The Joke of Airport Security

Aside from the timing of this particular event, hijacking a plane in the United States is easy as pie. I could do it with one hand tied behind my back it's so easy. I never would, because I have a love of the American people, and a certain level of Judeo-Christian ethic of life, not only for the lives of innocent citizens, but for my own life.

All of United States airline security is focused on its customers. Essentially, the United States has decided that the common airline passenger is the biggest threat to the common airline passenger. It has created this vast terror state, through which you cannot travel with a weapon - where you can be arrested for simply having too much cash by the DEA - where you can be strip searched for being black and female. Supposedly all for our security. And it's all crap.

I can hijack any plane in the country. I can smuggle any weapon into any plane for the purpose of allowing a hijacker to overtake the plane. How can I do that? Well, while your security personnel are placing your customers through the equivalent of police terror - security personnel who are largely untrained, untested, underpaid, and who are turned over at a rate of almost 100% a year - security personnel who can be easily duped by a real terrorist even though they seem to be stumped over things as simple as a soda or a disk drive - I and my agents can walk in as easy as pie... as your employees.

Airline and airport employees are some of the most untrained, unchecked, unverified, dishonest people in the nation. Aside from the pilots and the flight attendants, you don't need any training to work for an airline. Getting a job for the ground crew of any typical airline is easy. If you can provide verifiable references, fake or not, airlines are so desperate to get ground workers, because those same airlines refuse to pay their workers well or treat them with dignity. It is difficult for the airlines to get workers for these jobs. They will take anybody. This is why the airlines have such a problem with theft of luggage.

And just like that, I can have a handful of agents who load and unload your plane, and likely you will never know it until we strike you.

No, it's even easier than that. Because so many people who care for the planes don't even work for the airline. The people who usually clean and inspect the plane are often not even employed by the airlines. They are employed by contract companies. They are paid even less, and scrutinized even less. They can get anything on a plane in a secret location. A gun. A bomb. A knife. Or several.

They don't even have to be the same people. One plants. Another waters. Still another reaps the harvest. And you'd never know it, until we hit you. Can it really be THAT easy?

No, it's even easier. Stupid federal regulations which disarm the customer require that any arms brought onto a plane be inserted in secure suitcases, and those suitcases flagged with a special FFF tag.

What does this do? It tells any potential terrorist which bags have firearms in them. And it guarantees that said firearms are separated from their rightful owners, who, odds are would use them appropriately, and potentially places them in the hands of those who cannot possibly use them for any good purpose. This policy also guarantees that any terrorist which makes it to the plane is extremely likely to succeed.

But as I said, I'd never do such a thing. Because I love America. And I love Americans. And that brings me to the next problem.

Our national borders are sieves. Almost anyone can get into this country for any reason. Now sure, someone who hates America could be an American. But most of the time, if they are going to commit this level of an act, they are not going to be Americans. They are going to be foreigners. And this is exactly what happened on September 11. The perpetrators of this mass murder simply walked into this country. Even though they hated us, and even though it could have been determined, due to their national origin, that they were likely to hate us.

And you airlines and airports hire these people because they will work for next to nothing and accept your slavish conditions. They'll put up with it because they have an agenda.

Thomas Jefferson said that "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

Nothing illustrates the concept of a patriot more than what the firefighters and police did in New York. Many of them, who were not on the scene when the Trade Center attacks occurred, came to rescue those trapped in the buildings. Little did they know that the buildings were going to collapse on them and kill many of them. Or how about the passengers on the plane which crashed near Pittsburgh, of whom it is said tried to wrestle control of the plane from the terrorists, not being able to save themselves, but probably unknowingly averting a possible attack on the White House or the Capitol. Or a passenger on another plane who was actually calling her husband, a US official, asking him what she could do to avert this. She didn't have time to act, but clearly she had the will.

Yes, I rag on cops a lot. But this is an example of what cops are supposed to do. And the rest of the various police and sheriffs departments could put down their donuts, quit writing traffic tickets, and start following their example. And yes, I think the Congress of the United States is comprised of, for the most part, spineless traitorous sons of bitches. But they are OUR spineless traitorous sons of bitches, and the responsibility of either forcing them to adhere to their constitutional oaths, or removing them from office, belongs to US, not to some rag headed bastard who not only has no concept of freedom, but has no concept of true Islam: otherwise, he would not do this.

