The New Air Transport Security
Airport security has officially gone too far. Your options today: Naked scanners or way too intrusive groping.
Do you go through intense screening when parking a large van inside a downtown mall with tens of thousands of shoppers?
Time to think different. Here are my suggested new lines of defence against airplane hijacking/explosion:
1) Federal intelligence - If a potential terrorist already made it into the airport with explosives, we've already lost. Bomb building materials cannot be acquired without leaving a trail. It's up to government intelligence to catch on to would be terrorists, whether they plan to blow up a plane or Christmas shoppers.
2) Random interviewers when you walk into the airport - Imagine an open space airport where you can walk anywhere, right up to your gate without going through security lines. Instead, security professionals trained to spot nervous or suspicious passengers conduct random walk up interviews. Just a few questions need to be asked to determine if somebody has malicious or at least suspicious intentions. Random but less frequent hand luggage checks would further worsen the odds against a person getting by with explosives or other illicit objects/substances on to a plane.
3) No cockpit open door policy - Under absolutely no circumstances, including threat of harming passengers (with a gun or a sharp object) would the pilots open the door. Better still: build airplanes with no door at all from the cabin to the cockpit. Pilots enter and exit through a door directly out of the plane. Modify airport bridges to fit both doors. This eliminates the major motivator for a terrorist: taking control of a plane to use as a weapon or to threaten passengers for ransom. The worst that could be done is the offender harming a few passengers. He can do the same thing on a bus or on the street and will face the law just like any other criminal.
4) Last line of defence: Armed air marshals on every flight - Transfer the major security from airports to inside the plane. One or two trained air marshals would be enough of a deterrent for potential minor offenders to think twice about pulling a weapon inside a plane. Big time terrorists might not be deterred but they would be killed on the spot.
Checked in luggage would still be screened without inconveniencing passengers.
The way things stand now, the terrorists have won. They've terrorized us and changed our way of living. The above measures would be just as efficient (if not more so) as having a stranger run their hands over your body or see you naked in a scanner.
Do you go through intense screening when parking a large van inside a downtown mall with tens of thousands of shoppers?
Time to think different. Here are my suggested new lines of defence against airplane hijacking/explosion:
1) Federal intelligence - If a potential terrorist already made it into the airport with explosives, we've already lost. Bomb building materials cannot be acquired without leaving a trail. It's up to government intelligence to catch on to would be terrorists, whether they plan to blow up a plane or Christmas shoppers.
2) Random interviewers when you walk into the airport - Imagine an open space airport where you can walk anywhere, right up to your gate without going through security lines. Instead, security professionals trained to spot nervous or suspicious passengers conduct random walk up interviews. Just a few questions need to be asked to determine if somebody has malicious or at least suspicious intentions. Random but less frequent hand luggage checks would further worsen the odds against a person getting by with explosives or other illicit objects/substances on to a plane.
3) No cockpit open door policy - Under absolutely no circumstances, including threat of harming passengers (with a gun or a sharp object) would the pilots open the door. Better still: build airplanes with no door at all from the cabin to the cockpit. Pilots enter and exit through a door directly out of the plane. Modify airport bridges to fit both doors. This eliminates the major motivator for a terrorist: taking control of a plane to use as a weapon or to threaten passengers for ransom. The worst that could be done is the offender harming a few passengers. He can do the same thing on a bus or on the street and will face the law just like any other criminal.
4) Last line of defence: Armed air marshals on every flight - Transfer the major security from airports to inside the plane. One or two trained air marshals would be enough of a deterrent for potential minor offenders to think twice about pulling a weapon inside a plane. Big time terrorists might not be deterred but they would be killed on the spot.
Checked in luggage would still be screened without inconveniencing passengers.
The way things stand now, the terrorists have won. They've terrorized us and changed our way of living. The above measures would be just as efficient (if not more so) as having a stranger run their hands over your body or see you naked in a scanner.
posted by iPedro at 2:32 PM
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