Thursday, October 06, 2005

Wired News: Terrorists Don't Do Movie Plots

This article from wired brings up a really good point. Rather than trying to protect specific targets we should be taking much more general approaches to protecting against terrorism and funding intelligence, and disaster response capability. Right now if I was a terrorist I'd stay away from airports, subways, sporting events etc and hit somehting random that would scare the crap out of people like blowing up some school in Anytown USA, or detonating a carbomb on the bay bridge to send the message that no one's safe anywhere. Ridiculous limiting of nail clippers on a plane won't protect against this, but better intelligence can help.

Admittedly beefed up security at ports and airports isn't a bad thing bad, but current levels are absurd. There's no way you could take over a plane today with 10 guys with real knives, let alone nail files. The other passengers would beat them to death with their bare hads if they had to.