Protecting Cities from Hijacked Planes 971
Kong99 writes "A group at UC-Berkeley has proposed Soft Walls to stop hijacked planes from entering a protected airspace. Interesting read especially since they claim it is 'hack' proof."
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Protecting Cities from Hijacked Planes
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Waste not, get your budget cut next year.
How close can they get? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just one concern...what's to stop the hijackers from busting the autopilot controls in the cockpit? I would think that it would be sensitive to bullets or repeated bashing. It's not like you need an autopilot when you're right next to a city, just point the nose and go. What kind of range should these no fly zones have, and what should be protocol for when an airport is in/next to a city?
Sounds dangerous to me (Score:5, Insightful)
SoftWalls (Score:0, Insightful)
Don't make the claim (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially do not claim that safety-critical systems are hack-proof, since even people who wouldn't normally try to hack them will try.
It's like security through obscurity- in this case more like security through non-boasting. The same thing applies- it doesn't really make you more secure, but it stops a lot of people from trying.
graspee
There's no practical future in this project (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a solution to a problem which will never come up again in anything near the form it did. It's interesting to think about and expand our engineering knowhow with but it's worthless as a Real Solution to a Real Problem.
Peace (Score:4, Insightful)
Peace in the middle east would also solve a good portion of the problem (from an engineering perspective) and it doesn't cost millions of dollars. AND it is immune to hacking.
-n
Pilot control (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow this makes me feel a little less safe. I know that so much of flying is electronically controlled now anyway, with autopilot and more, but the there still is the ability for the pilot to actively fly the plane if it becomes necessary, without the plane "fighting" him or here.
What if the terrorist attack came in a different way, and the pilot had to make "evasive maneuvors" (sp!) or something?
Re:There's no practical future in this project (Score:2, Insightful)
Hack-proof? Better be bug-free. (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't say I like the idea of a computer having the final say over the direction of an airplane. Even if the intentions are good, pilots need to have the final say. Even Air Traffic Control can't force a maneuver on a pilot, if he or she thinks it is not safe.
In other words: I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't let you fly there.
it has a database, so it's not hack-proof (Score:5, Insightful)
Wishful thinking or willful ignorance?
The database would have to be updated prior to each flight, because the zones would have to be flexible. Points of entry are the main database at each airport, the central database at some government facility, and of course every single aircraft participating in this. Factor in the execptions you know the congresscritters cannot avoid putting into any sort of regulatory legislation, like exemptions from participation from non-commercial planes of a certain size or smaller, and you have a system so full of holes that it would hardly be worth the cost.
I don't know which is more foolish... (Score:2, Insightful)
The reality is that people are [still] regularly getting contraband through security checkpoints. Great, there are bars on the cockpit doors now, but I'm not willing to bet thousands of lives on that alone.
I personally doubt anyone will TRY this type of attack in the near future, but to claim it will never work again seems pretty bold.
Hackproof? Bugproof? (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice system. I'll walk, thanks.
Re:How close can they get? (Score:5, Insightful)
But changing the restricted GPS coordinates in the avionics is what I was thinking. You need to have a way to get that information into the avionics in the first place, so that's the weak link. Presumably you'd have some kind of wirefull connection that could only be accessed from the outside of the plane. But that'd just mean someone on the ground would have to be in on the plan, which isn't farfeteched.
Also, this is a safety-of-flight issue. If you are on the edge of restricted space and you see a plane coming right at you you have to take evasive maneuvers. If this system prevented a pilot from taking appropriate evasive action that'd be a bad thing.
Silly. (Score:5, Insightful)
So what if you can't slam a plane into a building? Your only limits are your creativity.
If the airplane's softwall control can't be hacked, then perhaps the terorrists can make planes crash into things by guiding them with `pirate soft walls'. Or just making planes crash. I don't think terorriats are lla that picky and choosy.
This is dumb.
When will American politics wake up and address the injustices that are the real root of the terrorist problem?
