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Path: utzoo!watmath!water!watnot!grwalter
From: grwalter@watnot.UUCP (Fred)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: Thinking of ways to preclude airplane terrorism
Message-ID: <11267@watnot.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 11-Jul-85 15:39:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: watnot.11267
Posted: Thu Jul 11 15:39:34 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 12-Jul-85 01:10:57 EDT
References: <2727@harpo.UUCP>
Reply-To: grwalter@watnot.UUCP (Fred)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 61
Summary: 

In article <2727@harpo.UUCP> jad@harpo.UUCP (jad) writes:
>
>  We need better methods of searching passengers and baggage prior to board-
>  ing planes. Here are some ideas:
> 
>  [device to recognize shape/hardness of objects on person]
>
>  [booth/device to distinguish objects on person] 
>
>  Suppose passengers were required to surrender ALL articles but their cloth- 
>  ing. Then the baggage and personal effects of each passenger were passed
>  separately through an explosion-proof cell and irradiated by an explosive-
>  detonating energy field.
>
>  Maybe the people in charge don't have all the ideas under the sun. If anyone
>  has ideas, let us hear them. 

Shades of Big Brother ! Would you fly if you were required to submit to a
strip search (how else to check that all items but clothes were
surrendered ?) each and every time you boarded an airplane ? I doubt very
many people would put up with this sort of treatment, along with the
increased rates necessary to pay to have this done. As for an
"explosive-detonating energy field", this would probably also damage other
articles besides explosives, such as magnetic computer media (not to forget
- most aerosal cans are explosive (ie. underarm de-oderant))

The booth/device ideas are better, but again any 'rays' given off by these
during the search could damage stuff, and I don't see harmless electronique
search equipment being developed for quite some time (anybody who could
develop something like this could also develop something else in a field
with a large market - companies go for the profit). Granted, you could have
it developed by the government, but ....

An idea would be to : 1) have the people and the cargo carrying parts of
the plane entirely separate - ie. you would have to exit the plane to get
to the cargo/baggage section. This way terrorists could only use stuff
(guns) that they carried into the passenger section with them. (This does
nothing about bombs however ... sigh ...)
                      2) not allow passengers to take as much baggage with
them into the passager section as they currently do, and require the
baggage to pass a metal detection scan. (what do you need a large metal
thing for when you're only going to be on the plane for some hours ? Granted
you might want to take a portable computer with, or a video game, but I'm
assuming that the people who would be checking what you were trying to take
would have a little sense and discretion). 
                      3) not allow passengers to have firearms (unless
they are police-type people) with them on the plane - .ie require them to
pass a metal detection scan. This is again assuming that the people doing
the scanning have some sense, because there are people walking around with
replacements for knewcaps/etc. that have metal in them.

These suggestions, while they would increase the cost, are feasible today,
and could be implimented.

If you have any others, or criticisms, let me/us know.

Fred

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