Terrorism using airplanes.
It seems to me that most of the measures being taken to thwart
terrorism using airplanes are fighting yesterday's threats while
greatly infringing the civil liberties of American citizens.
IMO there is virtually no chance of a plane being hijacked and
flown into a building again. This only worked the first time
because all previous hijackers had just forced the plane down
and held the passengers hostage. The fact that the crew and
passengers on board the fourth plane on September 11 prevented
it from crashing into a building (since some of the passengers
already knew what the first three planes had done) implies to me
that now that everyone knows about this, passengers and crew
would act similarly again. Terrorists could still blow up an airplane,
but this threat is a different order of magnitude and should not
result in the same draconian infringement of civil liberties.
Furthermore the way to protect terrorists from taking control of
a commercial airplane is to seal the cockpit doors so the bad guys
cannot get in. Are there any valid arguments against this and
why hasn't it been implemented? Why is there talk about arming
pilots when this much simpler and less risky measure hasn't been
done yet?