The Guardian reports today on an announcement from Tom Ridge, to the effect that a quick fix has been put in place by the US government to allow low risk passengers to get on and off their airplane’s more quickly:
Acknowledging that travellers resented the stringent security checks at US airports, he announced that “low risk” flyers to John F Kennedy New York would be allowed to register their fingerprints and other biometric details so that they could avoid the long queues at Schiphol by stopping at a fast check kiosk.
The Guardian complains only about how it is Schiphol that is getting the benefit of the new arrangements, rather than Heathrow, making the story a hook for another cheap gibe about American geography knowledge.
This is a perfect example of the way the world now works. This register is voluntary, but the process is now well in hand to enable the authorities everywhere in due course to demand such information from everyone, as a condition of international travel. How long before it starts being claimed that an unwillingness to register is an admission that one is a high risk flyer?
If you doubt this, read the rest of the story:
He said the system was based on that used for frequent flyers on US domestic flights.
He told Associated Press in Amsterdam: “The main advantage to the United States will come if this program successfully and efficiently moves traffic through and other countries say: ‘We ought to apply this on a much broader basis.'”
Precisely. We are rapidly entering a world in which the world’s various Big Brothers know our every move. Our best hope will be that, on the whole, Big Brother does not care.
I have been saying for some time now that the US is not exactly lagging behind in the implementation of intrusive measures like this, only to be pooh-poohed by those who say this will not happen in America (usually adding that the existence of an armed population will make it impossible).
I hate to say “I told you so,” but…
EG
If, as seems inevitable, our governments will force on us greater regulation and surveillance, then other than responding with demonstrations what we really need is a big organised push for more and far better mechanisms of holding the government to account. The new freedom of information act is a joke, as has been mentioned here before. And I have little time for the media feeding frenzy which regularly (and ever more frequently in Blair’s time) consumes another high profile minister – it is not directed in accordance with a concern for civil liberties. A proper freedom of information act would be one thing – and a new principle of political representation (i.e. of electing MPs) would be another.
Let’s face it – we live in a dangerous world. Much more dangerous than a hundred years ago. That is because the nuts that allways existed, now have new technology that enables them to commit mass murder very easily.
The security bodies of the governments, whose task is to protect the safety of the citizens, have to do what they can, and what it takes, to accomplish the task. Protecting people against the suicidal nuts isn’t easy !
I’m willing to submit, I’m glad to submit to an intrusive body search and bag search upon boarding a plane if that improves my chances of not being blown up in midflight. If submitting fingerprins will improve safety and expedite boarding, I’m willing to do that too.
Those who are not willing should be allowed to abstain from flying, or, to seek a flight company whose policy is that passenger privacy concerns are more important that passenger security. I would not wish to use such a company.
Jacob,
A hundred years ago the world was 9 years from world war 1 which killed 15 million people, most of the countries in Europe were dictatorships, the Japanese and Russians were at war, Sinn Fein was founded, and the winter palace in Russia was stormed by communists as a precursor to the beginings of death march to communism.
Still going to be saying this in 2040, or will you be talking about 200 years ago?
Going back to the main point, as a tourist when you get to America, you are fingerprinted and photographed anyway, it’s just one more goose step in Bush’s march to freedom.
Heathrow has a fast track arrivals line for Business and First class travellers which avoids a lot of queues. There used to be a similar system pre-911 at the larger US airports where regular (5 times a year+) travellers could have their fingerprints on record and would have a way of avoiding the standard queues.
I mostly fly into Seattle where only one international flight arrives at a time and there’s time to clear back logs between the arrivals. I’ve waiting 2 hours at SFO in the past and that was pre-VISIT.
Jacob,
Well, that’s the problem: there’s an important if in that sentence. And nobody has ever shown evidence that there is any connection between safety and identification.
But assuming it does work, are you also willing to submit to body searches and fingerprinting at shopping malls, schools, random points driving, in churches, and entering your neighborhood and workplace? Because there’s no hard and fast Terrorist Rule that says they have to concentrate on planes.
