[extropy-chat] Alert for Suspicious Farmers' Almanacs

[Charlie Stross]

On 1 Jan 2004, at 00:40, Samantha Atkins wrote:

>> You bet. Which is why the latest news in the UK is that BALPA (the
>> British Air Line Pilots' Association) is telling their members that
>> they don't need to fly if they believe there's an armed stranger on
>> their flight.
> I would give a lot to have had an armed and trained person, marshall 
> or civilian, on the planes involved in 9/11.   The dangers listed 
> above are small relative to the actual tragedy that resulted at least 
> in part from having no such person on board.

News update: BALPA apparently reached an agreement with at least one 
British airline. The arrangement is simple: the identity, armament, and 
seat location of the sky marshall is known to the captain (who may at 
their discretion inform other crew members), the captain and the sky 
marshall discuss in advance how they're going to work together, and the 
sky marshall acts under the captain's orders and authority at all times 
*except* when a hijacking is in progress.

What worries me isn't the possibility of sky marshalls on board planes 
but the fact that BALPA had to kick up a fuss to get these arrangements 
agreed. (Because the alternative -- sky marshalls not talking to the 
air crew, unidentified folks waving guns around on airliners, and so on 
-- doesn't bear thinking about. In the worst case we get hijackers 
masquerading as sky marshalls and the passengers and crew *believing* 
them, up until the last minute. Right?)

>> BALPA want attention focussed instead on heightening security checks
>> before passengers board the aircraft, and point to the poor quality of
>> many security staff as the biggest problem. Unfortunately it costs a
>> *LOT* more to have well-paid, professional, highly-trained airport
>> security staff than minimum wage drones plus one or two sky marshalls.
>>
>
> And what if they miss something?  Are the passengers and the potential 
> direct and secondary victims on the ground to have no additional 
> security?  How is this reasonable?   How does the cost of a trained 
> security on planes compare to the staggering and still growing costs 
> of a single incident like 9/11?

A little thought-experiment for you: how many hijackings have taken 
place since 9/11? Compared to hijackings before 9/11? And if you 
thought a lunatic on your flight was about to try to hijack it, what 
would you do (before and after)?

As I believe Bruce Schneier pointed out, 9/11 was made possible by a 
security design flaw: the general assumption that hijackers weren't 
suicidal. It was a self-correcting problem -- corrected within an hour 
of the first hijackings, as the fate of Flight 93 demonstrates. Since 
9/11, everyone's been so jumpy that at the first sign of trouble cabin 
crew *and* passengers have piled on the trouble-maker.

(Here's a tentative answer to my earlier question: I'm about as 
non-violent as folks come. I do *not* get into or start fights. I don't 
own a gun or a knife or know how to use either or have any self-defense 
training. But if I thought some guy on my flight was going to march up 
to the flight deck and hijack the plane, he'd literally have to go 
through my dead body to get there -- because while I *might* survive a 
fight with an armed hijacker I *wouldn't* survive a 
terrorist-controlled flight into terrain. How about you?)

I think we have far more to worry about from other directions. Bombs in 
unscreened hold baggage, hijackers mailing themselves via FedEx to get 
aboard a freighter aircraft, nut-jobs under the final-approach flight 
line at a major airport with an SA-16, that sort of thing.


-- Charlie