New security measures causing travel woes

**hiss srq** · 2006-08-10, 11:25 PM

From my experince today no, you are fine to go early and do spotting I was doing today after I got back from PBI but as for drinks, no they cannot be brought aboard. I got chewed on by an AirTran gate agent for going on the jetbridge with a bottle of Pepsi though I am SIDA badged etc... No joy on pepsi but spotting go for it. I did it for 3 hours today in the terminal and on the ramp. Pretty stupid if you ask me.

**Sulman** · 2006-08-11, 04:14 AM

From what I understand this was very much a real threat, involving some pretty hefty intelligence from Pakistan, UK, and US security services. The information that has been released has been somewhat reserved, which would suggest there are some loose ends yet to be tied up.

You can't really be surprised from a simple risk-management point of view that the prudent thing to do is eliminate carry-on items. I don't think it will last forever but in the meantime, it's a small price to pay.

James

**moose135** · 2006-08-11, 08:51 AM

Originally Posted by Iberia A340-600

So when they say ban all liquids does that mean I can't bring a bottle of Pepsi aboard?

Sorry, you'll have to leave it behind...not only that, but I hear they are making sure you urinate before boarding - can't have any liquids on board :)

Why is it this has become a huge issue in the last two days with bans on liquids on flights, when 10 years ago :!: terrorists actually managed to set off one of these on an aircraft, killing a passenger, as part of a plot to blow up a bunch of airliners over the Pacific?

**pgengler** · 2006-08-11, 10:03 AM

What really bothers me about the whole thing is that it's not being done for security, but it's all to give the illusion of security:

The CIA, the Homeland Security Department, and several top lawmakers knew "for days" of the [recent] terror plot.

Many hours after British police announced they had foiled a plot to simultaneously blow up planes over the Atlantic on their way from London to the U.S., ... [Bush] approved raising the alert to red on flights from England.

Source: CBS/AP, brackets, ellipses, and emphasis mine

If you knew about the plot days in advance, to increase security, you need to start banning liquids on planes days in advance. Doing so after the plot has been "foiled" (perhaps completely, perhaps not) is doing very little to make anything more secure, at the expense of everyone flying. This is just a symbolic gesture to make everyone feel safer about flying.

**Midnight Mike** · 2006-08-11, 10:17 AM

Originally Posted by pgengler

What really bothers me about the whole thing is that it's not being done for security, but it's all to give the illusion of security:

The CIA, the Homeland Security Department, and several top lawmakers knew "for days" of the [recent] terror plot.

Many hours after British police announced they had foiled a plot to simultaneously blow up planes over the Atlantic on their way from London to the U.S., ... [Bush] approved raising the alert to red on flights from England.

Source: CBS/AP, brackets, ellipses, and emphasis mine

If you knew about the plot days in advance, to increase security, you need to start banning liquids on planes days in advance. Doing so after the plot has been "foiled" (perhaps completely, perhaps not) is doing very little to make anything more secure, at the expense of everyone flying. This is just a symbolic gesture to make everyone feel safer about flying.

If they knew about the plot in advance, you remain quiet as you not only want to capture the people conducting the attack, but, you want to capture the leaders, the planners, and everybody else connected to the attack. That is why 24 people were arrested at once.

The next plan, is to make an announcement as loud as possible, that no liquids are allowed on the aircraft, ends any other attacks that could be planned out...

If they stopped allowing liquids on the aircraft last week, they may have not been able to arrest everybody or none at all....

**pgengler** · 2006-08-11, 10:28 AM

Originally Posted by Midnight Mike

If they knew about the plot in advance, you remain quiet as you not only want to capture the people conducting the attack, but, you want to capture the leaders, the planners, and everybody else connected to the attack. That is why 24 people were arrested at once.

The next plan, is to make an announcement as loud as possible, that no liquids are allowed on the aircraft, ends any other attacks that could be planned out...

If they stopped allowing liquids on the aircraft last week, they may have not been able to arrest everybody or none at all....

But in not doing anything to stop the attack vector, you've left yourself vulnerable. If the alleged planners had been able to get a tip on Monday that the government was closing in on them, they're probably ready to go, and could push their timetable ahead while they'd still be able to get liquids on the plane. In this case, they didn't know that anyone was on to them, so it all worked out, but there's no guarantee of this for any future plots.