The “cheap gibe about American geography knowledge” mentioned above only serves to make the article’s author look foolish, as is often the case.
Jacob
These measures would not have prevented 9/11. Most of the 9/11 hijackes were in the US perfectly legally. Mohammed Atta bought a ticket, Mohammed Atta checked in, Mohammed Atta cleared security and Mohammed Atta boarded without any alarm bells ringing because Mohammed Atta wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary for something residing legally in the US. If these security checks were in place that morning Mohammed Atta still would have been on that plane.
For some an intrusive body might ad a frisson of excitement of a holiday,however they might be bending over for nothing
Pete_London:
What would have prevented 9/11 would have been a locked door to the cockpit, and armed pilots. Very easily implemented and tried measures. Also armed guards on flights.
But the next catastrophe is never identical to the last one. I beleive that extensive searches are needed to prevent explosives to be smuggled into planes.
Fiona
” are you also willing to submit to body searches and fingerprinting at shopping malls….”
A am already submitting to body searches and car trunk inspections at shopping malls. That’s the grim reality we live in. I prefer it weren’t so but it is.
Della,
“Much more dangerous than a hundred years ago.”
Excellent point you made. The last century was the most horrible in human history, by far, no doubt about that.
Let’s hope the next one isn’t worse, or isn’t a quarter as bad as the last one.
Let’s hope that this terrorist-suicider-Islamist nuts phenomenon fizzels out over the next couple of decades, and does not drag the world into a 20tieth century kind first class catastrophe. Though – who knows ?
What was lacking a hundred years ago was the interconnected world, the airplanes, missiles, nukes. That’s what makes terrorism extremely dangerous today.
Locked cabin doors and armed pilots would have resulted in the passengers being slaughtered,what then?
A ring charge on the cabin door could blow it open without depressurising the aircraft whan next?
Do you really know what an “intrusive body search” is,in those circumstances only fanatics would fly.
Link above posting is courtesy Kim Du Toit
If there is going to be a 20th century style big death it will be caused by the actions of some goverment or other with too much power and murder in mind.
Terrorists, if they are involved at all, are likley to only be involved tangentially and are unlikley to cause very many casualies in comparison.
Della,
Terrorists don’t exist in the void. The are sponsored and protected by governments, which is why they can trigger a catastrophe. Just imagine what may happen if some nuke, smuggled by terrorists goes off in some US city. Whom will the US blame, and what will it do ? i.e. – whom will it nuke in retailation ?
“Terrorists… are likley to only be involved tangentially ”
No, they are likely to be involved crucially.
Peter,
“Locked cabin doors and armed pilots would have resulted in the passengers being slaughtered,what then?”
… would have resulted in SOME passengers being slaughtered before the rest managed to subdue the terrorists.
“A ring charge on the cabin door could blow it open …”
That’s why it is important to have good searches – so explosives don’t get into a plane.
There is no doubt in my mind that locked cockpit doors and armed pilots would have prevented 9/11. Of course, there are a million other ways by which determined suicide terrorists could cause great harm.
Peter,
“Locked cabin doors and armed pilots would have resulted in the passengers being slaughtered,what then?”
… would have resulted in SOME passengers being slaughtered before the rest managed to subdue the terrorists.
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You do not know how many would be killed nor if there would be those on the flight who could subdue the terrorists.
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“A ring charge on the cabin door could blow it open …”
That’s why it is important to have good searches – so explosives don’t get into a plane.
———————————————————————
The explosives could already be on the plane,there are explosives that do not show up on detectors,but you cannot make searches that thorough, that quick and efficient so that air travel does not grind to a halt.If drugs can be smuggled through so can plastic explosive
I repeat a full cavity search is not acceptable to the majority of passengers,ask your granny.
——————————————————————-
There is no doubt in my mind that locked cockpit doors and armed pilots would have prevented 9/11.
You are saying in effect that the pilots will sit it out whilst his charges are slaughtered,how many airlines will accept the responsibility for that?
