What if an airline came out saying that they have fully trained aircrews and staff that can handle close quarters battle? If it was real, I would buy a ticket on that plane every day, knowing that the TSA won’t protect me, but the company I am flying with will (and so will my fellow passengers).

interesting topic. however i must point out that “Wisdom of the Crowd” refers to the collective opinion of a group and not the opinion of the individual within the group. As you rightly stated there are many good people “in a crowd”. Good – being an opinion within the collective does not imply that the crowd is good.

Personally I think the crowd is stupid. The collective psyche of a crowd is manufactured through the media. In addition, most of the “good” that the crowd agree with is based on the consumption of manufactured goods and emotion.

The primary reason why I don’t think your policy would work is for the same reason it is in place. The current policy is based on the “fear of the crowd” which has been manufacture in the media. Should individuals start to “think” and contribute to the policy they might also question the rational. Should the rational not “hold water” then the policy would be questioned and hence security companies would fail to have this level of control over the crowd. Bla, Bla, Bla…

Crowds work to a certain level but individuals change things. The greater question should not be on increased security but the demolishing the barriers and integration societies. Again, bla, bla, bla…

Anyway, Mark, thanks for kicking the topic in the air. I think your blog (and provocation )is great to enable people to talk/communicate and engage. This has much more value to global security than a stupid logical machine at a long queue of agitated crowd.

Let us suppose I get a flight from Hong Kong to Seattle for e.g. are all Cantonese people terrorists ? I’ve met people in the US who don’t speak English. Are they bad ?

The irony is the tag “wisdom of crowds”. Crowds are stupid. That’s why they are crowds, they push and bumble along a nucleus of motivation that has no accountability, so you never know if it is right or wrong.

Just because a load of people do something doesn’t mean it’s right, which is why a court will always be used rather then public opinion and why saying “but everyone else did it” is not a defence.

This is not it.

Some people don’t want to die meaningless certainly by act of terrorism which put the fear in us. Some rather die by trying having seen and acknowledge the fact rather then sit like sheep to act. And its this fear that makes people reckless we don’t want that.

Its a government task first making a program that has rules and safety measure to act on and guarantee checked with and by company’s(government or private) who give security service with accurate trained personal on places where threats like this may happen.

Chaos is the last thing we need. Its the same with ambulance going through traffic with sirens and lights you don’t prevent these guy’s of doing there job or reaching there destination.

This post raise difficult questions thinking about regulating stuff on the web is one thing reality about this other another.

Once the new security measures tipped me off to how easy terrorism /had been/ (and to some degree still is) I began to realize that scarcely anyone wants to be a terrorist. Surely this is in our favor.