Rubbish. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose for instance that an aircraft happens to suffer from a problem like multiple engine failure and the only way to avoid crashing into a densely populated urban area would be to trespass an area of protected airspace. Or the only possible landing opportunity might be an abandoned or smaller private runway or even a stretch of highway which would happen to fall under or near the shield, and this system would prevent the aircraft from maintaining an optimal course. Imagine the public outcry if there were ever a major accident due to the robot taking over. I guess the benefits of this system might outweigh such uncommon occurrences but I can imagine pilots are terrified of relinquishing such an amount of control.
Re:There's no practical future in this project (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, there is nothing preventing a dedicated individual or group from doing just this thing. If one owns their own large aircraft, (lots and lots of individuals own large commercial type aircraft) there is nothing to prevent crazed people from doing just this sort of thing on innumerable targets. The problem with terrorism is that it is almost impossible to prevent all possible events without a complete lockdown on society. The best possible solution is to prevent folks from feeling disenfranchised, uneducated and angry.
Re:There's no practical future in this project (Score:1, Insightful)
In which way will stories in the newspaper/on tv prevent a plane, crashing into a building at 300 mph, from damaging it?
Completely useless (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just yet more knee-jerk reaction by people who get a warm fuzzy feeling from pretending they're doing something useful, when in reality they are just wasting time money and effort.
Re:Repeat after me! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait.
I mean, it's why the Stock Market has been compromised by evil criminal masterminds manipulating the prices via electronic subterfuge.
Oh, wait.
Oh, I mean that's why terrorists have been able to bring the air traffic control network down by hacking into it.
Oh, wait
I guess you're extrapolating from the fact that web sites are often hacked and Microsoft Outlook is vulnerable to worms to the grandiose implication that this sort of system is inherently vulnerable. I think that's a big stretch of an extrapolation.
Re:hack' proof (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing that's not hack-proof is a system that's turned off, or broken too badly to run properly anyway. And maybe not even then.
Re:Emp (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Peace (Score:1, Insightful)
Peace in the middle east will cost millions, but only because anything involving washington costs millions. But you are right. Peace in the middle east will stop encouraging so many people to try and do 9-11 type things. This system will only stop one type of attack. It is a small subset of all the ways people can attack other people.
It is typical for Americans to try and solve problems by dealing with the symptoms, not the cause. See Western Medicine (Dr: Oh, you're sad, here's some pills to cover that up), war on drugs (Judge: Oh, you like drugs. You go to jail we can keep you away from them (like that even works)), etcetera, etcetera.
Re:It wo\uldn't work...... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Peace (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when?
Peace between Israel and Egypt costs billions of dollars a year in aid, assistance, fixed oil prices and so on.
The end of the Cold Wars costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year in securing old facilities, clean up and decommissioning weapons systems.
Peace between the Koreas costs billions of dollars a year in salaries, equipment expendatures, aid and assistance.
Even if Hamas, Hizbollah, Islamic Jihad and the Israels all sat down, smoked the peace pipe and buried the M-16s there would be people not satisfied and they would conduct terrorist operations.
Even if the United States hadn't Tomahawked the Sudan and Afghanistan following the Embassy bombings and played the Peace card to the Taliban there still would have been terror.
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, I'd think another issue is, how large of a city is considered large enough to protect? Do little towns get protected, or just cities of over a million?
Also, another note, in Chicago they have one of the airports directly in the center of the city, how does the plane get there? Or if there is a narrow pipe for them to fly down to the city, what if the plane needs to abort its landing?
Ossama's new training program. (Score:3, Insightful)
They could even allow planes to be hijacked from the ground if terrorists managed to take over air-traffic control sites.
Well, duh, if it works by radio, people will listen to it and figure out how to take control. If some big dumb company like Microsoft makes it, there will be a buffer overflow in some unnecessary chunk that gives complete control of the flight control system. I imagine a scenerio where a terrorist sends the "air-clippy" a specially crafted message that either renders the controls inoperable or gives control to terroist on the ground. Ha ha [min.net] is not very funny in the air.
Re:There's no practical future in this project (Score:5, Insightful)
It used to be that the standard hijacking protocol called for the flight crew to welcome the hijacker into the cockpit. It was assumed that the hijacker would not know how how to fly the plane and also wanted to live, and therefore would need the help of the pilot to land safely. Moreover, the pilots were trained to take the hijacker anywhere within the plane's fuel range they wanted to go, because the situation would be best resolved with the plane landed safely no matter where that turned out to be. That plan worked pretty well before 9-11-01.