Basically you don’t know and as the bard says are “Just making shit up”
Of course, there are a million other ways by which determined suicide terrorists could cause great harm.
So they will just shift to one of those having paralysed the aviation industry.
Jacob,
This bothers me. People keep trying to frightening us with the terrorist supermen and their imaginary weapons of unimaginable power and I ain’t buying it.
Pretty much every terrorist attack is fairly petty. It’s never the terrorist superman with a nuke, it’s a guy with a few kgs of explosive. It’s never the terrorist superman with smallpox, it’s the guy with an RPG. It’s never the terrorist superman with the dirty bomb it’s the guy with the box knife. Terrorists just seem to have the same sort of weapons a petty criminal could get hold of and it’s just not that frightening.
Sorry about the dodgy quoting.
Della – Careful, Michael Moore is going to sick his team of lawyers onto you for plagiarism. Have you forgotten the tiny little altercation in Afghanistan? This was not the irrational lashing out that you seem to think is the hallmark of American “hard power”. Toppling the Taliban made the terrorists’ war against us infidels that much harder to wage – it was the first decisive, effective victory in the war on terror. And it’s now possible to be cautiously optimistic about that perennial basketcase, Afghanistan. Which is saying a lot when you consider its recent history. Sure, t’would be nice to catch Osama, but do you really think the war on terror would end if he was removed? When al-Qaeda folds (and I think it probably will) this struggle won’t end – the fact that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 is irrelevant. Amongst other good reasons for turfing the monster, removing Saddam has taken a potentially pivotal figure for those who fight us out of the game. Much is said about al-Qaeda’s ideological beef with Saddam. You don’t think that their common enemy would sooner or later force them into bed? I do.
Also, why do you think a nuke going off in an American city is so “ridiculously unlikely”?
Jacob,
Maybe where you live you get searched at shopping malls, but that situation is neither inevitable nor something one should accept on a permanent basis.
Nobody wants to go through life being treated like a prisoner at a minimum security institution, and there are other, better solutions.
I have to agree with Della.
Although the principle of a nuclear weapon is simple, the engineering involved in making one is not trivial. The conventional explosive alone has to be just right, it has to be very carefully shaped and the design process for this alone is complex even for the simplest “gun” type uranium bomb. If it is not just right, all you will get is a small explosion and few chunks of fissile material – bad enough, but not that hard to clean up. Likely target countries have nuclear weapons, and can be reasonably supposed to have the skills and kit to clean up in such an event.
As well as that, you need initiators, detonators and of course fissile material. The detonators are a bit more sophisticated than used for a conventional bomb. Initiators are not used for anything else in the world. Fissile material is hard to get a hold of, despite the lurid stories of missing Soviet bombs, etc. Don’t you think that if the stories of the Soviet suitcase bombs and whatnot were true then several states would have acquired them even if terrorists had not? There seems no evidence that this has happened. Nuclear devices also have a definite shelf-life, as the radiation degrades the other materials making up the bomb.
Even if you do get a hold of enough uranium (or less plausibly plutonium), it has to be sufficiently pure and it has to be very accurately machined – what shape works in one bomb design won’t work in another.
Even if all of this did happen, given a little time the radio signature of the fallout enables you to determine where the fissile material came from and so the state responsible for the stuff in the first place could be indentified fairly quickly and presumably suffer retaliation of some sort.
All in all, I think the likelihood of a nuclear device being successfully used by a terrorist organisation is incredibly small. Al Qaeda has considerable cash at its disposal and I am quite sure that if they could have done something like this they would have by now. The fact that it has not happened tends to suggest that it’s not really feasible.
What is more likely, however, is a dirty bomb, but even then similar considerations apply to acquiring the radioactive material. The stuff you can get without undue difficulty is not especially harmful and would in any case be widely dispersed by the explosion. Even uranium is not that all that dangerous in such a dispersed form, and of course it is not excessively difficult to clean up.
EG
If one were a terrorist one would surely make a lot of effort to get operative on the “trusted passenger” list.