To know that an attack in imminent, to know the way the way that it's going to be carried out, and to do nothing to stop the attack vector, instead counting on being able to round up those involved, is not good security.

**PhilDernerJr** · 2006-08-11, 10:59 AM

You're talking as though the attack was going to be carried out yesterday. It wasn't.

They didn't even have the flights booked yet. It WAS in advance and the measures were put into place at the right time.

Also, from what I've read, the exact procedure that they would have used on these flights were NOT what were going to be used on those Pacific flights, and yesterday's "cocktail" was one that was not known of or expected in the war on terror.

**moose135** · 2006-08-11, 11:49 AM

Originally Posted by Phil D.

Also, from what I've read, the exact procedure that they would have used on these flights were NOT what were going to be used on those Pacific flights, and yesterday's "cocktail" was one that was not known of or expected in the war on terror.

From Time.com:

Though details are still sketchy, the broad outlines of the foiled plot to bomb airliners plying the Atlantic are eerily reminiscent of a decade-old attempt by an al-Qaeda-linked group to massacre hundreds of airline passengers — in that case aimed at U.S. airlines flying over the Pacific. That plot too targeted a dozen or so airliners and aimed to use a liquid explosive, a nitroglycerine-based concoction that was to have been smuggled on to the aircraft in hand baggage. The plot, codenamed Bojinka — a play on the Serbo-Croatian word for explosion — by its Pakistani planners, came frighteningly close to fruition. In December of 1994, according to U.S. court documents, Ramzi Yousef and Wali Khan Amin Shah, were instrumental in the bombing of a Philippine airlines flight en route to Japan that was a dry run for their much more ambitious attempt to blow up a dozen jets simultaneously. They managed to smuggle a container of liquid explosive concealed in contact lens solution aboard the airplane on an earlier flight, leaving it under a seat in row 26. The explosion killed a Japanese man and forced the plane to make an emergency landing.

<snip>

The parallels between the two attempts underline just how vulnerable airliners remain, says Zachary Abuza, a terror expert who teaches at Simmons College in Boston, Mass. "The amount of explosive you need is really very small," Abuza notes. "It doesn't take much to bring a plane down. And the return is huge. They are targeting the global economy and this remains a huge way to make a dent very quickly by disrupting business and tourism." He and other experts warn that bombs on airplanes will always remain one of the most tempting targets for terrorists, who have killed almost two thousand passengers over the last three decades.

The foiled plot also underlines the fact that, for all the talk in recent years about al-Qaeda focusing on coming up with a new form of terror attack — be it with weapons of mass destruction or against a target other than air travel — the group tends to stick with what they believe is a good plan, notes Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qaeda. "They think in the long term, over decades," Gunaratna says. "They will keep trying the same plan until they get it right, as was the case with the World Trade Center." From "Richard Reid the shoe bomber to the arrest by Philippine police last year of Islamic extremists in Manila who had manufactured explosives they managed to get into toothpaste tubes, the pattern is there," concurs Abuza. "They will keep trying. And we don't know the chemical composition of this latest attempt, but if they have come up with something that is stable and easily disguised we could really have a problem."

Yes, the EXACT procedure or chemicals may have been different, but the fact remains the same type of attack was planned (and tested) 10 years ago, yet today it's a crisis and we have generated mass hysteria in the airports.

That's like after 9/11 when all these goverment officials said they never imagined using aircraft being flown into a building as a method of attack, yet during the G-8 summit earlier that summer, they installed anti-aircraft weapons around the site to guard against just such an attack.

**PhilDernerJr** · 2006-08-11, 01:01 PM

oh poops. :(

**Midnight Mike** · 2006-08-11, 02:19 PM

Originally Posted by pgengler

But in not doing anything to stop the attack vector, you've left yourself vulnerable. If the alleged planners had been able to get a tip on Monday that the government was closing in on them, they're probably ready to go, and could push their timetable ahead while they'd still be able to get liquids on the plane. In this case, they didn't know that anyone was on to them, so it all worked out, but there's no guarantee of this for any future plots.

To know that an attack in imminent, to know the way the way that it's going to be carried out, and to do nothing to stop the attack vector, instead counting on being able to round up those involved, is not good security.

Your comment, would hold water, if the attack went through as planned. By the way, the UK Authorities had control over this one, the United States & Pakistan was providing assistance.

Since they had a date of the attack, 16-August, they had complete control over the situation.

According to reports, they had an insider who was proving information.