And then there is the attack on the Pentagon. Defense is the agency with the most clear constitutional mandate.

But you don't have to be a soldier to be a patriot. The thousands of people who perished in the World Trade Center were engaging in the most patriotic activity there can be: the ordinary everyday commerce of the United States. And they were murdered not as a random act, but specifically because they engaged in commerce.

We have seen the tree of liberty watered with the blood of patriots on September 11. Now it must be watered with an equal portion of the blood of tyrants.

Put bluntly: we need to kill the people who did this, and kill the nations who harbored and trained them.

I frankly don't care who it turns out to be. Whether it turns out to be Osama Bin Laden, the Afghanis, the Palestinians, the Iraqis, the penguins of Antarctica or the Bavarian Illuminati, for that matter. We need to rain fire and brimstone down on these people. Because if we do not put these people out of their eternal misery, they will be back. With more targets. Maybe a rogue nuclear weapon or two, or a biological weapon. We must make having done this so terrible for the people who did it that all people will be in mortal fear of ever doing it again.

Now more than ever, we need to lose the "culture of disarmament" which has developed in this country. The original militias were PRIVATE CITIZENS who could be called up at a moment's notice to defend both the country and the community. We were all intended to BE armed, in order to be able to avert foreign and domestic attacks just like this one.

If you think that a few key citizens with firearms could not have stopped the events of September 11, keep in mind the conditions that the would be suicide terrorists found on these four aircraft. They had no armed opposition to them. The terrorists had full control to direct these planes wherever they would. Had there been armed resistance, even if the planes would have still been lost themselves, almost certainly the terrorists would not have been able to fully control their planes and direct them into the targets. We might have lost the 266, but we wouldn't have lost what could turn out to be 20,000 people. Nor would New York have lost about 400 firefighters and police officers acting as rescuers.

The gun control hysteria set the stage for terrorists controlling an American device which no one in the first line of defense was able to stop, because they were unarmed sitting ducks. What if the next device isn't an airplane, but a suitcase nuclear weapon, or a biological weapon?

But I'm not just talking about pulling out pistols. I'm also talking about learning how to fight. No one even teaches flight crews basic self defense. This must change.

By allowing the militia system to decline, and turning over our security to government agents, we have severely weakened our ability to defend our country from attacks of every kind, especially attacks like these. It may be appropriate to provide more funding for government agencies to meet such threats, but realistically, such agencies are not likely to be able to detect all such attacks before they occur. We must attend to the first line of defense, which are the people on the scene, who might be able to detect such attacks before they occur, and respond when they do.

Closing the borders and ending much immigration goes straight to the point I made as to why I would never do such a thing. I have love of the American people. I have a certain level of Judeo-Christian ethic of life, not only for the lives of innocent citizens, but for my own life. And we have no duty to share our nation with foreigners who do not share that ethic. No one who does not intend to be an American should be allowed to come here on any more than a travel visa, and some people from certain parts of the world shouldn't be allowed to be here even for that.

It is very important for us to determine what a given individual wants to do in America. A Mexican national who wants to really and truly become an American is a good thing. A Mexican national who wants to reestablish Aztlan in the American Southwest is a bad thing and is a terrorist in the making. I had a different opinion about this before September 11. I don't want to share my space with an Islamic terrorist who hates America. I don't want to be "open-minded" in admitting Mexican nationals to work here if I'm going to have to shoot it out with them in the streets of Phoenix and Tucson in one of their "wars for independence".

It's not about the language. I listen to Spanish language television almost every week for something or another, and there are five languages spoken in my household, including Spanish, French and German. It's not about the culture. I actually have great admiration of many different foreign cultures. But there is a difference between a foreign national who wants to become an American, and a foreign national who wants to destroy America. And we need to determine who's who. And right now, we can't.

I didn't feel that way prior to September 11. But another key reason September 11 happened is lax immigration policy. This is one thing that not only the military, but the militias, should be used to do: guard our borders and ports. And one thing the INS needs to seriously undertake: determining WHY a foreign national is here. Our national security is more important than having somebody to pick my grapes and clean my house.

If Congress is serious about their singing of "God Bless America", they will alter current immigration policy to make it harder for those who hate America to be here.

The 266 traded, under some duress, liberty for security. They were used against their will to murder 10,000 people. And they are just as dead as if there were NO security measures whatsoever.