The idea of having a suidical pilot among the hijackers worked exactly 3 times on 9-11-01. On Flight 93, the plot failed because the passengers and crew had been informed of the previous hijackings and they changed the defense. Knowing that their lives were already lost, the passengers had no incentive to cooperate with the hijackers, and the "Let's Roll" offense was formed.
Now, the cockpit door is locked before the first non-crew member is permitted on the plane. Nobody's getting into the cockpit during the flight anymore. Anybody trying to defeat the cockpit door lock will be seen, and will be attacked by the flight crew and/or air marshals... You've seen the stories on what they do to passengers who just try to stand up within the last 30 minutes of a Washington, D.C.-bound flight now...
It's kinda sad, when I was a kid they used to open the door and let kids look into the cockpit while boarding the plane. That's no more and will never be again.
Mod me off topic if you will (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't water yourself down. You're right (Score:3, Insightful)
But I'd bet good money the odds are much lower of a hijacker trying to use the plane as a missile.
Let's be blunt, planes are not used as massive suicide bombs on a regular basis. I don't know the stats, but I suspect a system like this would cause more problems than it was worth.
Everyone is raising all sorts of examples of situations where having a "Soft Wall" would be a very bad thing, and would cost lives.
I suspect Boeing is going along with this either because of a PHB who can't see past the end of his nose, or because they know it is too dangerous to implement but have to investigate it anyway for political reasons.
That or the article's claims of Boeing's involvement are overstated, inflated and limited to "They sold us some specs that are avaialbe to the general public."
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. The lack-of-a-clue is blazingly obvious in the last paragraph:
He doesn't seem to realize that in many scenarios activation of his system would amount to a fight between the pilot (on the spot with full human judgement, and theoretically with life-and-death authority over everyone else aboard) and the programmers (present by limited proxy, i.e. the hardware and software involved). Sure, human judgement is fallible, but A) it can adapt in real time, and B) machine "judgement" is usually just a stimulus/response system set up by one or more humans. If the program covers all contingencies, great... but is that really the way to bet?
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Peace (Score:3, Insightful)
Dangerous and foolish (Score:5, Insightful)
First, most cities are not "restricted airspace". There are no prohibitions against flying over all kinds of areas where just as much damage could be done as happened on 9/11. And in fact, you can't protect cities in this way, because they tend to put airports near cities. So this proposal fails to achieve its most basic security goal.
In fact, most restricted airspace is over isolated areas and is used for military training. It is restricted only so that combat pilots don't have to worry about accidentally ramming into jetliners.
Second, these days one of the main forms of security related restricted airspace is the Temporary Flight Restriction, TFR. This follows the president all over the country as he campaigns for the 2004 elections. But since the locations of the TFRs change daily and unpredictably, there would be no reliable way for the avionics to be loaded with the current TFR locations. Hence the proposal would fail to address one of the main current security concerns.
Third, there are significant safety issues involved. Every system is prone to failure. What happens when the gadget mistakenly activates and starts trying to turn the plane? The pilot will be fighting with the controls at a time when he may be distracted trying to land in bad weather. The system could easily kill many more people than it would save.
And fourth, there are occasions when there is a legitimate need to enter restricted airspace, such as during an emergency. A dumb gadget like this cannot be expected to understand that an engine is failing or that the control surfaces are damaged, and the pilot needs to get the plane on the ground pronto! Military bases, with their ultra-long runways and isolation from civilians, are ideal locations for emergency landings; but they are generally in restricted airspace. Again, imagine the scenario of trying to land a crippled airliner while battling a robot which insists that you don't have the right to land there!
All in all this is such a bad idea that it's clear that no one involved has any experience with the aviation business and what the real security issues are.
What about breaking key systems? (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically what I'm saying is...if the pilot purposefully loses control of the plane towards the right direction, can the "soft wall" system regain control? I'd say probably not, and it sounds like this doesn't help any problem whatsoever, and it certainly creates some:
I can see a pilot maneuvering around a big city, getting in line to land...accidentally he starts to move towards the "soft wall"...the system forces him to return, right in the area where there are other airplanes. That sounds like a traffic control nightmare, one more thing for those poor guys to be aware of, one more thing to give them ulcers.
