Could hoaxes be as effective as killing?

[Workingman]

Yesterday two airliners were escorted down to Atlanta USA due to bomb threats. There was also one earlier in the week over New York. Not long ago the Spanish rail network was targeted and late last year the RAF escorted a plane down to Stanstead. There will have been other cases we have not heard about.

The beauty of hoaxes, from the perpetrator's point of view, is that they are as cheap as a text message. All they have to be is credible. The number and type of targets is almost limitless and because of that they cost the victim a huge amount in resources, disruption and security. These things, and vigilance, have to be kept up for as long as the campaign goes on. The authorities could never ignore a hoax because the first time they did they would be hit by the real thing.

[TheOstrich]

Then you need to catch the hoaxers (easily enough done in some cases, I suspect) and try them in the courts as if they had carried out the real thing ....

[Suff]

I'm thinking that when these acts are committed in international space, then we need an international place to try them. Where, of course, we can have international rules to punish them. Like hanging......

[Workingman]

This all came up from something I read on a comments page.

A poster was saying how such a tactic could tie us up in knots. I won't give his examples but it went along the lines of hoax, hoax, hoax, real thing, hoax, hoax...............

I could understand what he was saying, and I agree with both of you: such acts should be treated as the real thing and punished accordingly.

[Suff]

I don't see any other option but to treat them as the real thing the whole way through. Which means anyone doing this kind of thing suffers the full consequences as if they had done it. Right up to and including the death penalty.

It's really harsh and not the way we would like a progressive democracy. However I, for one, don't want to be in a shooting gallery because we're too wishy washy to deal with it.... Not that my mind would be any different if I didn't travel so much. I would never put anyone else in a position I did not want to be in myself just because I lacked the will to act in a measured and direct way.

[Workingman]

It has just been on the news that a hoax caller had been put through to David Cameron in No10.

There are no details about what was said, but the caller claimed to be Robert Hannigan, director of GCHQ and that his "unsecured" mobile phone number was known to the caller.

It goes to show that security can never be seen to be 100% effective.