Shouts from the desert

Bruce Schneier, the leading expert on computer security, has written a piece for Wired News in which he states that all the extra security put into places at airports since 2001 has done nothing to improve the real security of air travel. The substance of the article can be summed up by one short snippet:

Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcement of cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. Everything else &emdash; Secure Flight and Trusted Traveler included &emdash; is security theater.

The most important part of this is "passengers who know that they may have to fight back". The World Trade Centre attacks were a dramatic show of force, but by any reasonable and objective analysis they were a one-off that can never be repeated because passengers now know that they are faced with the prospect of certain death if they do not fight back. In such circumstances they will, by sheer force of numbers, overpower any hijackers. The terrorists know this, and this is reflected in the fact that there have only been 15 hijacking incidents (including suspected hijackings) in the 4 years since then - significantly less than the annual average in the years leading up to 2001 - and there has been no genuine terrorist hijacking of a large aircraft since then. Of the hijackings that have taken place, most have ended quickly with the hijackers being overpowered by security officers, crew or passengers.

This reinforces the recent comments by Amanda Vanstone, and Bruce Schneier has similar things to say about her comments.