Re:Hack Proof? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, if you don't mind the plane crashing immediately after you do this, that's a great idea.
You can't fly a modern passenger jet without electronics. End of story.
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it is always possible to emotionally coerce the pilots, such as by holding the people in the cockpit hostage.
Maybe it's just me but I suspect we're going to end up with a plane with not only a reinforced cockpit but also some sort of nonlethal incapacitation gear for the cockpit. Of course then someone will come up with the idea of holding the plane hostage with something on a deadman switch... But getting that on the plane may prove problematic. I suggest hiding it within a video game system. :P
How long until... (Score:3, Insightful)
Comatose passengers aren't likely to hijack a plane... Especially if they're isolated from the flight crew.
The way they did it in the 5th Element is the way to go...
Re:Pilot control (Score:3, Insightful)
We've seen probes miss planets because of software bugs. We've seen rockets explode because of software bugs. I don't want a peice of software overiding the pilot. I'll take my chances with the terrorists.
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:2, Insightful)
There is an opportunity for the pilot to be mentally (not physically) coerced into opening the door by, for instanding, killing passengers started with the women and children first. The soft wall has other problems but it does have some merit.
It sounds silly to me (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not going to happen again (Score:5, Insightful)
Standard procedure for a hijacking is to cooperate with the hijackers to minimize harm to the people on the plane.
If the people on a hijacked plane know that they are on a doomed aircraft, the attackers have no leverage. The Pennsylvania flight was different from the other three in that the passengers ignored the-plane-will-crash-if-we-use-cellphones rule, called their families, got the lowdown, and then attacked the terrorists. The terrorists lost. The mission failed.
Mr. Shoe-Bomb also failed because the passengers gang-beat his ass. Mission failed.
Every plane hijacked in the future will have passengers that will not cooperate. The pilots won't cooperate. Missions to use airliners as bombs are now useless: any sane attacker will of course now use other methods.
Creating softwalls and turning our country into a AA-covered bunker is idiotic. Attacks via planes can't succeed. At the very least, the pilots will slam the plane into a field to save the lives of thousands.
I worry at the irrationality of the actions of the people of the U.S. Shutdown of the Constitution. Illegal attacks against non-threatening countries. Concentration camp in Cuba, complete with execution chamber (coming soon). Cameras everywhere. Reading everyone's mail.
You know, the attackers communicated face-to-face, so NONE OF THIS WOULD HAVE STOPPED THEM.
We're turning the U.S. into an prison populated by people constantly agitated by their warden into a state of hysterical paranoia.
Listen, the people who really, really wanted to blow us up died in the planes. They are dead. They aren't in Iraq. They aren't everyone who speaks Arabic. They aren't being tortured in little white jail cells across the U.S.
Any future attack will come from a different front. And frankly, these men aren't that bright: they're cultists to begin with, so 9/10 of their brain cells are useless anyway.
The few loonies who want to attack us will do so no matter how many cameras are over our beds. Now, on the other hand, by attacking non-combatants all over the world, Bush Inc. has converted infinite good will into an implacable wall of resistance, not because of what we are, or the insanity of our enemies, but because of what we have done to people who had nothing to do with the 911 attackers. 2,000-10,000 dead in Iraq: Perle and Wolfowitz refuse to give an accounting. Bush has insulted and alienated the entire world when previously he had them firmly on our side. He's like John Adams wandering into Paris in the 1770's, who insulted and patronized the very people Franklin had so carefully cultivated into supporting the U.S. Adams, like Bush, nearly lost the war by his gross incompentency in diplomacy, his raw moral fanaticism, his ignorance of other nation's cultures, and his blind nationalism.
Soft walls won't save us from Bush's stupidlity in dealing with, well, ANYTHING.
Ri-i-i-ight. (Score:4, Insightful)
No way white Christians would ever launch a brutal armed campaign, kill millions of middle easterners, burn their homes and libraries and loot their cultural treasures, thereby setting their society back by thousands of years, all in the name of the Christian God and his holy book! I mean, white Christians wouldn't even think of such a...
Oh, wait...
