The author of the article is the one who rightly explains that the only thing that has made us safer since 9/11 is locking cockpit doors and the knowledge that passengers should not comply with terrorists. In fact, that last one was learned so quickly it disrupted the 4th plane of that very attack.
Everything else is security theater.
Re:Close the Washington Monument
by cookiecaper on Thursday December 02, 2010 @05:52PM
(#1964004)
I don't know that you could really get away with it in the lavatory either. Those smoke detectors are meant to stop people from having a cigarette, which doesn't necessarily emit that much smoke, so they're probably tuned to be pretty sensitive, right? But yeah, I assume the guy wouldn't really care if he was going to blow up the plane; attendants probably aren't in the habit of storming the lavatory when the smoke detector goes off.
All it takes is a terrorist bright enough to try and set light to their bomb in the toilet rather than sitting surrounded by other passengers while fiddling with a fuse and lighter, and the system has failed. These attacks are failing because the chosen attackers are stupid, not because the system is effective.
Air Marshals. 4.2 arrests per year average, $200m per arrest. A very, very expensive comfort blanket.