Right. One could walk onto a domestic airliner with a couple of pounds of nitrocellulose explosive and a detonator today*** and not even be questioned about it, nor would ANY of the current electromechanical technologies employed by the TSA detect it. Psychological and ethnic profiling plus detailed questioning by a trained professional would easily catch someone attempting such, but NO NO, picking on minorities and foreigners is MUCH more devastating to them (sarcasm intended) than having some stranger gawk at my wifes naked body in a scanner or letting her be groped by some lecher of a TSA guard who flunked the psych exam required to work at McDonalds is to her. Not to mention the fact that the GAO's independent analysis shows that the radiation dose absorbed during a routine scan series is, at a minimum, 10X what the TSA and the manufacturer claims it is. If I'm in another country, well then I have to submit to whatever they see fit there, BUT NOT HERE. To turn your previous question to me on its ear, which is more important, my and my family's personal right to privacy, right to be secure in our selves and possessions against unreasonable search an seizure, and our psychological peace of mind or that of some non-U.S. citizen who has no such rights under our constitution? I say MINE.
Non-metallic weapons+++ and "old-school" conventional explosives are totally undetectable by the machinery you espouse. A nut-job out to kill people on a plane is 99.99% detectable by psych profiling.
Now, let's talk bioweapons...want to kill a plane full of people without resorting to explosives? I can name you at least 6 "bugs" that will do the trick. Want to inoculate a plane-load of pax and then let them spread a disease to, say 1/4 million people before the CDC even realizes they have an epidemic on their hands? That can be accomplished also. All we need is a seed stock and common labware from a high school or undergraduate microbiology lab. The seed stock for MANY human pathogens is available commercially TO ANYBODY from the ATCC (
http://www.atcc.org) for a nominal processing fee. We can incorporate genomic (not plasmidic) multiple antibiotic resistance into bacteria in just a week or so. MRSA can be obtained from any hospital. Viruses are a bit trickier, but the CDC's repository in Atlanta is a smorgasbord of opportunity and their security is worse than a 7-11 at 3 am if you know what you need and who on the campus has routine access to it. Biologicals are totally undetectable to the screening systems. (but much more effective sprayed onto the salad bar at a rest stop restuarant)
Chemical weapons? Same deal. Carry on the precursor macromolecules and catalysts / enzymes, then "build" it in the lav. Doesn't take much to get the job done. Three pax with less than 3oz each collaborating, and again, not detectable at security.
How about good ol' physical destruction? Anyone with an AMM can figure out how to disable an airliner's systems from the pax cabin. It isn't rocket science. Need privacy or at least a short head start? Gain access to the crawl spaces through the access panels in the rear lav floor and ceiling in most Boeing equipment. Can't stop that with a screening machine either.
The bad guys haven't TRIED to thwart our security measures, yet. If they had tried, there would be a LOT more dead airplanes and people. The only sociopaths to try it recently, those who made the headlines, were too stupid to pound sand in a desert and they were not terrorists (except by George "Alfred P. Newman" Bush's definition, in which anything that moves and "isn't with us" is a terrorist). Not all mass murderers are terrorists. A smart terrorist would go though TSA security like a hot knife through butter. But, they don't need to. One, its easier to go around it by becoming an airport or airline employee. Two, they've got us chasing our own shadows already, and that was the intent all along. Taking credit for the subsequent idiots' attempts merely serves their purpose of keeping us at it.
Mark my words. The next big terrorist event will have nothing to do with aviation other than their mode of travel to the U.S. in the first place.
***How? By simply rinsing 80:20 cotton-polyester blend clothing fabric briefly in a 2:1 mixture of sulfuric acid and nitric acid, then rinsing it in water and drying it. Turns the cotton into a wearable explosive that would not set off ANY electronic sniffer. The detonator? The striker wheel from a simple butane lighter or any other spark source. BTW -- nitrocellulose = guncotton, the original smokeless gunpowder. Pack it into a confined space once you're on the plane and you've got a bomb, approx 6X more powerful than traditional gunpowder. Need it in a different yet just as undetectable form? Use 100% pure cotton instead. While wet, compress the processed cotton in a jar of petroleum ether. Turns it into a plastic that can be machined and moulded into just about any shape - fake CDs, computer cases, cell phone protectors, shoe liners, you name it. (Goes by the common name collodion, and used to be the the base material in film stock. Nowadays its also commercially available in both solid and liquid form - used by bioresearch labs for mixing custom DNA and protein analysis gels). Collodion is so flammable that once ignited, it will even burn under water - it provides its own oxidant during decomposition. In fact, pouring water onto a "dry" collodion fire will convert the fire into an explosion. In large masses collodion is also a contact explosive, just bang it together and it goes BOOM.
+++ I flew 1/2 way around the world -- New Zealand to the US and then all the way across the US -- with a 8 inch ceramic-bladed Benchmade hunting knife in my carry-on two years ago. Forgot I had put it in the shoulder strap pocket of my knapsack when we were hunting Tahr in the Southern Alps; didn't remember it until I was unpacking at home. It went through x-ray screening no less than 4 times and was never flagged by the screeners. So much for technology solving the problem.
RE quote: "Our way of life has survived.".
No, it has not.
