Plane Stupid
Posted: Wed 9 September, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Security, Thoughts 2 Comments »I still find it hard to understand the certainty of the Government and Security Forces that terrorist attacks will happen again on aeroplanes. Maybe they know something I don’t.
To me, security – or at least the perception of security – comes about through making easy targets into harder targets. When it comes to home security, we don’t look at making our houses completely thief-proof. We look at making them into a harder target than my neighbours.
In my opinion, people in general – whether it be your everyday office worker, a burglar, a politician, or a terrorist – are lazy. They’re not going to do something difficult if they can do something easy.
On the terrorism front, airports are (in theory at least) the hardest target around now. Bear in mind though that I’m still a firm believer in ‘Security Theatre‘ – so airports at least appear to be the hardest target. They’re certainly more hassle than (for example) sitting on a bus or a train.
So I find it hard to understand that conviction that planes are still the prime target. Personally I’d probably be trying to look at anything but planes and airports.
I agree on the airport security. I’ve often thought they’d have more success detonating a device in the lengthy queues for security scanning or a football match.
However, I do believe blowing up commercial airliners still represents a challenge to these people. To prove that, for all the increased security measures, these people still did it.
Also, there’s no doubt that planes falling out of the sky are incredibly symbolic. Particularly, if they fall on major cities.
There, that’s me cheered up for today 🙂
Oh, there’s any number of softer targets out there that would make just as much impact – allbeit not quite so PR-friendly and necessarily visual – than airports/airlines.
For obvious reasons, I’m not going to go off and make suggestions, (For one thing I can do without a no-charge detention “on suspicion of…” etc. etc.) but I could probably name ten without even thinking. Sad, but true.