Liquid explosives - the last stand of airport security.

[Taxloss]

This latest security panic, over the "liquid explosive plot", represents the last, dying gasp of airport security as we know it.

Airport security has always been somewhat ineffective. The reason you're asked if you packed yur bag yourself is because a terrorist smuggled a bomb onto an aircraft by slipping it into his girlfriend's bag. The reason you're not allowed to carry anything sharp is because 3000 people were killed by terrorists carrying boxcutters*. The same is true of pretty much every aspect of existing procedures - they were introduced AFTER a successful attack. Many of them are government responses not to the bolting of a horse, but for the public needing to hear a stable door slam shut.

But let's be completely clear about something - if we can't keep weapons out of prisons, and we can't, then we have no hope in hell of keeping them off planes.

And so we reach what might be considered the "bottom line" of airport security.

Before you read on, a warning: there is no nice way of saying this.

Terrorists will, sooner or later, start sticking weapons up their rear ends, and getting them onto planes that way.

And there is, quite simply, no way that can be defended against. Or rather, there IS, but not without HUGELY reducing the appeal of air travel, and damaging the world economy into the bargain. Would you still be happy to fly if there was a 10% chance of an anal examination involved?

The racist part of the right wing has a simple answer to this: profiling. Profiling would be as ineffective as anything else - terror groups would simply recruit outside the profile. This already happens - men were more likely to be stopped at checkpoints in Israel/Palestine, so the bombers started recruiting women as well.

In short, if terrorists want to use planes as missiles - and it's a very cost-effective way of causing death and mayhem on a huge scale - they will continue to do so.

What can be done about terror in the air, then? Uncovering plots before they reach the airport is a good start, as is having a long, hard look at foreign policy and energy policy (which are increasingly the same thing).

But another way of dealing with this is to teach the public to take an informed approach to risk. Not fatalism - but government in a mature, calm manner.

How likely is that? In present circumstances, not very. But it is something we must remember, and we must come to expect and demand from our politicians. I do not want to be frightened by you - treat me like an adult, don't try to scare me.

* IMHO. Please let's not turn this into another discussion of the relative merits of MIHOP.

[serryjw]

1. Agree 100%

we can never defeat the threat by bombing the shit out of countries. Think about how many enemies we have made in Lebanon when a young child sees his family and city destroyed.


When are terrorist going to put liquid explosives in electronic equipment? Does security verify the computer works ?

[longship]

2. The "terrists" are laughing their heads off.

They didn't even need to execute any plot. All they had to do is make a plot and the whole western world freaked out and slapped more restrictions on their people.

My wife thinks these new restrictions are great because she can fly safer. Of course, this is not only absurd, it's not even close to true. I pointed out to her that not one plot has been foiled by all these restrictions. Every single terrorist plot discovered since 2001 has been exposed by interdicting people, money, communications and not shampoo, not shoes, not boxcutters. The sole thing that these restrictions have accomplished is to make flying less comfortable, more of a hassle, and less free.

The terrorists love this shit. They are making up even more fake plots that they can have the western security agencies expose so that we can have even more hassle and even fewer freedoms while we travel. They are having a good time with this all at our expense.

If I were the terrorists, I'd next hatch a plot that involves exploding diapers. That would really scare the shit out of people and would really make travelling a hassle. It wouldn't even have to be true, just be plausible enough to make everybody react. The west is running around like Chicken Little screeching, "The terrists are after me. The terrists are after me!"

Maybe the terrorists do hate us for our freedoms. And just maybe they are deliberately hatching plots to force us to restrict those freedoms.

When are people going to figure this out?

[Taxloss]

3. Absolutely - they've won right now.

We're terrified. And our governments are either too clueless to know how to deal with that, or - scarily - like it that way.

Either way, we need better governments.