None of this has much to do with security. The securocrats do it because they can, because it gives them lots of wizzy machines, important work and the capacity to bully ordinary people without resistance. It is a race for the appurtenances of power and status and the fixing of rank and privilege to identity and conformity. It is no different in fundamental motivation or symbolic conduct of prison hierarchies (cf. the common emphasis on physical humiliation). Obtaining the submission of others proves one’s moral worth in this ethos.
Liberal Western civilisation’s peculiar genius was the universalisation of individual value. The idea that the powerful have a duty to act with civility to the powerless, and the allied one that justice is no respecter of persons, are slipping away.
Euan – When I said ‘nukes’ I was including ‘dirty’ bombs. I believe deployment of one of these is not all that remote. I’m sure you know more than I about the sort of damage they wreak (and the chaos they cause) so I won’t go into specifics. I agree that the development programme that culminates in the construction of a conventional nuclear weapon is generally so expensive (and requires such expertise) that it’s nearly always going to be a weapon wielded by states, rather than organisations such as al-Qaeda.
Having said that, we don’t know if there are missing Soviet nukes. (Are lost nuclear weapons really called Broken Arrows, like in that movie?) I think that it’s foolish to disregard the possibility, however unlikely. Who knows why one might sit on a nuclear weapon – perhaps waiting for the price to be right? Perhaps waiting for an apt moment to deploy? If the bomb could be traced back to the USSR, so what? It’s not unthinkable that al-Qaeda could deploy a conventional nuclear device – maybe about as unthinkable as simultaneously hijacking four planes with a view to destroying the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and the Whitehouse, was on September the 10th, 2001.
I live in America, have flown hundreds of times in my life (not so much in the last 5 years, though) and in the last two years did two international trips, one to Australia and one to Egypt, Israel and Jordan.
I have never seen fingerprinting or quick-queues in America, but I have heard that all foreigners will be fingerprinted when entering the country.
There are a lot of commenters here who need an education.
The hijackers would not have been able to kill a planeload of passengers with 4 inch kitchen knives. Don’t be daft. Similarly, the whole reason they got away with it is that it had never happened before. In all known cases, the hijackers simply took the passengers, almost always unharmed to Cuba or Libya or something. It won’t happen again. Note: There have been no hijackings in America since then.
We may have invaded Afghanistan first, but if you believe the US counter-terrorism Czar, Richard Clarke, Bush and Rumsfeld both _wanted_ to invade Iraq instead.
Good luck educating your commenters. I consider it an obligation to do it at my own blog, but I’ve got much less traffic. 🙂
According to this: Dirty Bombs Vastly Overrated.
“First, it’s the explosion that kills not the radioactivity. Although prolonged exposure can make you sick, you may not want to stick around long enough for that to happen.”
“Second, assembling the radioactive material is almost sure to kill any terrorist. After all, a square mile of contamination needs to be compressed into less than a few cubic feet. That’s a several million-fold concentration. And the stuff would get so hot; it would melt most containers.”
The Soviet Union collapsed 13 years ago, at that time the average age of a nuclear weapon in the U.S. stockpile was about 14 years. The design life of a nuclear weapon in the U.S. stockpile was 20-25 years. To increase the life span of the U.S. weapons each weapon has been getting refurbishments for some time now, but they evidently didn’t do this before the fall of the Soviet Union. Another thing to mention is that smaller weapons have shorter shelf lives due to the need for materials with a greater radioactivity, and the fact that the small parts would probably degrade more quickly, they would also degrade more quickly if improperly stored. In addition suitcase nukes were produced in the 70s.
The terrorist supermen, according to legend, are supposed to have stolen Soviet suitcase nukes. These weapons, produced in the 70s would be at least 35 years old. The design life of a large nuclear weapon was 25 years, small weapons like the suitcase nuke degrade more quickly and they have probably not been stored properly, or maintained. Disregarding the fact that there are no terrorist supermen if they set of their small Soviet nuke it would almost certainly be a dud, and would contaminate a couple of hundred square meters at most.
