Fight over TSA request for more passenger data

[Aslanna]

Honestly... What pilot would open the door if a hijacker/terrorist threatens hostage shooting? At least you limit the potential casualties. He/she would have to be an idiot to open the door regardless of what the terrorists say or do.

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

Honestly... What pilot would open the door if a hijacker/terrorist threatens hostage shooting? At least you limit the potential casualties. He/she would have to be an idiot to open the door regardless of what the terrorists say or do.

I'd like to see it get harder to get on the plane in the first place, so no one gets hurt. If the pilot is a liberal, then he/she would prolly trust the hijacker when he says.."no one will get hurt if you just open the super cool awesome new door!"

[Sylvus]

Honestly... What pilot would open the door if a hijacker/terrorist threatens hostage shooting? At least you limit the potential casualties. He/she would have to be an idiot to open the door regardless of what the terrorists say or do.

I'd like to see it get harder to get on the plane in the first place, so no one gets hurt. If the pilot is a liberal, then he/she would prolly trust the hijacker when he says.."no one will get hurt if you just open the super cool awesome new door!"

Please note that I'm not merely suggesting that reinforced doors will solve all problems. I think it should be made more difficult to get bombs and weapons on the plane as referenced in a couple of my posts in this thread. I'm also all for "teaching flight attendants karate", though I don't think anyone was literally suggesting just that. It was more of a "read between the lines and see that it means having person(s) on flights trained to subdue an unarmed assailant", be it air marshals or whatever.

Relying on existing data about those people that the government thinks might want to do something nefarious on a plane is far less secure than just making it so no one can do anything nefarious on a plane. You have to make assumptions that the government has a comprehensive database of everyone that might commit a terrorist act and that it's going to be virtually impossible for anyone to use fake information to get around said database. Neither of which are assumptions that would provide me with any level of comfort. Sure, it could be helpful in those cases when known terrorists are trying to board a plane using their real information or aliases known to the government, but how often is that going to happen? And this gets us back to Zaelath's original point...

[Midnyte_Ragebringer]

You will never reach 100% safety or 100% comfortability of safety or 100% terrororist-free society. All you can do is implement policies that improve the procedures we have in place, that create new procedures, that eliminate opportunity, etc. You have some great ideas Sylvus.