Re:How close can they get? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Repeat after me! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:HOW ABOUT WE STOP TREATING THE MUSLIMS LIKE TRA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There's no practical future in this project (Score:3, Insightful)
One should make a distinction between the organizers and the individuals who martyr themselves. I am making no judgement on any group other than to say that I believe terrorism in any form is wrong, but on the whole, like any organization with agendas, the folks who carry out the actions are less well off, less educated, and at a distinct financial disadvantage. Thus the psychology of advantage and recruitment that brings martyrs into such action.
Not to pick on you personally, but it amazes me how all the information we receive about terrorism doesn't make the slightest dent in that comforting notion that they're just unhappy because they're poor.
No offense taken. I completely agree with you here in that I hold no such misconceptions about folks being unhappy just because they are poor. Rather they have strong feelings based upon belief and are reacting to what actions they see being perpetrated upon them and their beliefs. In many cases these feelings are perfectly justified based upon actions our government has taken and is taking. What many Americans have a problem with is that not everyone in the world wants to be like us and we need to respect that.
Re:Peace (Score:3, Insightful)
As a peace negotiator we can't take sides or else we take some of the crossfire.
Re:How close can they get? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:That applies.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Many people, probably many slashdot readers, understand that most muslims are peace loving and have no interest in killing us. There are people there who hate us, just like you've shown there are people here who hate them. It's usually the ones who know nothing about one another that choose to hate.
But I guess not wanting to commit genocide of a race is anti-American and too liberal for you, so I'll end my post here.
Re:I'm sure pilots will love this (Score:2, Insightful)
Third of all, how many space shuttle flights have there been in the last 10 years? And how many commercial airplane flights have there been in the last 10 years? How many people are monitoring the Space Shuttle flying? How many people are monitoring the average commercial airplane flying? Don't compare apples and oranges.
Oh and I almost forgot: you mention that the autopilot in Columbia _can_ be disabled. The autopilot mentioned here _cannot_ be disabled. Slight difference. Nothing worth mentioning. Until you need to disable it.
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:5, Insightful)
This system is trash. As you said, someone might have to violate the soft walls in order to avoid a collision. Since their can be no way to overide this an accident could easily happen because of this system. Unfortunately, it will probably get implemented anyway because the public loves their security blanket, even if it is covered with smallpox.
Re:HOW ABOUT WE STOP TREATING THE MUSLIMS LIKE TRA (Score:1, Insightful)
please, got brainwashed? Have you heard of Palestine? Do you remember when Iran was a democracy? Do you know about the dictators we support?
Re:HOW ABOUT WE STOP TREATING THE MUSLIMS LIKE TRA (Score:4, Insightful)
Like most simple ideas about peoples motives, thats almost entirely wrong. There are lots of reasons, one of the primary being the presence of US soldiers in their holy land.
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:HOW ABOUT WE STOP TREATING THE MUSLIMS LIKE TRA (Score:2, Insightful)
Testing your theory (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really believe that?
Not necessary (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason 9/11 happened in the first place was because pilots and passengers had always been taught to cooperate with terrorists under the assumption that the terrorists will land the plane somewhere and make demands. Once it was shown that hijackers will pilot planes into buildings (an attack unheard even by 'experts'), passengers (starting with the 4th hijacked plane) will gang up on a hijacker and prevent the hijacking from happening. And pilots will do anything to prevent a hijacker from gaining control of the plane.
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:2, Insightful)
No, as long as one plane is on the edge and needs to turn into the wall to get away from a conflict, it is dangerous.
As it stands, the computers in two aircraft nearing collision have a chat and decide on the two optimal vectors, and then move the planes along those vectors automatically...
I'm sorry, but this is a very poor description of the TCAS system. First of all, you assume both aircraft are so equipped. What if one of the planes is a small Cessna -- it has no TCAS. Second, even if they "chat", the only resolution may be for one plane to turn into a "soft wall". Third, they do NOT move anything automatically. They issue a warning and tell the pilot what to do. It is the pilot's responsibility to decide if that is the best course of action.
When you create a system like this, you have to imagine the likely failure modes, and then imagine the new failure modes it introduces. Like, "pilot MUST turn into a wall to avoid a collision with another aircraft, cannot, and they hit". Like, system breaks and puts the aircraft into a hard left bank.
