard to get control of the plane, the risk/reward for hijacking looks poor. That shooting down hijacked flights was authorized may also be a deterent, altough realistic response time is long, so maybe not a big factor. Terrorists are better off doing something else.
It plays with numbers in a sketchy way, as well. "5,000 incidents" out of how many flights? 148 arrested out of how many employed? "Between 2002 and 2012" but what about since then? "$200 million per arrest" but "deterrent effect is unknown".
That's really it for data. The rest are anecdotes. The "not trained" link was to a NY Post interview with a former air marshal expressing an opinion.
Maybe there is a serious problem with the program, but this article does not do much more than try to get its readers upset.
A waste of time. Could not even figure out what "going to the border" was.
Until that's done, it's disingenuous to claim that Air Marshalls have prevented only thus-and-such incidents. That's not counting what didn't happen just because they are there (or might be there).
E.g. a reasonable argument is to diminish the Air Marshall service because they are individually problematic, while keeping the rumor that they may be on any flight. That doesn't fly in the face of statistics but uses it to reinforce an argument.
I’m more comfortable as a flyer and as someone who’d like to do business in the US if I know that there are air marshals. Surely this pays for itself this way, especially given the ever increasing accessibility of air travel. I say this an American who knows how crazy our population can be.
Post 9/11 a plane full of people is not going to let a guy with a knife take control of the plane. It is pretty unlikely that one Marshall is going to notice a suspicious person versus the 12 people sitting within 6 feet of them.
At this point, I'd say they are completely useless.
Locked cabin doors are also good. Metal detectors at airports would be fine, if they were staffed by private security contractors rather than the unaccountable TSA. Also their xray backscatter machines are pointless, their paranoia about shoes is pointless, and their insane paranoia about water-bottles is pointless. Other countries don't have these things, and things are fine for them. By all means have people walk through a metal detector to stop carryon handguns, but the rest of this crap is completely pointless.
Hm, is this true in EU?
But nothing like air marshals or TSA as they are described.
(granted, that was dealing with a UK->US and US->UK flights)
From my experience in EU -> EU flights they pass your bags through the machine and a metal detector, and that's it
First, regional and international flights always been in the same terminal and therefor the same check for me.
International...depends on a country:
Vietnam spent more time looking at my passport then looking at my luggage (actually didn't look at all, was talking to someone and not looking at the monitor).
Korea - leave everything in a bag, leave your shoes, easy-breezy.
Japan - the same as Korea.
Germany/Spain - was more worried that: I have place to say and plane ticket back and that I will be let into the US on my way back that what was in my bags.
Mexico - again, more time spent on documents than my bags, but I was subject to random search at the gate once...unpleasant.
In fact, even in the US TSA checks aren't the same: some airports let you leave everything in a bag, others will bitch about tiny wireless headphones left in a bag. Anyway, I'd say TSA will have the most ridiculous checks and number of people who have no idea how to go through TSA.
Airport security in America used to be done by private contractors. The TSA didn't exist before 2001. And before 2001, airport security checkpoints generally ran much smoother and faster than the TSA.
(I am not a libertarian, so spare me the jabs.)
The only "positive" thing about security before 9/11 is that those private contractors were paid to let as many people through as possible for the least amount of labor possible so they were not very serious with the security. So thats why some people remember things running "smoother". But it was definitely not safer. Remember, there were 19 9/11 hijackers, and not one of them had any problems bringing a knife on board.
Point me to one case where anyone has successfully sued a private airport screening contractor for damages resulting from terrorism? That does not happen. It would be an interesting economic experiment if airport screening companies were made liable for the acts of people they erroneously let in, and were forced to buy insurance to cover for these liabilities. I would expect airport screenings by private contractors to get much more aggressive than the TSA then. But currently this is not the case.
Meanwhile, the modern TSA fails something like 90% of their own tests, in terms of letting stuff through. Many people who every-day carry stuff like knives talk about forgetting to remove their pocket knife, and getting it through TSA accidentally.
I finally lost it in 2008 or so when a bouncer at a club wouldn't let me in with it (and I had parked quite a ways away and waited in line for too long for me to consider going back to put it in the car). So... nightclub bouncers are more effective at screening weapons than the TSA.
The TSA is far more accountable than private security contractors. In fact I really like the TSA, those security checks became far more civil and professional and pleasant after the TSA came in.
As far as private security contractors -- this is what usually happens when they hire them for airport security. Because airport security is sinecure ... there is no competition or option, it is treated as a way to extract the most money by a well connected businessman. A well connected businessman will get the contract, and then attempt to extract as much value from it by spending the minimum amount possible on salaries. So all the "private security contractors" will be minimum wage jobs.
But the airport is a terrible place to work for a minimum wage worker. Travel to and from the airport is usually difficult and expensive, and parking is very expensive. In fact parking is usually more expensive per hour than the minimum wage. So most minimum wage workers avoid airport jobs.
So who takes these jobs? Minimum wage workers that cannot find any other minimum wage jobs. These end up being mostly ex-cons. So you get the situation that ex-cons provide security for one of the most vulnerable parts of our transportation infrastructure. This was the case pre 9/11 and it is one of the reasons why none of the hijackers had any trouble smuggling knives on their flights.
These have 150 confirmed kills [1], and another 239 suspected kills [2]. They also weigh a lot, so a lot of excessive fuel is burnt because of them every day. They also sometimes break, causing delayed and cancelled flights.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_370
car - 4600 billion pax miles, 42,000 deaths, 1 per 100 million miles
plane - 500 billion pax miles, 246 deaths of airline travellers on 9/11, 265 from Queens, about 1 per 1 billion miles
Certainly there are ways to measure if the air marshal program works as a deterrent. Even if there isn't, I'd argue we still need to axe the program, given the cost, abuse, risks, and lack of clear benefits.
While I completely agree, this would just shift the problem to the terminal, where people would gulp down as much as they can at airport bars, and become unruly when denied boarding at the gate due to inebriation.
I guess that might make people drink before they go to the airport, but public intoxication is already an offense, which could be identified at security screening.
Good lord.
It was a “throwaway” so I suppose I shouldn’t expect actual discourse.
I don't drink a lot, but like going to a baseball game - drinking and flying is fun. Goes well together.
The drunk people who wind up causing the plane to be diverted in the air seem 100x worse than someone needing to be escorted away from the plane at the gate.