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The interesting part to me is that the mode of attack for 9/11 can't easily be repeated. It depended on passengers assuming the plane was being hijacked, and t
by tyingq 5y ago
The interesting part to me is that the mode of attack for 9/11 can't easily be repeated. It depended on passengers assuming the plane was being hijacked, and that they would eventually be released.
That stopped working on the 3rd (edit: 4th) plane. I don't see how it would work again. Passengers now default to assuming there's no path to live other than fighting back.
Meaning many of the measures we still take aren't really preventing anything. I do understand this doesn't apply to the shoes (shoe bomber), but that's just one of many things we've put in place.
- antihero 5y agoAny attempt at this, the terrorists will have a game plan of how to convince people on the flight to chill out, that they have no mal-intent towards the passengers, etc etc. I mean it might not work, but I reckon they'd put on a really good act and manipulate people heavily into making it feel like they are actually quite safe and it would be a poor decision to try and overrun them.
- BoHerfIIIJrEsq 5y ago> how to convince people on the flight to chill out My sense is that there is nothing they could say. Hijack a plane, a bunch of men are going to attack you. That's it.
- ansible 5y agoYes, I'd be someone who jumps up to rush the hijackers. Because I'd have nothing to lose. And if all I do is soak up some damage and die, it may give others behind me a chance. I'm not especially brave or fearless or anything. But if you back me into a corner with no way to survive, then I'll fight back like a caged, starving rat.
- Stevvo 5y agoIt depends on the social dynamic of the group; for example I don't expect a plane full of mainland Chinese passengers would attack a terrorist.
- barbazoo 5y agoPeople freaking out and being aggressive on planes about much less these days...
- ZanyProgrammer 5y agoAnd yet what you’re describing has never happened to the best of my knowledge (at least in the west).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- adriancr 5y agoHow would they convince pilots to open the door to let them hijack plane?
- kiba 5y agoSo any future attempt requires higher level of competence to pull it off, which means it's probably very unlikely that such an attack will ever happen again. If we want to prevent hijacking of planes for terrorism purpose, then we'll need to go deeper and fix the root cause of extremism which required tons of focused effort, probably tackling seemly intractable problems. Not spend billions upon billions more on likely ineffectual screening procedure and tools to satisfy the surveillance state.
- tyingq 5y agoI don't see any situation where that works. The only variation I can think of that might work is enough hijackers to control the passengers, which seems unlikely outside of a lightly booked flight or small plane.
- the_snooze 5y agoAbsolutely. It's not a 9/11-style attack we need to be worried about. No one will let a plane get commandeered ever again. The 9/11 terrorists took advantage of the "comply with the hijackers" policy in place at the time. That opportunity ended the moment the second plane hit the towers. The real threat is lone wolf random attacks on the general public like the DC sniper. That's a very low-cost high-impact attack that paralyzed an entire metro region for nearly a month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C._sniper_attacks
- baktubi 5y agoI think the nation should make military training/civil service mandatory. The reality is that random attacks will happen in random places and everyone needs to be equipped to handle accordingly. Basic combat training and paramedic abilities, disaster recovery and such associated procedures. This would create a tighter bond between citizens and improve communities ability to look after one-another. If everyone handles those situations steadfastly, terror won’t work. Another benefit is less reliance on national guard to handle climate crisis like hurricanes, fires, and floods.
- baybal2 5y agoFunny fact is that conscription largely lowers the risk of prolonged civil wars, Syrian being one fat exception.
- k7sune 5y agoIt also makes citizens more aware of the cost of war. Had conscription use up so much time of a citizen’s prime years, I think it would be more popular.
- pharmakom 5y agoWouldnt that also equip many attackers with better skills?
- 5y ago
- adriancr 5y agoCockpits are now locked by default, so there's no terrorist getting in there anymore, they can threaten anything, all it would do is divert to closest landing spot.
- bambax 5y agoYes, and this is why crazy pilots suffering from depression can bury their planes in the ground and nobody can do anything about it. 200 people lost their life in the crash of Germanwings 9525 on March 24, 2015, but this is not classified as a terrorist attack so it doesn't really count for anything. However, it is the direct consequence of the so-called security procedures implemented the world over; those 200 people are victims of "security".
- ridaj 5y agoSource? This is at best an indirect consequence EDIT post downvotes: what I mean is that even without a lock on the cockpit to prevent their copilot from entering, it seems difficult to prevent a determined pilot from crashing a plane.