This is damn good news, they stopped an attack, arrested 24 people & 6 in Pakistan.

Good Security is finding out about an attack, stopping the attack, finding all those involved, & arresting or shooting of all involved.....

**hiss srq** · 2006-08-11, 02:37 PM

Several food for thought type things here also as far as the investigation goes. Has anyone thought that in light of these events in the UK about the missing Egyptians that came over about a week ago or so? Seriously what is to say that in light of the fact that these terrorists in the UK had no previous record and were even lifetime British citizens might not be as much a risk and even tied to this event? I know the goverment has stated that these individuals were not a risk to our national security in public releases but perhaps there is more to it than they are actually saying? I found it odd that they would announce this in particular that these people were missing in the first place without some other underlying suspision maybe.

my other peice of food for thought is now a moot point in light of the fact that at the boarding gate they are now going to start searching all pax again after the initial searches but I was thinking about how the terrorists could potentially fly through connections internationally on say a flight that starts out in say SRQ than goes to EWR before going to London or another city that is not under such tight raps right now and in that time frame once they have cleared TSA at SRQ they are not subject to the same scrutiny again minus the normal international flying procedures before jumping on a 757 across the pond. They could potentially in that intrim have stolen some cleaning materials etc... from on the jetbridge or from a custodial persons cart at EWR and created a concoction that would possibly knock out all aboard including the flight deck crew possibly and there ya go the plane just runs out of fuel or somthing and crashes . I mean there are a hundred scenarios but these are some intresting ones I came up with.

No need to flame me just thought i would put it out there.

**pgengler** · 2006-08-11, 03:25 PM

Originally Posted by Midnight Mike

Good Security is finding out about an attack, stopping the attack, finding all those involved, & arresting or shooting of all involved.....

Well, yes and no. In this case, what they did worked, and they were able to stop the attack despite not closing the vector until after they'd picked up some/all of those believed to be involved. I maintain, however, that this is not good security, despite that it seems to have worked here.

Let's look at the way things could have gone in this case. Suppose that the planned date of the attack is August 16. With less than a week to go, I think it's reasonable to expect that nearly all, if not all, of the necessary supplies are on hand and that nearly all of the people needed are where they're supposed to be. I'm not sure what a bunch of terrorists would spend a week doing before an attack, but if they're reasonably well-organized, they're not waiting for crucial resources to come in this close to the designated time.

So, I think it's reasonable to expect that the attack could have been pulled off at any time in at least the week before the planned time, subject to the availability of last-minute tickets on flights. At this point, all it takes is for one indication, real or perceived, that the government is on to them, and some could decide to push things ahead by a week.

Meanwhile, the government has caught wind of the attack, and have reason to believe that it could be carried out in a week, and have a good idea about the method that will be used. At this point, it becomes a race: can the government pick up everyone (or at least enough people) involved before they're able to pull it off? If the terrorists surprise the gov't by striking a few days ahead of schedule, and before the government decided to move against them, then the attack is going to succeed, because there's nothing stopping it.

In this case, the government's plan worked. If, as we're constantly being told, there are hundreds of other terrorist cells and groups, all out to get us, then sooner or later one of them is going to either get a tip from somewhere, or get spooked by something (even a wrongly-perceived surveillance) and change their plans. If you haven't taken any action to stop the plan, only the people, then there's a much better chance of their plan succeeding than if you took action against both.

That said, I think I can understand the point that you're trying to make. Certainly, it's not in the government's best interest to stop an imminent attack only to let the masterminds of it get away so that they can formulate a new plan.

Good security is a combination of both. You should make a plan to apprehend the people behind the attack, but you should also be working to render the attack impossible/unfeasible, just in case the people slip away before you can grab them, or if you can't get all of them. The institution of the "no liquids" policy after the arrests likely means one of two things: 1) that there's a possibility that not everyone involved was arrested, and there's a risk of a (smaller) attack, or 2) that the government is trying to show people that it's taking measures to keep them safe from such an attack.

The first case there is basically the same thing I mentioned (at great length) above: that you can't always be sure of getting all the people, and so you have to take steps to close the attack vector. The second case is pretty self-explanatory: it's the government wasting resources on pointless "protection."

(One thing I really don't understand is why, if the government knew about this in advance, and probably expected they'd institute a "no liquid" polict, there wasn't at least some sort of plan to get a consistent message across and to do so without sprining it on everyone, including screeners, all at once.)