Could British invention foil terror bombs? (opens in new tab)

People don't view the impact of death merely in terms of body count. If we did, we wouldn't care about serial killers or child abductions or people shot by police. We devote major resources to fighting terrorism not because of the body count, but because we feel it deeply unjust to allow terrorists to kill innocent people to make a political point, especially when that political point is an attack on fundamental precepts of our society. Terrorism isn't just an attack on people; it's intended to be an attack on our institutions and our society.

Because (it feels) like it's not possible to properly debate the subject in public. As a little/normal person the answer is always the same: "But but what if it was your mother/girlfriend/daughter that died in the attack?!". These are the same people that probably have been into contact with someone who has directly dealt with the consequences of police corruption, yet won't ever support "making the police's job harder".

Once an attack "gets through", which will always happen eventually, anyone that didn't support the PersonalRights-Devouring Anti-Terrorist Bill will get crucified by the press and their opponents.

Most people don't appear to care about numbers, or facts or evidence. They only seem to care about pushing their ideology (normally authoritarianism) that "makes them feel safe", rights and freedoms be damned (which is why I can never take the US's obsession with "rights and freedoms" seriously).

It's because this "something" is attractive for media, causes lot more fear than "boring" stuff like car crashes or diseases and, of course, can be politically exploited.

I think humans have a cognitive bias that makes them fear risks more if they perceive "ill will" behind it.

A natural disaster is scary and can kill a lot of people, but to most people it feels more impersonal.

When someone is targeting people directly (serial killers, murderers, terrorists) it feels scarier because there is an intention to harm.

This bias is stronger that probability. Even if someone lived near a volcano that had a 5% chance of killing you every year, I bet that same person would be more scared of a terror attack that had .01% chance of killing you per year.

This is reflected in our legal institutions. If you kill a person accidentally, even through neglect, that is involuntary manslaughter, but if you kill deliberately, that is murder.

I live in Boston. I had friends that were in the World Trade Center when the planes hit, then terrorists blew up our marathon and my kids had to stay inside all day during the ensuing manhunt. So that's twice I have been personally affected, and I am really just an ordinary citizen.

Yeah, soon we will be like "God forbid if we run out of terrorists.." because peace could really ruin our economy.

You should tell that to women and kids who were hit by chemical bombs from British Muslims in Rojava.

>that causes little deaths compared to most diseases or social issues. cost little compared to most economical or educational issues. has little long terme consequences on the country compared to internal and external policies, laws, politics and visions

9/11 was an extra 20% on top of US murders in 2001. The Paris attacks also clock in at an extra 20% of the murder rate in France. Larger versions of sophisticated ambushes like the ones in Paris or Mumbai could very conceivably run up death tolls in the thousands. These people would kill millions of us if they could, so why exactly should we let down our guard?

Not to mention that murder is not the totality of terrorism's effects. When people critical of Islam are repeatedly targeted by terrorists, we all lose our freedom to speak our minds. We live in societies almost completely free of political violence, which has allowed an amazing flourishing of industry, technology, and culture. Terrorism is a huge threat to that. Europe in particular has a serious problem on their hands, given how many European-born Muslims are alienated from and hostile to Western society.

>is a direct consequence of social, economical and educational issues and a by product of policies, laws, politics and visions.

Huh? Isn't this true for any societal issue?

This is a device to make money.

All they need is for it to be installed in ONE airport and then they can say "Hey, look. They've got it installed because they are anti-terror. Look at you. You don't have one. You know what that looks like to all of us? Yeah, you are pro-terror. To be anti-terror you need this device."

Any politician who gets one of these installed using government anti-terror funds! Sweeeet! They can strut around telling everyone how much money they are spending to foil terrorists and ACTUALLY HAVE A BOX THEY CAN POINT AT. <press release/photo shoot>

An effective deployment of the device would probably involve a sort of sluice gate setup, that will detect traffic through an outer perimeter and, when triggered, seals an inner perimeter. The distance between the two is designed to be greater than that which can be covered on foot in the time the device takes to make a detection.

That, of course, ignores a central lesson of the Brussels attacks: They happened before security. This device might make it reasonably hard to get explosives into an airport building and concerts halls (because thousands theatres like the Bataclan are totally going to invest millions in these devices and the necessary physical reconstruction), but there are plenty of other buildings where large numbers of people congregate, including busy streets that will be impossible to protect like this.

Also, having a mechanism to seal your targets inside during an attack is totally never going to be abused by the bad guys (and if you evacuate on a trigger, you just need a few guys with AKs outside the exits).

That said, I'm sure there are good applications for an effective non-intrusive explosives detector (eg in making airport security smoother) -- these attacks just ain't it.

You don't understand. My rock repels tigers; hence, presence of tigers must be due to the absence of my rock.

Did I mention that my rock is on sale?

And by spraying markers on a lot of people you can either:

    - cost a lot of money by forcing events to be cancelled;
    - enforce more invasive/costly security measures;
    - diminush the value of the security mesure and pass a bomb in.

But this is what's strange with terrorists : they strike ma as utterly incompetents. There is so many easy ways to fuck things up, and they always do the ineficient and hard things. My father worked as a head of security for a national company, we used to discuss of all the way you can really hurt companies, people and society. It's not even that hard and costly. Are they lacking of imagination, or not really trying ?

Do you want to see what happens if you slip a big knife into someones carry-on? It's harder than "covertly dabbing" someone, but not impossible. On the other hand, big knifes are substantially easier to get your hands on without drawing attention to yourself than even microscopic amounts of Semtex. Yet, it doesn't happen, so I think we're safe here.

> "If it had been on the doors there, it would have stopped people getting in."

Problem? People blowing themselves up on airplanes. Solution: Check them for bombs before they board the airplane.

Next Problem? People blowing themselves up in the lines before the bomb check in the airport. Solution: Check people outside the airport.

Next Problem? People blowing themselves up in the lines outside the airport Solution: Check people for bombs before they board the trains for the airport.

Next Problem? ...

s/[airplanes|airports|trains]/<crowded place>/g

Apparent Actual Problem? Crowds of people are hard to protect without making the crowds live's very uncomfortable.

Actual problem? People want to blow themselves up in crows of people.

Solution: Spend more effort making the world a place in which people do not like blowing themselves up anymore and/or in which they are too lazy to be motivated to do it.

Plan?