You cannot install such a system in an aircraft safely without having a means of disabling it. One example of this concept is the autopilot. The autopilot has small motors that move the controls to keep the plane level and straight (if that it what it has been told to do). Sometimes, rarely, this system goes bonkers. Pilots find themselves fighting an autopilot that wants to climb, and the autopilot is usually stronger. The result is a stall/spin/crash/death. That's why there is a button, usually on the yoke right near the pilot's finger, that disables the autopilot. At the first sign of trouble, he holds that button, and then has time to figure out what is happening and reach over to the panel to turn the autopilot off. To have it otherwise would result in a pilot needing both hands just to overpower the autopilot and having no hands free to turn it off.
That aircraft should not be near the wall off area's anyway,...
I'm sorry, but airspace is either restricted or it isn't. There is no rule that says you cannot fly "near restricted airspace", only that you cannot fly into it. There will be aircraft near it, there will be aircraft that are allowed to fly into it (Police and medical helicopters, e.g., and probably news media).
And what is this nonsense about switching to "airport beacons" if an attempt at blocking the GPS is detected? Airport beacons are those white and green rotating lights -- the only navigation information they provide is to help the pilot find an airport at night. They won't help keep an airplane out of a "soft walled" area.
This is a bad idea. Any sane pilot will oppose it, unless it can be shut off instantly, and if it can be shut off, it is worthless. The only value it would have is to keep innocent pilots from wandering into such an area by accident, and they aren't a threat anyway, and there are already GPS units on the market that will sound an alert to wake them up.
"Hack proof?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Pull the breaker, bye-bye soft wall.
Technology is not always the answer (ooo, can I say that here?)
Hell, no. (Score:5, Insightful)
The concept of "pilot in command" is extremely important in the FAA's rulebook, and is hard set in aviation culture. It's very simple; one person in the cockpit is the pilot in command (PIC), and he or she is directly, completely, and personally responsible for anything that happens to that plane while it is in the air.
The FAA's rules also clearly state that, in an emergency, the PIC is authorized to do anything necessary to take care of the emergency, even if it breaks every other rule in the book. For instance, if my engine failed and there was no civilian airport in range, I could legally land on a city street or a military airstrip, fly through restricted airspace, override ATC commands, etc.
So what happens if my engine fails, I need to get to an airport on the other side of a major city, and that city is "protected"? Suppose I have just enough altitude to get there at my best glide rate. Will the airplane override my inputs and resist my approach over the city?
What happens if "soft barriers" prevents the pilot from safely responding to a systems malfunction? A lot of flight does occur over dense urban areas (the final approach to Santa Monica airport passes just a few hundred feet over some downtown towers). Who is responsible for the non-optimal response: the pilot in command, or the soft barriers system?
"Oh, but that'll never happen," one might respond. Go to the NTSB's aircraft accident report site and read some reports. Aircraft are complex mechanical devices, and they can and do fail all the time, often in subtle and bizarre ways.
As a pilot, I won't get anywhere near a plane with "soft barriers", even as a passenger.
-John
Pilot will love this (not) (Score:2, Insightful)
Good idea, but too strong a lobby against it.
Re:Dangerous and foolish (Score:4, Insightful)
Second, as was already pointed out, onboard software can't be expected to know, for example, when a passenger is having a heart-attack and the only airport for miles is in a 'restricted area'. 91.3(b) explicitly gives pilots the right to land at a military base, or near a Presidential TFR, or anywhere else they damn well please in such cases. With the new system: "We didn't crash into any buildings, but Bob died, oh well". I smell lawsuit. What about an emergency override, you ask? The system can't have an override switch anywhere a pilot could get to it, or it's effectively useless (hijacker flips the switch).
Kill this thing, and let the pilots get back to flying their planes.
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:2, Insightful)
Uh, no. Perhaps you should stop getting your political reporting from Fox News?
Re:Sounds dangerous to me (Score:5, Insightful)
What if I setup my own NDB/DME and get it to transmit an identifier saying "new york". Then put it at the end of a runway...