- tyingq 5y agoIt's a pretty well known event. The copilot locked the captain out and used the purposefully designed system to also disable the cockpit entry code. Of course the primary cause wasn't the security setup, but it did contribute to the event. "The captain had a code to unlock the door, but the lock's code panel could be disabled from the cockpit controls...The captain then tried to break down the door, but like most cockpit doors made after the September 11 attacks, it had been reinforced to prevent intrusion." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525
- filleokus 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525#Cause_of_crash https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanwings_Flight_9525#Cause_... > Robin said that when the captain left the cockpit, possibly to use the toilet, Lubitz locked the door, preventing anyone from entering. The captain had a code to unlock the door, but the lock's code panel could be disabled from the cockpit controls. The captain requested re-entry using the intercom; he knocked and then banged on the door, but received no response. The captain then tried to break down the door, but like most cockpit doors made after the September 11 attacks, it had been reinforced to prevent intrusion. This seems like a pretty direct consequence to me. Similar to how an ultra isloated air-gapped environment with only one-way networking[0] would mean that the ops people couldn't easily stop e.g an ransomware attack in its tracks when detected. It's a cost/consequence of having the isolated network in the first place. (If there was some magic code that always opened the cockpit door, then that could be coerced out of someone, yielding the system almost pointless) [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidirectional_network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidirectional_network
- baybal2 5y agoIt makes no sense anyways. If it's alleged el qaeda, and their "billions of dollars in funding" they would've just raised an army, and razed the place. If someone needs on a principle to have the plane shot out of the sky, there are way dumber, and more sure ways to do that than trying to get a bomber on board.
- ben_w 5y agoAl Qaeda was in the middle of losing Afghanistan when the shoe thing happened, it’s not entirely implausible they’d tell some random person to try something dumb.
- k__ 5y agoTo be fair, while not as big as flying a plane into the WTC, blowing one up would still be possible.
- _ph_ 5y agoYes, but that has rarely happened in history. And to prevent that, we do scan the luggage and make sure that there is no unidentified luggage on the plane.
- Godel_unicode 5y agoThe shoe scanning is an extension of that, based off of the real threat that someone will pack shoes with explosives. The only reason it didn't work the last time it was tried was that the bomber stayed in their seat as opposed to e.g. using the toilet.
- sovnade 5y agoThe passengers re-taking the third plane was a stroke of luck. That flight was actually delayed long enough that passengers were making phone calls to friends and family and heard that the first plane (or two) had already crashed, so they knew what was happening. That's when they decided to storm the cockpit. Had they not been delayed, they probably wouldn't have known and not retaken the plane. edit: but agreed - point being we know now if a plane is hijacked, there's very little chance of it coming down peacefully.
- plainnoodles 5y agoI think that's their point, though. When people know their only option is to storm the hijackers, they do.
- jkestner 5y ago9/11 was such a singular event for Americans that future terrorists don’t have to kill people to be successful, if the goal is to create enmity and get the US to waste billions of dollars. Just an occasional scare will set us off again.
- germinalphrase 5y agoBillions? We’ve been spending billions per month for twenty years.
- voxl 5y agoYou act as if Afghanistan and Iraq are very happy to have been invaded and considered it a mission-accomplished. If the objective of terror is enrage your adversary then by all means, but the U.S. will only be more and more heartless and effective at those attacks continue.
- Bud 5y agoIt also depended on unlocked cockpit doors, which are no longer a thing. The shoe bomber FAILED because it's pretty fucking obvious if someone is trying to light a shoe on fire. We don't need the security theater of taking our shoes off. It needs to stop.
- Godel_unicode 5y agoUntil that person goes into the bathroom...? This kind of argument is honestly a big part of why the theater is still in place. People keep making poorly thought through arguments about why we don't need it. Those arguments are inevitably shot down, and everyone remembers that rather than thinking about it for themselves.
- moss2 5y agoWishful thinking. Even if passengers assumed there's not path to survive other than fight -- and you're not in a position to say that they assume this -- most people will not do anything about the hijack anyway.
- monkeynotes 5y agoIt doesn't take 'most' passengers to overpower some people. All it takes is one hero to move and others will pile on, just one person to break the bystander effect. This is scientifically proven with crowd modelling.
- ceejayoz 5y ago> most people will not do anything about the hijack anyway You don't need most. Flight 93 demonstrates that the "sit down and be quiet while the hostage negotiators work" approach is dead for a while.
- jcranmer 5y agoFlight 93 resulted in a passenger revolt that prevented the plane from reaching its intended target. The underwear bomber was tackled and subdued by fellow passengers.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- titzer 5y ago> That stopped working on the 3rd plane. 4th plane. The third plane hit the Pentagon.
- tyingq 5y agoIt does seem like that's the right numbering, thanks. I said "3rd" because the flight was hijacked around 9:30am EST. And I assume what they heard was news of the first two planes, rather than the one that hit the Pentagon.
- jh0486 5y agoPutting the fate of our airline safety to the collective bravery of humanity seems like a bad idea to me. If I'm getting on a plane, I have no problems taking my shoes off and being scanned to have a better chance of a bad scenario not happening.
- Scoundreller 5y agoHow many hours of security would you be comfortable with? At some point, the cost-benefit ratio falls apart.
- mellavora 5y agoMight not be preventing anything, but they sure are making a lot of money for some people.