From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Sun Aug 18 2002 - 21:56:59 MDT
On Sunday, August 18, 2002, at 08:01 pm, Brian Atkins wrote:
> At this point the various governments and corporations still haven't
> figured out how to perfect a multilayered defense against 40 year old
> offensive weapons (jet passenger planes),
Actually, this is not quite correct. Many of the assumptions floating
around since 9/11 are not quite accurate.
1. We can prevent these types of hijackings. El Al does it all the
time. We just never bothered to do this in the U.S. because we didn't
think it was necessary.
2. The airport security systems didn't fail. They prevented people from
bringing guns onto the plain. The hijackers had to resort to using
box-cutters which were allowed under the rules. The rules worked as
desired. We just need to adjust our our rules to block other dangerous
weapons, such as blades, as well.
3. The hijackers do not have weapons of mass destruction (yet). They
had to resort to using our own airplanes as weapons because they didn't
have any of their own. As far as we can tell, they have been unable to
get their hands on these weapons.
In other words, many of our security procedures work just fine. It is
not true that we are incapable of defending ourselves. We just haven't
really tried before. Now that we know security is imperative, we can
apply what we know in ways we have never tried before. We shouldn't
have to reinvent everything from scratch.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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