I am a pilot in training. This isn't funny. It's insightful. Faking a VOR is mind-numbingly simple, and an un-overrideable transmitter in the wrong place activated at the wrong time could be catastrophic. Placed at the end of a runway, it could be used to force an aircraft to immediately initiate an extremely hard bank in a situation where the airspeed and other factors make that maneuver basically instant death. There is also the problem that stuff goes wrong. (And yes, I do keep track of where the autopilot circuit breaker is) As a pilot, I simply cannot have a flight system that seizes control of the aircraft because of the possibility that it may go wrong. No one would begin to tolerate such a system if installed in an automobile. I would hate to think that we don't extend that thought to aircraft simply because so few of us are pilots.
Re:There's no practical future in this project (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember being a kid on an Eastern Airlines flight to Orlando and I got to go into the cockpit while the plane was flying. The pilot also gave us little plastic wings. Seems foolish now in retrospect.
Keeping the world safe from trained kid terrorist/pilots is what we learned on 9/11? I may disagree on whether that was as foolish as present policies. If thousands of people can die every year just from the right of smokers to blow smoke in non-smokers' faces and the department of homeland security isn't concerned about that, I am willing to risk letting kids back into cockpits and, even their parents.
Dumb and untimely (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course, every system has it's weakness. What if the hijacker threatened to kill, or did kill passengers if the pilot didn't open the door? Do all our pilots have steele reserve?
The best way to fight terrorism is to figure out why people are desparate enough, or mad enough to kill you. Eliminate the reason and you eliminate terrorism--And NO "they hate our freedom" is not the reason. Our freedoms are being eaten away...and anyway, why didn't they attack Japan or England, or France, or Canada? Those places have just as much freedom as we...
I wouldn't be surprised if the next terrorist attack is from a Militia-man going extreme over the Patriot Acts I and II.
Replace the HD?? (Score:2, Insightful)
So, why not bring your own database / replacement-HD with you when you hijack the plane?
What's the ROM do if it detects a harddrive swap in flight? Crash the plane immediately? Make everything a no-fly zone? Land at the nearest airport, lock the doors, and send knock-out gas through the cabin?
Of course, Lik Sang will sell a modchip. You can't have a computer in a plane without a working Linux port available!
Re:Repeat after me! (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, if someone did hack into the trading system, what are they going to do? It would be damned hard to route money to places it wasn't intended. So that leaves take the system down altogether. Do you really think something of that magnitude could be covered up?
uh huh... (Score:1, Insightful)
Feh! This has got to be one of the most assinine ideas I've heard yet... Hack proof... yeah right. Do ANY of these nitwits read the Risks list?
Here's some off-the-napkin-back attack methods:
1) "Trusted" mechanic downloads an "upgraded" set of coordinates to the softwall system. Terrorist controlled plane flies right in... It shouldn't be, so no one thinks twice to watch it until it's too late...
2) Terrorists in the general vicinity of the area spoof the GPS signal... It doesn't kick over to VOR, so it must be OK...
3) Just in case they spoof it too well, they spoof the VOR boxes too (remember, they're basically unmanned sheds located in the middle of fields all over the place...)
4) The system is installed, but the fuse is removed? And the indicator light is removed too...
5) Don't fool with the system at all... Just start crashing planes near restricted airspace, and blame it on an inability of the pilot to react to the emergency because the "system" prevented the pilot from doing so... Besides the lawsuits that will end up eating companies and individuals, it will throw so much FUD into the public domain that the systems will be out almost instantly...
6) Don't crash planes - but have pilots report problems with controlling the planes - whether it happens or not... Again, FUD causes the public outcry and the systems are removed...
7)Upload a set of coordinate corrections to the system via whatever "trusted" method there is, and reprogram the system to delay them from taking effect until the plane is at some pre-determined altitude... Once it's there, ALL coordinates become softwalls... Then the plane can't do anything except shutdown...
In short, doing anything that removes control from a pilot is a BAD idea. I'd much rather stick with the threat of being blown out of the sky if one violates a restricted area than trusting a computer to keep me out... Besides, there's always the possibility of EXPLAINING why one is in a restricted area and being escorted by F-16 out of the area if there's a situation that necessitated going in there in the first place (emergency, mechanical/electrical/software failure, etc...)...