Many say we must maintain liberty and freedom. Wrong. We must reestablish liberty and freedom, including many of the freedoms which have lately been swiped away from us. Some might say we should turn over more power to the government. Wrong again. We need to empower the people to fight this. Otherwise, these things will occur gain and again. The government actually got us into this mess via the tyranny of stupidity.

If we allow the curtailment of freedom and liberty over this, then we are as bad as the people who are attacking us. If we allow tyranny in the name of greater security, then we fulfill the "Great Satan" role they have ascribed to us.

Moreover, if the United States government, as an answer to this tragedy, decides to institute a police state, ostensibly for the protection of the American people, then it has ANOTHER problem. A much bigger problem than Osama Bin Laden. Namely, American patriots. American patriots are not going to tolerate a police state. And American patriots, more than any other set of people, best know every single point of weakness of the various standing governments. And they constitute a much greater number of people than any official figures could ever account for.

American patriots are the LAST enemy the federal government wants to have. Because they are the very people most capable of taking down the standing government. Of course, such a confrontation, which would make the War Between the States look like a picnic, need never happen. American patriots WANT to be friends with the federal government. All the government needs to do to be the friend of American patriots is to do their constitutional duty. It's really that simple.

Turning American airports and airplanes into an extended police state which maximally distrusts their own customers is the single stupidest thing the industry can do. For one thing, people just won't fly the planes as often. People will drive, instead. Or they won't travel at all. They will vote with their feet. There are a great number of us in the country already who refuse to fly, or fly very rarely, for two reasons: one, we don't like being treated like Soviet citizens instead of American citizens, and two, we know the security measures are a joke. Even today, as you, the American airline industry and the American government, try to invent more restrictions upon the American traveling public, even in the wake of this tragedy, we shake our heads in disgust because it seems you have no clue.

The danger points in airline security are not the flying public. They are the airlines themselves, and the support companies the airlines hire. Hiring people at low wages and crappy working conditions is not just a formula for incompetence. It is a formula for sabotage as you invariably hire people who have ulterior motives for working for you beside the bad pay and bad conditions. It is also a formula for bankruptcy. Ask the Chairman of Pan Am... oh wait, that's right. You can't.

Moreover, airlines ought to give thought to something that is commonly done on the Israeli airline El Al, which has never ever had a hijacking. Namely, armed security guards on the planes as they fly. After September 11, that scary guy with an Uzi on your plane, doesn't seem as scary any more.

Another danger point is Air Traffic Control. Not for any ulterior motives on their part, but simply because they are not sufficiently trained or staffed to deal with terrorism in the air as it is going on. This is something we chose to skimp on in the 80's and it has come back to bite us.

After the dust clears, and after the perpetrators of this evil act have been incinerated and vaporized, perhaps it is time to objectively reconsider our foreign policy and all the foreign entanglements that our government has ensnared us into. I would be the last person to say that US foreign policy has been noble. There are people in the world who hate us for just cause.

Instead of a foreign policy which centers on our financial self interest, we need to have a policy which seeks to export and establish freedom. And of course, to establish and export freedom, we must have it to give, and must maximize it in this country. I believe that now more than ever, we are presented with a fork in the road. One fork reestablishes our Constitution and our Bill of Rights, and our limited government with maximum freedom, as a model by which we thrive, and a model which we export to the rest of the world. The other fork, a heightened police state, with continued foreign entanglements based on financial interests, guarantees the eventual destruction of the United States.

Freedom was attacked on September 11. Freedom must be defended, in all its forms. If it is not, we have no country, we have no security, and we have no wealth. ###

Turning American airports and airplanes into an extended police state which maximally distrusts their own customers is the single stupidest thing the industry can do. For one thing, people just won't fly the planes as often. People will drive, instead. Or they won't travel at all. They will vote with their feet. There are a great number of us in the country already who refuse to fly, or fly very rarely, for two reasons: one, we don't like being treated like Soviet citizens instead of American citizens, and two, we know the security measures are a joke.

I've already cancelled a trip I was planning next month. I will not show up 2 hours early for the flight. And I won't fly without my trusty knife. And if the airline tries to refuse to refund my fare, they can expect a big fight. The only way I'll fly is if they honor the conditions in place when I bought the ticket. I will fight for a refund.

