Common sense about these airborne Terra 'Lerts:

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

"Nobody needs to actually destroy a jetliner these days to ignite a debilitating plague of panic and foolishness....

Meanwhile, the ultimate and destructive irony is that we've responded to news of the infiltrated terror plot not with increased confidence -- confidence in knowing that most would-be bombers are unskilled fanatics whose plans are prone to failure, and confidence in our abilities to outwit such people -- but with yet more fright and self-defeat."

http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/2006/08/25/askthepilot198/

[madame defarge]

1. More common sense from a security expert

What the Terrorists Want
Schneier on Security

A weblog covering security and security technology.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

We're all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/08/what_the_terror.html

(I've posted this a couple of times today on different threads; it's truly a great article & worth the time.)