<story><title>Why Aren&apos;t There More Terrorist Attacks?</title><url>http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/05/why_arent_there.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ja30278</author><text>I&apos;ve been increasingly wondering about this, and I&apos;m not sure I agree with the article.&lt;p&gt;Schneier asserts that &quot;It&apos;s hard to sneak terrorists into the U.S.&quot;, which is hard to swallow given the essentially unchecked flow of immigrants coming across the Mexican border every day. Why would a terrorist fly into a major US airport, when he could just as easily fly into Mexico and then walk across the border (carrying as much cargo as he liked). Think of the vast drug shipments that cross this border, and then tell me that sneaking across a small suitcase of biological agents would be difficult.&lt;p&gt;I also disagree that &quot;small attacks aren&apos;t enough&quot;. If you and 9 of your friends coordinate to roll grenades into 10 elementary schools in 10 different cities, I can assure you that you&apos;d make headlines, and bring daily life to a standstill as parents refused to send their children to school.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s also increasingly bizarre to me that terrorists would target airports or airplanes at all. Airports are the one place where security is most concentrated. Practically speaking, blowing up a plane is probably the most difficult option you could choose if you wanted to kill 300 people. Why not pick one of the other myriad unguarded &apos;soft&apos; targets where people gather?&lt;p&gt;Either terrorists are incredibly stupid, vanishingly small in number, or both.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Anon84</author><text>&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;     given the essentially unchecked flow of immigrants 
     coming across the Mexican border every day. 
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
The words missing there are &quot;poor Latin&quot; (immigrants). Coyotes are not stupid and want to be left (more or less) alone and free to conduct their business. They &quot;self-police&quot; themselves by selecting who they carry across the border, choosing:&lt;p&gt;1. People they can trust not to create problems along the way&lt;p&gt;2. People that will try to stay out of trouble in the US (if you&apos;re successful, you&apos;re more likely to try to get your family in as well and recommend the same coyote. If you&apos;re caught (specially early on) you might turn them in.&lt;p&gt;3. People that don&apos;t look suspicious (that might be undercover law enforcement, for ex)&lt;p&gt;And above all, they &lt;i&gt;KNOW&lt;/i&gt; that the day a terrorist attack within the US is traced back to them public outrage would make law enforcement come down on them with the heat of 1000 suns and the border would be closed tighter than Scrooges coin purse.&lt;p&gt;Smuggling in illegal aliens is illegal... but smuggling in terrorists is illegal, dangerous and extremely bad for business.&lt;p&gt;The same thing applies to drug smugglers as well. Collaborating with terrorism isn&apos;t in their best interest.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Aren&apos;t There More Terrorist Attacks?</title><url>http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/05/why_arent_there.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ja30278</author><text>I&apos;ve been increasingly wondering about this, and I&apos;m not sure I agree with the article.&lt;p&gt;Schneier asserts that &quot;It&apos;s hard to sneak terrorists into the U.S.&quot;, which is hard to swallow given the essentially unchecked flow of immigrants coming across the Mexican border every day. Why would a terrorist fly into a major US airport, when he could just as easily fly into Mexico and then walk across the border (carrying as much cargo as he liked). Think of the vast drug shipments that cross this border, and then tell me that sneaking across a small suitcase of biological agents would be difficult.&lt;p&gt;I also disagree that &quot;small attacks aren&apos;t enough&quot;. If you and 9 of your friends coordinate to roll grenades into 10 elementary schools in 10 different cities, I can assure you that you&apos;d make headlines, and bring daily life to a standstill as parents refused to send their children to school.&lt;p&gt;It&apos;s also increasingly bizarre to me that terrorists would target airports or airplanes at all. Airports are the one place where security is most concentrated. Practically speaking, blowing up a plane is probably the most difficult option you could choose if you wanted to kill 300 people. Why not pick one of the other myriad unguarded &apos;soft&apos; targets where people gather?&lt;p&gt;Either terrorists are incredibly stupid, vanishingly small in number, or both.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DrSprout</author><text>What you&apos;re missing is that nothing occurs in a vacuum. People don&apos;t like being associated with terrorists, especially not people helping immigrants across the border. If you go to Latin America, they&apos;re often even more bigoted than Americans are - and I&apos;m not talking about gringos. The level of hatred for blacks is positively revolting from a North American perspective.&lt;p&gt;So Mexico really isn&apos;t a great entry point for a dark-skinned Arab, unless he speaks Spanish with a flawless accent (though given the variety of Spanish accents, that&apos;s not necessarily that hard.)&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62;I also disagree that &quot;small attacks aren&apos;t enough&quot;. If you and 9 of your friends coordinate to roll grenades into 10 elementary schools in 10 different cities, I can assure you that you&apos;d make headlines, and bring daily life to a standstill as parents refused to send their children to school.&lt;p&gt;If you&apos;ve managed to coordinate 10 different homicidal suicidal maniacs in 10 different cities to kill a bunch of people on the exact same day (and somehow managed to find 10 who won&apos;t tell anyone anything that suggests they&apos;re doing something suspicious,) aside from the fact that that is very hard, you&apos;ve definitely evolved to a large-scale attack.</text></comment>