From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Aug 21 2002 - 16:45:46 MDT
--- Harvey Newstrom <mail@HarveyNewstrom.com> wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, August 20, 2002, at 08:35 pm, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> > El Al's most effective procedure we do not, and will not, put into
> > place: that is the interview of every passenger by a skeptical
> security
> > professional who is not paid by the airlines and cannot be fired or
> > transfered for rejecting 'too many' passengers from the flight
> > manifest.
>
> I have no dispute with this procedure, however my personal favorite
> security method is simply locking the cabin door. El Al has their
> pilots enter through a separate door. During flight, there is no
> entry into the cockpit under any circumstances.
> Hijackers can take over, bomb
> the plane, kill all the passengers or do anything else they want, but
> there is no way for them to take over the aircraft. This seems
> simple and direct, and would limit the scope of a hijacking.
C'mon Harvey, you are brighter than this. Today's planes are all fly by
wire. An Al Qaeda crew trained with A&P licenses and certifications on
the aircraft systems (as well as at least one Comp Sci degree) flown
could easily splice the cockpit out of the control circuit and fly the
plane from the passenger compartment with a laptop, an interface box,
and a freely available flight control software package ( I have several
on my various computers).
The wire harnesses generally travel along the dorsal spine of the
aircraft, above the passenger compartment, or else along the walls of
the cargo compartment, depending on the plane.
In such a case pilots, once they lock themselves in the cockpit, have
taken themselves out of the equation. They can land the plane, and
negotiators show up an hour later, just in time to watch the plane take
off again under the control of the hijackers flying by laptop.
>
> >> 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.
> >
> > This is also inaccurate.
> [Excellent analysis of domestic versus foreign plane usage snipped
> here....]
>
> Good explanation, Mike. But actually, I was referring to all the
> fears of suitcase nukes and biowarfare devices. So far, all the
> evidence says they don't have these. Their attempts and
> experiments have been quite
> limited compared to 9/11. They actually tried to use cyanide in the
> earlier WTC bombings, and we didn't notice it at first.
> The poison gas failed to be useful. Bioweapons are more difficult to
> make and deploy than they first appear. Mundane weapons like guns
> and airplanes are still the primary threat.
The cyanide scare at WTC I was a non-reality. Turns out cyanide is
produced by burning some plastics, especially those commonly used in
auto interiors. Quite a few autos toasted in the garage where the bomb
went off.
>
> >> 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.
> >
> > No, we shouldn't. Restoring the ability of law abiding Americans to
> > exercise their constitutional rights while onboard aircraft would
> go a
> > long way to preventing future hijackings.
>
> I'm not so sure about this, but then I don't tend to have the faith
> in guns that others seem to have. I would be worried about false
> alarms. How many false alarms have we had lately, where people
> thought they saw a terrorist and later it turned out to be wrong?
> My fear would be that armed passengers would open fire and find
> out they were wrong after someone was dead.
Rules of engagement are used in everyday concealed carry practices that
are well recognised in the courts, by law enforcement, and taught in
safety courses, and only need to be more well publicized like other
safety rules are. I would imagine that publicizing said rules would
themselves go a long way to preventing hijackings. Imagine getting on
an airline skyway where a sign lays out the rules for those carrying
concealed. I'd bet such signs would send al Qaeda dirtballs crying to
their mamas.
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