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Comment by nabla9 | Hacker News Reader

If somebody wants to kill air travelers, TSA screening checkpoint line is the most attractive target.

Just fill big suitcase with explosives and wait until you are middle of the TSA screening line during holiday season.

To be honest, that's a huge fear of mine every time I'm waiting in a TSA line. What happens if they find a weapon and the person decides to use it right then and there? What happens if their equipment sets off a weapon? What happens if a domestic terrorist is trying to get back at the TSA directly?

Most of my flights are what Delta or United call "connector" flights, so there are only 40-50 people on the plane anyway. Not an attractive target, I would think. But standing in line at O'Hare, there could be 100+ people there. I'm not afraid of the TSA. I'm afraid of the massive crowd of people they create.

Exactly. If you look at airports that face actual, active threats (israel) - you'll see they've minimized security lineups.

The end-goal of terrorism is the psychological impact, not killing a few people more or less. And there's just something about airplanes that creates a larger psychological impact when they're hit. Maybe it's the thought of being stuck in one, helpless and with no way out. Or maybe they symbolize progress and freedom, making traveling the world so easy. Whatever it is, that's what the terrorist attacking airplanes are going for.

And 911 was tremendously successful in that regard. Americans more or less willingly gave up many freedoms and accepted a police state.

From the article:

"The TSA is failing to defend us against the threat of terrorism. The only reason they've been able to get away with the scam for so long is that there isn't much of a threat of terrorism to defend against... Terrorists are much rarer than we think, and launching a terrorist plot is much more difficult than we think. I understand this conclusion is counterintuitive, and contrary to the fearmongering we hear every day from our political leaders. But it's what the data shows."

You're much more likely to get killed on the car ride to the airport than at the airport.

You're right. But there's something about standing in a high security area with these serious looking people wearing gloves and swabbing things and big x-ray scanners and leading people away in handcuffs and it puts all kinds of ideas in your head. It makes the threat of terrorism seem that much more real and prominent. And my mind says if it's going to happen, it's going to happen right here. Not up there.

I was just debating with my wife last weekend about how people are so terrified of guns when cars are so much more dangerous and random and senseless. But it's human nature to worry about danger when someone is actually threatening you with that danger. I worry more about accidents when someone is driving dangerously in front of me. I worry more about terrorism when someone is screaming at me to take my shoes off so they can check for a bomb.

You're right, security is a feeling as well as a reality and humans are not rational. I didn't mean to discount your feelings, only add some perspective.

I, for example, am scared of stranger violence. I know logically that if I were to be murdered/assaulted it would be much more likely to be someone I know who did it - but I still fear stranger violence more than what is rational.

Bruce Schneier (the author of this article) writes a lot about this:

https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2008/01/the_psychol...

> ...there's something about standing in a high security area...

High security areas take security screening seriously.

When an intoxicated man in a blue shirt can successfully impersonate a member of your security staff and perform multiple private screenings of (attractive, female) travellers [0], it's clear that you don't take security seriously.

[0] http://www.loweringthebar.net/2014/07/drunk-gropes-two-posin...

You are far more likely to be killed by your children then by terrorists. You are more likely to die tripping over your couch in your living room then to be injured by terrorists.

Only if your couch makes it through a security screening.

Wouldn't put it past the TSA to fail to catch it.

Actually terrorism is much easier than we think - if nothing else a knife or a car will work - but terrorists are really, really, really rare.

Or, like, any other public transportation option.

Busses and trains are not magically immune to explosives. Especially when they have literally zero security and you could easily bring an entire suitcase full of dynamite onto them. The fact is, there just aren't enough people interested in that who have the necessary skills to actually obtain explosives without alerting the FBI to their existence.

Here at least. Bus bombings are almost common in some places: https://www.google.com/webhp#q=bus+bombing&tbm=nws

If you just want to blow something up there's nothing even all that special about "transportation". Planes are special, because they have an unusual characteristic; taking control of a plane gives you an extremely powerful weapon that you can point anywhere and deliver incredible destruction. There aren't very many other things that two or three people can do that will credibly take down a skyscraper.

As it gets harder to deliberately crash a plane and there's ever more drive-by-wire, though, that threat diminishes, and the airport threat diminishes with it. Hypothetically if planes were completely ground-controlled, there would basically be no reason for airport security at all... blowing up planes isn't that intrinsically interesting, really. There'd be a certain amount of inertia to the concept, but that's it. (Yes, I know it used to be done, but post-9/11 I can't help but think that terrorists would view that as a pathetic second-best effort now.)

(Though I'd appreciate some serious security around the ground control station, though. Taking over one plane is one thing... taking over "all the planes in the area" or even "all the planes in the sky" would be something else!)

there's also the fact that it's easier to blow up a plane. you need a big bomb to destroy a bus but only a small bomb to make a hole in the plane and kill everyone. and the plane has way more people on it than a bus.

A hole in a plane's fuselage or wing doesn't mean that everyone dies. You need a lot of power in order to take out a wing. Remember that wings on commercial jetliners are designed to eat an entire disintegrating jet engine in order to protect passengers in the fuselage.

Additionally, a jetliner's fuselage can take a VERY large hit at cruising altitudes and speeds [0] and still leave the plane flightworthy.

Planes are tougher (and their crews better prepared) than people think they are.

[0] http://lessonslearned.faa.gov/ll_main.cfm?TabID=4&LLID=20&LL... (Be patient. This might take a while to load, but it's worth the wait.)

Is the TSA really doing anything to prevent someone from taking control of a plane though?

