OK, what the hell has happened to the Brits?

Wdtabor wrote:


Picture two terrorists, one walking to the restroom and one walking back
from. They meet where the marshal is seated. One grabs the guy around
the throat while the other goes for the weapon.

Uh, there are between 90 and 400 passengers on that plane. How do your two
terrorists know which one to grab, or that there aren't two of them? The
penalty for guessing wrong is death.

Sigh In you pop up this thread a few messages, you'll see that I wrote:

Yes. They'd also need to identify the marshal amongst the passengers, as
you noted. However, relying upon these "secrets" is relying upon something
called "security through obscurity". It doesn't work in the long term.

If nothing else, it's yet another "weak point" against which an "attack" can
be attempted. It means that the terrorist doesn't need to get a weapon on
board, but just get access to the marshal's identity on a flight. That is,
there are now two different ways to acquire a weapon on board, whereas
before there was just one.

So you're depending upon the terrorists not learning a secret.
That's fine...until/unless they do learn the secret. In that
case, security is actually *reduced* as they now have access to
a weapon on board (assuming, again, that it's not easier to simply
smuggle something on board than it is to discern this secret).

Of course, if my plan were adopted, allow all Concealed Weapons Permit
holders to carry at will on any flight, there might be anywhere from zero
to dozens.

Your plan has a couple of advantages: the secret changes, making
(1) it tougher to discern for a given case (ie. flight) and (2)
making the cost of a "lost" secret lower, as it would impact only
a single flight.

However, it also has a major weakness: the assumption that all the
carriers are "safe". As you widen the population of people permitted
to carry weapons on board, you make it more likely that this population
includes your attackers (either as actual members or through impersonation).

Finally, your personal values are reflected in your comment "the penalty
for guessing wrong is death". That matters to you. That might even matter
to at least some of the actual attackers (I seem to recall reading that some
of the 2001/9/11 attackers didn't know it was a suicide mission). But
it doesn't need to matter to the attack planners.

I've no doubt that those planners - sitting safely on the side - would be
perfectly willing to send attackers into battle with falsified information.
The likelyhood of success drops, of course. But then they've plenty of
victims waiting for martyrdom.

- Andrew