The Armored Door, Terrible Symbol of Our Security Needs

We will probably never know for sure what happened in the cockpit of the Germanwings Airbus A320 that crashed Wednesday morning in the Alps. We will know even less about what went through the head of the co-pilot, who, from all indications, deliberately caused the plane crash.

But this act doesn’t just involve one man, it involves all of us, and everything that we have collectively allowed since Sept. 11, 2001, and that we are getting ready to allow in France once again with the information law.

Because what we know is that the co-pilot activated the blocking of the cockpit door, that he locked himself in alone, that the captain knocked and, faced with the lack of response, that he attacked it with an ax, without success.

Between the captain and the co-pilot with unknown intentions, there is therefore a door, an armored door.

The Legacy of 9/11

Everywhere people are asking themselves about these doors; an airline pilot, cited by Liberation in its edition of Friday, March 27, said, “After two weeks, with the tools on board, maybe someone could damage it a little.”

And already certain airlines have taken measures to get around the danger of someone who locks himself alone in the cockpit, making the presence of at least two members of the flight crew mandatory.

We know why these armored doors exist. They’re part of everything that changed after Sept. 11, 2001. That day, four planes were taken off route by terrorists who got into the cockpits and took command of the controls. The answer was obvious: secure the cabins, which up until then had only been protected by light doors and were simply locked.

The measures taken were of two types: an armoring of the door and the dividing walls, and a locking system that allows a person present in the cockpit to make it impossible for someone else to open the door, if necessary.

This wasn’t a given. Already in 2001, The Wall Street Journal echoed the questions raised by these measures and the problematic consequences that they could have:

• Risk that the pilots would find themselves locked in and wouldn’t be able to evacuate in the case of an accident; or

• Accidents linked to a rapid loss of pressure in a zone close to the cockpit.

The hypothesis of a deliberate act of one of the pilots wasn’t imagined, but The Wall Street Journal explained that the debate is an old one at Boeing, and that it’s an old “dilemma.”

After Sept. 11, the dilemma was resolved. Under pressure from the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority, armored doors were installed in all planes. The terrorist threat took precedence over all other risks, and not just the unpredictable ones. Less than a question of probability, it was a political problem.

The armored door is a symbol of the state in which we have been plunged since Sept. 11: the acceptability of any measure, as long as the objective is guaranteeing our security against the terrorist risk.

Dangers to Freedoms

The armored door is on the endless and ever lengthening list of measures adopted since 2001 that, in wanting to protect us from certain dangers, expose us to others.

In this sense, the armored door is a terrible echo of the information law that comes under discussion Wednesday, April 1, and which creates clearly identified risks that will potentially influence public freedoms.

What are these risks, always ready to be sacrificed for the sake of security? The attacks on individual liberty, on the freedom of movement of people, the dwindling right to a private life, to private communication, the increase of control, the systematic suspicion of certain populations …

To this frightening list, the Airbus A320 crash adds new risks: personal insanity. But perhaps also a more collective risk, identified very well by a local person in the comments section: “By dint of armoring the doors against something foreign that feels dangerous, we don’t see our own unease anymore, and we prevent necessary relationships.”

Even if it is very difficult to understand the motives of the co-pilot of the Germanwings plane, we know that it was possible to carry them out because of our collective insanity: putting the terrorist risk above all other risks.