Post-9/11, the cabin door is now shut and locked during most of the flight. I can't imagine a pilot or crew-member would open that door due to a terrorist threat, knowing what we do now (and that they would probably die anyway, if they opened the door)

The door has also been substantially reinforced. It's probably safe to bet that anyone who tries to break through will not be successful for a variety of reasons. :)

Which again was a reason for why Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz could undisturbedly let the plane crash for committing suicide.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525)

Ultimately, countermeasures risk becoming attack surfaces.

Indira Gandhi was murdered by two of her own bodyguards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indira_Gandhi#Assassination

Aye. It is.

As I understand it, FAA regs require that there be two people in the cockpit at all times. So, the Germanwings tragedy would very likely not have happened in the US.

That would be true if at all times meant 100% all times. But I doubt that this rule exists and is assumed to exist to keep the pilot himself from causing harm. But rather to notice medical conditions as soon as possible. So from this psychological stance it is very likely that there will be moments of maybe no more than a minute of someone being alone in the cockpit - realistically.

Pre-9/11 airplane hijackings were a moderate inconvenience. At worst you wind up in Cuba or something and have to find a way to get home. Post-9/11, and by post-9/11 I mean literally hours after the towers were struck, passengers knew better than to comply with hijackers, which is why Flight 93 ditched into the ground.

True, however I would imagine that an attack on an airport would hurt more than an attack on a bus or train depot; I'd wager that flights might get grounded until everything is sorted out. Nobody's going to shut down New York's Penn Station if something happens in Chicago or San Francisco.

I really wonder why this hasn't happened yet. I can only assume that either terrorists are maniacally fixated on the airplanes, or there are approximately zero intelligent terrorists.

Or option C, 9/11 was a one-off, special circumstance that was difficult to create in the first place and nearly impossible to replicate.

9/11 certainly was pretty unusual, but packing a suitcase with explosives and nails and hauling it into a crowd of civilians is the sort of thing that happens fairly regularly in some parts of the world.

See Boston marathon.

I don't consider it a particularly sophisticated attack, but it was undeniably effective both at injuring people and at spreading FUD.

Aircraft are an attractive target if you can cause the aircraft to crash, but most terrorist attacks on aircraft don't have that result.

    > and at spreading FUD

It was? Has the behaviour of Bostonians changed significantly? Were political goals achieved?

Bostonianish person here: it hasn't changed Boston. My brother-in-law was running the Marathon that day, he finished about 30 minutes before the explosions.

Watertown residents' cars are no longer universally decorated with "W Strong" stickers. The feds had to strain mightily at the jury pool to get jurors willing to consider the death penalty -- sentiment in Massachusetts was 2:1 in favor of having Tsarnaev rot in prison.

Insofar as the Tsarnaevs had a political goal, I don't think they achieved it.

The Boston maraton bombing cost a fuck ton to clean up and deal with too - many thousand times as much as the enemy used (what 100 dollars worth of cooking ware?).

That is the problem with terrorism.

> 9/11 certainly was pretty unusual, but packing a suitcase with explosives and nails and hauling it into a crowd of civilians is the sort of thing that happens fairly regularly in some parts of the world.

Sure, but the places where it happens anything that could even remotely be described as fairly regularly in parts of the world where the social and economic conditions and legitimate political outlets for dissatisfaction with those conditions are all vastly different than in the part of the world that has the TSA doing screening at airports, i.e., the US.

While it has happened at times in the US (e.g., Boston Marathon), it doesn't happen enough that the expected number of times it would be expected to have happened in airport lines if such events were even distributed among similarly-sized crowds would be anywhere close to 1.

I think it hasn't happened yet because there are very few people who actually WANT to do that. The TSA and other security agencies would have you believe that the world is full of mass murderers. Based on the evidence, I'd say that's not true.

Japan got 4,000 people to Kamikaze during WWII. Taliban and Alqaeda were doing over 200 suicide bombings a year for a while.

So while clearly its not full of mass murderers, there are enough to cause chaos.

>If somebody wants to kill air travelers, TSA screening checkpoint line is the most attractive target.

My other favorite example is that in a lot of buildings, including school buildings, the standard fire drill AND bomb evacuation drill has everyone move outside, often into a single area which is far less controlled than the building being evacuated.

The attackers objective is not blowing up a crowd of people.

Their objective is a hijacked airplane; a dangerous weapon that can be used to attack strategic targets like the White House.

> ...a dangerous weapon that can be used to attack strategic targets...

Do you honestly believe that Air Force hardware won't be used to destroy a hijacked passenger jet that appears to be in service as a weapon? I don't.

Assuming they could get one there in time, no I wouldn't doubt it. Not sure how deliberately murdering hostages is constitutional but then neither is most of what the government is doing.

How many jets patrol the US mainland now? What is their response time?

I am assuming the white house has AA, but what about congress?

If required, the murder of innocents strapped to or contained within a weapon of war is totally legal. It has been legal for hundreds of years.

I can't speak authoritatively, but jet response time to a breach of a sensitive no-fly zone is in the single-digit minute range. [0] I would be shocked if every major government facility wasn't surrounded by a no-fly bubble. I would be surprised if we didn't have the capability to send fighters to anywhere in the CONUS within ten minutes.

[0] Quite some time ago, I was living near Tacoma, WA when the POTUS was visiting. There was concern that an aircraft was going to enter the temporary no-fly zone around the POTUS, so a couple of jets from the nearby base were scrambled and cleared to go supersonic -maybe- 1,000 feet off the deck. The din and air pressure change was incredible; it was if a tremendously large bomb had gone off some distance away.

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