On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 10:42:50AM +0100, Alan Pearson wrote: Won't help. You can easily hide a knife somewhere in/under your clothes on your body. No need for hand luggage. And if the knifes are free of metals you won't find them - save by strip searching _every_ passenger. I don't think having a bunch of security guards strip search (including closely checking out bodily orifices) every passenger before every flight is going to make flying more popular. And it still won't provide absolute safety, even at this cost. That _might_ help a little. But the extreme costs and logistics involved in this will make it prohibitive for prolonged use. And it can be overcome to: Just have a bunch of people with very good memory fly the flight in question for a while and have them check out the passengers. They might spot some of the antiterrorists. And on doomsday, the antiterrorists just will be neutralized first - at least it will be tried. Then you might better forget about flying. It is _extremly_ hard - if not impossible - to guard against a _very_ determined suicide attacker. There is an old rule in the security business: You _cannot_ reach absolute security, you just can make the price of breaching the defenses much higher than what can be gained by it. This will protect against _most_ possible attackers, but unfortunately not against all. There will always be someone who is willing to pay _any_ price to breach a given defense. And on very bad days, some of those might succeed. Regards, Alex. -- We have gone from a world of concentrated knowledge and wisdom to one of distributed ignorance. And we know and understand less while being increasingly capable. -- Prof. Peter Cochrane, formerly of BT Labs