Re: Technology to end Terrorist Hijackings

I am finding a lot of interesting & thoughtful articles about choices &
possibilities.

Regarding feedback about
http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/stories/story/0,10738,2812283,00.html
and http://www.skirsch.com/

In general I agree that there are too many resources at risk - they cannot
all be protected against every doomsday possibility - but prior to Sept 11
for the most part there seemed to be no serious thought given to protecting
any of them, and now we have a nation speculating about ideas that have long
been considered science fiction plots & not seriously considered as reality.

I do not believe our technology & society is at a stage where protecting the
ground water from biological or chemical warfare is practical.  We do not
know the relationship between pollution into our water supply & birth
defects.  We suspect a relationship but do not have the political will to put
a stop to the commercial pollution of our water supply.

The idea of having a panic push button aboard a plane being hijacked is a
good idea ... the news should go to the Air Force as well as to the ground
controllers.  I hope wherever the backup buttoms are for flight crew it is
not a place easily set off by accident by a random passenger.  They talk
about safe mode being cut off to help with the landing & I am thinking, "Oh
Great, now the hijackers can fly the plane into the airport control tower, or
where a hundred other aircraft are refueling."

The only way safe mode would really be safe is if the panic button caused
some sleep chemical to get to everyone in the plane, and it could not be
protective cloithing by hijackers prevented, except the pilots would be
protected by some medication they get before they leave - well I do not
believe we have that bio technology yet - this really is science fiction.

These guys need to wargame this idea to work the bugs out.

I saw one place an estimate of $ 70,000 to equip planes with gear that would
permit a hijacked plane to be taken over by ground control & flown by remote
control, but I suspect that would not be enough, because terrorists would
tear the guts out of the robot & take over the plane anyway & we know
computer security in this nation thanks to the lack of security mentality in
the design of mission critical systems in recent decades is such that
installing such a system in commercial aircraft would just make the control
systems of such a system a hacking target & instead of a handful of hijacked
aircraft we'd have a few thousand flying bombs.

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)