Breaches seen as terrorist tests

Washington Times ^ | 1/16/04 | Audrey Hudson

[kattracks]

The arrest of a Sudanese passenger carrying bullets after a trans-Atlantic flight from Washington Dulles International Airport to London this week follows a series of breaches, and an airline security analyst suspects terrorists are testing the system.

"It would be a mistake to brush this off," said Charles Slepian of the Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center. "We should be more concerned with their ability to blow up a plane than to hijack one."

[Wally_Kalbacken]

These folks are smart and evil. That's why the cheapest method of dealing with it could be, in fact, things like spending $87B to stabilize Iraq. And killing as many of these bastards pre-emptively as we can.

[CyberAnt]

"security analyst suspects terrorists are testing the system"

Geeeee .. I wish I could get paid .. I thought of that over a week ago; and in fact there were several of us on FR who agreed that the terrorists might be testing the system.

[John H K]

I've always felt the test theory was nonsensical.

DRY RUNS are a different deal, as we know the 9/11 hijackers took the flights they later hijacked.

And hate to burst your bubble, but people have trotted out "It was a TEST!" for pretty much every single incident that people thought/hoped was a terror attack in the last 2 1/2 years, but turned out not to be. It's a theory that's a lot older than a week :-).

No point in wasting people in "tests" when they get caught.

Remember, AQ really doesn't have all that many people to work with...especially remotely competent ones. You're looking at hundreds at best.

And the negative of alerting security when caught massively outweighs whatever could be "learned" from a so-called "test."

[endthematrix]

FReepers are ahead of the issues, time and time again.

[CyberAnt]

As my Pastor always used to say .. you never have to worry about a wild fire because there's always a wet blanket to put it out!!

[HangThemHigh]

You've got a point, I was also thinking they would not want to sacrifice valuable resources, after all, cold blooded killers who are also willing to blow themselves up are not all that common.

But, do you think the "test cases" might be lukewarm Islamofascists, not willing to take the big plunge and thus no great loss if caught? The real bad guys would need to make sure the test person was not traceable back to themselves, but that shouldn't be all that difficult.

[P.O.E.]

Perhaps they're trying to habituate the system in order to raise the bar, so to speak. Kind of like Moynihans "defining deviancy down". Or like car thefts - they happen so often that they don't get a lot of attention. And thus, through inattention, they can slip through.