It's a shame that these regulations are being put into place. There's a lot of places I flew to on business that I can drive to in 4-6 hours. If the flight is an hour, and I have to allow 2 hours or more for the anal probes and complete search of my underwear and toothbrushes, I'll just drive. It's more convenient to leave when I want instead of when the airline flight is scheduled. That's worth another hour or two.

This is going to kill the short hop commuter airlines. Any flights on routes less than 400 miles will probably shut down within a few months. These aren't worth the trouble, even to business travelers.

"Stupid federal regulations which disarm the customer require that any arms brought onto a plane be inserted in secure suitcases, and those suitcases flagged with a special FFF tag."

I was under the impression that baggage containing a declared firearm CANNOT be labeled as such. Someone please correct me if I am wrong -- am searching for a source, but if this is an error, it damages the credibility of the article.

I was under the impression that baggage containing a declared firearm CANNOT be labeled as such. Someone please correct me if I am wrong -- am searching for a source, but if this is an error, it damages the credibility of the article.

I'm not sure what the federal regulations are (or whether they've been changed for "security"). I know that Delta requires that you check the bag with a firearm. You must have the rifle or shotgun or pistol in a hard sided, locked case, and you have to sign some special paperwork, declaring that the case contains a gun, that the gun is unloaded. I believe that you have to show the agent that the gun is unloaded (take it out of the case and show that the magazine is out or empty, or whatever depending on the type of gun) when you check the bag. Then, they watch you lock the case to make certain that it's locked. There's no question that some (low wage) airline employees know which bags have guns in them.

The greatest deterrent to hijacking is the knowledge that you will never elude authorities once you've committed the crime. Obviously, this was a non-issue for these particular terrorists. The next deterrence step is to give would-be terrorists the knowledge that they'll be killed in flight while doing little harm to passengers or crew.

Increasing security is fine in the short-term, but long-term it's just like gun control. You prevent any honest person from defending themselves, while the dishonest ones continue to find ways around any regulations in place. Forcing everyone on a plane to carry a knife would be a better measure than not allowing anyone to do so.

The greatest deterrent to hijacking is the knowledge that you will never elude authorities once you've committed the crime.

First, the events of Tuesday were not typical hijacking's. They were suicides. Secondly, the best deterent to hijackings in general (which we have very, very few of) would be to have SECURITY PERSONEL on each flight in combination with tight physical security at the airports.

In this case, one person with a gun or a tazer on each of these flights would have prevented any of these planes from being taken over. However, the federal government in it's infinite wisdom could not find the money out of a 2 trillion dollar budget to provide security to more than a handful of flights, nor could it see the clues that pointed to this type on incident taking place.

Let's face it, the federal government is incompetent in just about everything that it does and is indirectly responsible for these events.

---max

Well, even before the latest stupid regulations were in effect, I planned on driving from Dallas to Spokane, Washington next weekend.

Now others who were going to fly have called and wanted to ride with me.

There goes the airline industry customer base! Soon, we won't need the FAA bureaucrats who came up with these stupid policies as there won't be an airline industry to regulate.

I guess there might be some good to come out of this afterall.

The greatest deterrent to hijacking is the knowledge that you will never elude authorities once you've committed the crime

How can you say this? Did this deter the b@st@rds the committed Tuesday's atrocity? Of course not. They couldn't care less about "eluding authorities" They planned on suicide along with mass murder.

For that matter it doesn't deter a lot of ordinary street crime. Most criminals have a long record. This implies that they have failed to elude authorities repeatedly. This never seems to do much in the way of deterence.

I was under the impression that baggage containing a declared firearm CANNOT be labeled as such.

I travel on United with firearms frequently. Same precautions as Delta, but the "firearms" tag is to be placed
with the gun inside the baggage. Federal Air Reg (FARS) 108 is the governing regulation.

You are correct, and it is clear that the author of this piece has never traveled with a firearm and likely possesses little "real world" knowledge about that which he/she writes. But, then again, that never stops thousands of journalists from unknowingly disseminating incorrect information.

That said, the rest of the article, IMO, was on target and put forth a number of points that really need to be emphasized over and over -- until the "security experts" employed by the government, airlines, and airports get the message.........

Airliner security will continue to be a joke as long as security is an overhead cost to the airlines, rather than a function of the government. The free market has ABSOLUTELY FAILED here. No one despises big government or the police state more than I, but I have seen this travesty from the inside.

We want the very cheapest airline fare, but don't think about what is being cut to allow that cheap fare to exist.

Now we know.

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