OK, what the hell has happened to the Brits?

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:33:10 -0500, Eric Pinnell see my web site wrote:

Impossible. The pressure systems on an airplane could literally
keep the cabin pressurized even if an entire window were to disappear.
A few bullet holes would make no difference in cabin pressure.

OK, I buy that. Are the bullets also good enough to prevent cutting off the
wiring that runs back and forth along the cabin?

#m

--
harsh regulations in North Korea (read below link after reading the story):
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/04/open-mikulan.php
oooops ... sorry ... it happened in the USA, ya know: the land of the free.

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 16:37:34 -0500, Ron Natalie wrote:

terrorists know which one to grab, or that there aren't two of them? The
penalty for guessing wrong is death.

He's the one sitting in first class and not drinking.

this would make him beeing the guy on upper deck on a 747 and having about
300 or so passengers and a handful of terrorists on the lower deck. for
sure, the cockpit door is accessed through the upper deck ....

If it is me beeing a terrorist in this situation and I can't get control of
the plane itself (and ramming it into a building, ...) then I will be happy
by killing the 300 or so passengers.

#m

--
harsh regulations in North Korea (read below link after reading the story):
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/04/open-mikulan.php
oooops ... sorry ... it happened in the USA, ya know: the land of the free.

On Wed, 31 Dec 2003 18:37:56 -0500, Andrew Gideon wrote:

You're assuming secrets staying secret, again.


You're assuming they don't.

Yes. Welcome to the world of security.

You have to state that you are a computer nerd. This explains very much. At
least to me. :-)

All (at least most) of your statements are portable to almost any other
security concept - be it networking or airline security.

#m

--
harsh regulations in North Korea (read below link after reading the story):
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/04/open-mikulan.php
oooops ... sorry ... it happened in the USA, ya know: the land of the free.

"G.R. Patterson III" wrote in message ...

I would be more inclined to agree with you if I could forget the fact that two of
the University of Tennessee police force detectives accidentally shot themselves
(one in the foot) during my tenure there as an undergraduate. They were considered
to be better quality than rent-a-cops.

They were. I mean, c'mon, it's Tennessee!

In article ,
Jonathan Goodish wrote:
What's better, explosive decompression or a fuel-loaded airplane being
slammed into a busy downtown area by a terrorist who is able to gain
control of the airplane?

Do you really think that these days that a typical B747 load of people
(over 200) would allow a handful of hijackers to live long enough to try
crashing the plane?

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

Michael Nouak wrote:

Simply become an air marshal. On the day you get the call from Osama,
simply board your flight, maybe with another air marshal. At the
appropriate time, get up, scream "US Marshal, freeze!" and shoot the other
marshal, or any random passenger if you're alone, in the head.

Sigh And I thought I was devious.

This doesn't even require knowing the other Marshal(s). They'll pop up
immediately.

This is an interesting problem. The solution to your scenario is to have
marshals all know about one another (at least on a single flight). But
that increases the risk of all marshals' identities being exposed at once
by a single security failure.

I have to admit: I'm glad I'm not in the business of formulating these
plans.

- Andrew

Martin Hotze wrote:

It would even be easier (as I believe that "Al Queada" has almost
unlimited financial ressources) to found their own airline, operate
unsuspect for some time and then .. well .. you get the picture ...

You know...El Al's just had *too* good a record.

Laugh

- Andrew

In article t, Steven P.
McNicoll wrote:
So you're depending upon the terrorists not learning a secret.

How would they learn it?

There are dozens of ways. It's sort of like solving an equation - from
the knowns you can derive the value of x. The IRA (nothing to do with
pensions, but republican terrorists in Northern Ireland used to spy
quite frequently to find the identity of their enemies and kill them),
and the IRA weren't on suicide missions. Someone determined enough to
face the certainty of death will probably be even more determined.

A brute-force way of doing it would be to have two terrorist cells on
board. The first one begins the hijack. The sky marshall takes charge
and does his job *instantly identifying himself and where he keeps his
gun* to the second cell. The second cell then swing into action some
time later, first seizing control of the sky marshal and his weapon, and
then continuing with their plan. And now they are armed with a gun.

Since flight attendants are allowed on the flight deck, where there is a
crash axe available, what security vetting are we doing of flight
attendants? What does the sky marshal do when an FA incapacitates the
crew with a crash axe and locks the reinforced cockpit door behind him?

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"

"Wdtabor" wrote:
I find the company of my fellow honest citizens who are armed to be
comforting.

I don't.

Many of my fellow honest citizens don't have sense enough to pour water
out of a boot. Anyone who can vote can carry a gun in many states:
considering the quality of elected officials, how comforting is that?

I'm a gun owner. I'm also a licensed driver. I don't expect any better
judgment from my fellow gun owners than I do from my fellow drivers.
--
Dan
C172RG at BFM

Andrew Gideon wrote:

Michael Nouak wrote:

Simply become an air marshal. On the day you get the call from Osama,
simply board your flight, maybe with another air marshal. At the
appropriate time, get up, scream "US Marshal, freeze!" and shoot the
other marshal, or any random passenger if you're alone, in the head.

Sigh And I thought I was devious.

This doesn't even require knowing the other Marshal(s). They'll pop up
immediately.

After reconsideration...

This requires that the terrorists smuggle weapons on board. Most of our
discussion of determining the marshals' identities was aimed and not
smuggling weapons, but grabbing theirs.

So this doesn't really apply to the discussion of how putting marshals on
board might decrease security (by making weapons available).

However, what would occur if one unarmed terrorist popped up yelling "I'm
the air marshal". The marshal would subdue him/her, yes? The other
terrorists would then know the identity.

Hmm. Marshals would have to be trained to interfere only in extreme
cases...which means that the first terrorist might have to be a little more
extreme. But this does appear to be a potential vector for breaking the
identity of the marshals.

- Andrew