Hijacking is just a variety of hostage taking, something which is not that difficult even for someone with no special training and no special equipment. It has been happening very frequently for thousands of years.
Della – isn’t Google remarkable? 🙂 Look, I originally thought I’ll spend 5 minutes Googling to find sources to refute you – which I did – and I found a bunch of links that contradict your own (and yours contradict mine, sure). But let’s face it; we could go on forever Googling and counter-Googling. So ignoring all that mullarky, my main point is we simply don’t know. From the brief research I’ve done there’s enough credible people out there saying a threat of nuclear weapons (dirty or otherwise) being deployed exists. And there’s plenty of credible people who contradict them. Who’s right? We don’t know. I’m not prepared to stand up and say “there is no threat”. Ergo, I believe there is a chance that we are threatened.
Hope you don’t take offence at this, but no shit! Why is this definition relevant to my point? If someone had’ve said to you on the 10th of Sept, 2001 that four aeroplanes are going to be hijacked simultaneously, then flown into some of the most important buildings in the USA, would you have answered with the above? I doubt it. That was my point. Before 9/11, if the scenario was described to a bunch of experts, I bet they would have argued as to whether such an attack was possible. In that case I’m sure we could have thrown opposing links at one another. 🙂 As an aside, I am intrigued that you find the 9/11 attacks, in retrospect, such a trifle.
Ignoring all of the above, I am actually more interested in reading your reaction to the first paragraph of my post on the 15th of Jan at 3.10am. That was the crucial part IMO, and is so far unanswered by you.
Della,
I will not try to contest the factual information you bring, as I lack expertise. I hope you are right. I’m relieved to know that a nuke terrorism incident is unlikely.
Still, it doesn’t seem plausible to me to calim that given enough resources and the support of some state – terrorists will be unable to build in the future some dangerous (nuklear or otherwise) device.
Then there is the matter of chemical and biological stuff. A bunch of nuts in Japan were able to produce sarin gas in a home laboratory. The anthrax murders and scare of 3 years ago are still unresolved, and such incidents could happen again.
You don’t need necesarily a terrorist “superman” to cause much trouble, any regular terrorist will do. Just imagine two or three episodes of car bombs a la Timothy Veigh, with 150+ victims ….
Terrorism is a serious threat, and could easily be the trigger for the next big war, as it has been innumerous times in the past (remember WW1 ?).
It does not matter whether retaliation is in correct dose against the true perpetrators or not. When an atrocity happens, retaliation will happen too, and things will escalate.
Josh – here’s a tip to help you increase your traffic. Don’t be such a smug, schoolmasterish prig. Don’t attempt to “educate” your commentariat. Incidentally, I’m surprised you’re not aware of that term, being so educated and all. You should feel privileged that people bother to read your musings, rather than righteous because you think you’re teaching them a thing or two.
I agree with you on one point – I can’t imagine hijackings taking place these days with the weapons Muhummad Uttar et al used. On three of the four aeroplanes involved, able-bodied men and women obviously considered that their lives weren’t in sufficient danger to quell the hijackers. In the shadow of 9/11 an aeroplane with a number of people on board would be a considerably more difficult target to hijack. I believe people would be falling over themselves to disarm the hijacker/s. An aeroplane with a great deal of vacant seats would be a different kettle of fish, however.
There are quite a few people who believe Richard Clarke is somewhat tainted. Contrary to his assertions, I believe Dick Cheney, W’s old man’s defence secretary, was the most Saddam-obsessed member of cabinet. A sense of unfinished business? Who knows? And importantly, who cares if Bush wanted a link to exist between 9/11 and Saddam? I don’t doubt for a second that they would have gone into Iraq there and then if some evidence was found. Not a great deal turned up and a more worthy target was selected. So what’s your point?
The decision to remove Saddam was made by Bill Clinton and Al Gore, who made Iraqi regime change government policy. President Bush and his administration simply carried out that policy. Removing Saddam made perfect sense after 911 for a viariety of well repeated strategic reasons.
The Administrations response to 911 has been measured and reasonable. Claims about “lashing out” are absurd.