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Comment by pinaceae | Hacker News Reader

airport security is not built to prevent evil geniuses to act out a brilliant act of terror macguyver style.

airport security is there to prevent someone to walk onto a plane carrying a boxcutter knife - which they failed to prevent at 9/11.

it's to weed out the idiots, mentally unstable, etc. the times square bomber types.

it relies on underpaid, undereducated personnel. because it exists in reality, which means it is constrained by cost. it also relies on chance and probability. for every post here about sneaking stuff through you have posts of people being held in interrogation or even denied flying triggered by minor details.

and yeah, how many security researchers would post if they got caught? survivorship bias at play.

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> airport security is there to prevent someone to walk onto a plane carrying a boxcutter knife - which they failed to prevent at 9/11

That's the point of this sort of thing - it won't. As the article demonstrates, the tools to put together a weapon more lethal than a boxcutter are available within the airport terminal.

> it's to weed out the idiots, mentally unstable, etc. the times square bomber types.

Why? They don't seem to be attacking large stadiums or subways.

> airport security is there to prevent someone to walk onto a plane carrying a boxcutter knife

Sorry, but no. Sharpened edge of a credit card, pieces of belt, metal parts of the shoes, pins from the hat - that's just what I can come up with in seconds - these are the things I always get on the plane without issues and would be just as effective as weapons as the boxcutter knife. They may prevent boxcutter knifes, but they don't prevent sharp items in general.

If you want to go for dangerous, cutting items, you don't even have to take them with you. Buy a bottle of wine and smash the bottom off in the toilet - it's both better to hold in hand and more damaging when you wave it around.

Flying last week I watched a food delivery man in front of me go through security. He rolled an aluminum dolly loaded with boxes of foot up and put all the boxes on the xray conveyor. He was then scanned by the TSA and they rolled the dolly through to the otherside of the checkpoint after looking under it.

Point: the dolly was a hollow tube framerail construction. They didn't xray it as it was too large. They just rolled it through the screaming metal detector. You could have put whatever you wanted inside those framerails. And that's just the victualler. There are myriad ways to get stuff through. Theater at its best.

Boxcutters are no longer effective tools of terror on airliners. They ceased to be so on the morning of 9/11/2001. Why try to stop them now?

I think you're underestimating the havoc that a group of well-trained individuals armed with knives could cause in the middle of a transcontinental flight even with a locked, reinforced cabin door.

I agree it's not as clear cut as a ban on firearms or explosives, but it seems like a sensible restriction to me, worth enforcing as best we can.

A "group of well-trained individuals" is going to manage to create the weapons mentioned in the link in the OP. You're never going to be able to stop someone who really puts their mind to it.

The rationale in this sub-thread was to leave the current security in place "to weed out the idiots, mentally unstable, etc", and those people will be stopped by passengers after the mindset of what the goal of an airplane is changed on 9/11 (it used to be "they want to redirect the flight to Cuba" now it's "they want to redirect the flight into a building").

Maybe I am. The way I envision such an attack, they pull out their knives and start threatening or cutting people. Then the rest of the passengers, knowing that they will die if they don't stop this, dogpile on the attackers and subdue them. They then tie them to their seats with whatever is handy and hand them over to the police when they land. Where does that go wrong?

When they pull their knives but immediately grab a child and threaten their life. Who is going to be the one to start this dog pile but also cause the demise of a child?

Passengers today know that everyone on the airplane is going to die if they don't act. That child is already dead if they don't act. People with nothing to lose are extremely dangerous, and that's what any hijacked passenger is now. Sun Tzu says never to back your enemy into a corner with no way out. 9/11 only worked because the passengers thought they had a way out. Nobody thinks that now.

What about extreme physical fitness and martial arts? Or, to quote Carlin, "really big hands" - does a knife or 10 really make the difference?

Better be a big group or they're going to be drastically outnumbered. Since 9/11 here have been several cases of real or apparent threats on aircraft that were quickly ended when passengers piled on.

All the pilots have to do in that case is start maneuvering the plane in a manner that makes standing up impossible.

It's really very easy to stop this type of thing.

> I think you're underestimating the havoc that a group of well-trained individuals armed with knives could cause in the middle of a transcontinental flight even with a locked, reinforced cabin door.

Of course they can do a lot of damage. But they don't have to be on a plane for that. They can do a lot of damage on the street. The big question is: can they take control of the plane and use it as a weapon?

Nowadays, passengers know that hijacking means likely death. That knife won't stop everybody.

What the press will say if someone gets a boxcutter onto a plane and tries to do something with it.

Who cares?

"and yeah, how many security researchers would post if they got caught? survivorship bias at play."

Used to something similar at play with stock picking. You heard about people's successful investments but never their losses which they of course kept quiet. This is of course more old school. Now people are much more open about airing daily laundry. My guess is that Schnier would blog about something that didn't work not that that detracts from your point. A lesser known security researcher would not necessarily act the same. Not to mention separately that "getting caught" means you have an interesting story for the press.

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