Please enable JavaScript.

Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.

The discussion on whether the events that took place on September 11th…

- - - - Every purchase one makes with a credit card, every magazine subscription one buys and medical prescription one fills, every website one visits and e-mail one sends or receives, every academic grade one receives, every bank deposit one makes, every trip one books and every event one attends, all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as "a virtual, centralized grand database.
      - The terrorists Information Awareness program (TIA) program would seek to identify patterns of conduct that indicate terrorist activity
      - Taking advantage of the integrative power of computer technology, the system would allow the government to develop hypotheses about possible terrorist activity, basing itself entirely on data that are already legally available
  - - - “American Muslims have already lost many of their civil rights. "All Muslims are now suspects," Hooper has protested bitterly. The most salient outward sign of this is said to be the ethnic profiling that now occurs routinely in this country, particularly at airports but elsewhere as well-a form of discrimination widely considered to be self-evidently evil.” pp. 30.
      - “This emasculated system did manage, even so, to pinpoint two of the September 11 terrorists on the day of their gruesome flight, but prevented any action beyond searching their luggage. As Mac Donald points out, had the system been allowed to utilize all relevant criteria, followed up by personal searches, the massacres might well have been averted.” pp. 33
- - - - “If we want to ensure national security, then removing restrictions on the private sector and letting the market take its course is the best solution. Such a strategy would fortify internal security, facilitate economic health, and free government to pursue legitimate constitutional duties, all without infringing on the rights and liberties of the American people. It was a policy that kept the Millennium Bug at bay. It's a policy that will work today.” pp. 9
      - “The September 11th terrorist attacks themselves demonstrate how private initiative is the better route to security. No government agency managed to stop the attacking aircraft once airborne. For all our considerable military might, targets in Washington and New York were sitting ducks. It was the heroics of private citizens on Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania when passengers staged a counterattack against the hijackers that proved to be the only successful measure taken against the attackers that day. Moreover, it was private citizens, along with airline staff, who stopped shoe bomber Richard Reid from blowing up Flight 63 over the Atlantic Ocean.” pp. 9
      - “Airlines, as property owners and businesses seeking to earn a profit, have a direct and compelling interest in securing their physical assets and in providing a safe and inviting environment to customers. The government employee at the airport, even if he or she is a good, competent person, is nevertheless a mercenary of sorts, with much less at stake, and, therefore, with much less motivation to do a good job.” pp. 9
      - “The single most effective thing that's been done in this regard is to retrofit much stronger cockpit doors, to deny terrorists access to pilots and controls should they manage to get on board. But the rest of aviation security policy is an inconsistent mix of overkill and underprotection. Mandating 100 percent inspection of checked bags for explosives, but not of carry-on bags, makes no sense. Neither does inspecting 100 percent of passengers for metal but not for explosives. Likewise, why inspect 100 percent of bags but not the cargo that flies alongside them?” pp. 41
      - “The TSA that Congress created is a far cry from what I'd like to see. To begin with, the failure of airport screening to prevent the 9/11 attacks stemmed directly from the Federal Aviation Administration's failure to define any sort of meaningful performance or training requirements for airport screeners.” pp. 44
    - - Airlines could hire armed security personnel and station them aboard flights
      - A more effective policy, and one in keeping with the natural right to self-defense - as well as with the Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms - would be to allow the airlines to defend themselves, their customers, and their property in the event of an attack, thus, arming pilots
      - Simple cockpit barricades, which the airline industry has now installed at relatively low cost, can prevent all 9/11-style attacks
      - Responsibility for airport security should be returned to the private sector
- - - - Nevertheless, the commission paid only minor lip service to gaining control of our borders and focused its main emphasis on recommendations that proposed vast new powers for the federal government, along with serious new infringements of the rights of U.S. citizens
  - - - The planes ended up crashing in the states of Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York