9/11 Changes In Our Society

On September 11, 2001 the unthinkable happened. It all started as an ordinary day, but soon matters took a turn for the worse. At the World Trade Center in New York City hijacked planes stroke into the two twin towers. In shock, no one at the scene had any idea on how to react or more importantly, how to help others stranded in the smoke filled buildings. That day strangers helped strangers escape the wrath of the spreading fire and smoke. However, the top half of the buildings were different. There was a giant crater in the sides of the buildings that merely separated the two halfs. Sadly, people on the top had little to no surviving. Since, their only choice was to stay in the smoke filled rooms some people jumped out of a possible 110
stories. Since this has been the scariest day in the US many things had to be changed in the country to prevent this from ever happening again, such as certain laws and security/routines in airports. One change in society is security and routines in airports. The days right after the attack airport security had to be managed immediately. First of all, there had to be stricter guidelines on luggage. Your bags must go through many different forms of security before you are able to access the plane. Also, only ticketed passengers could go through security. This would prevent a number of people boarding the plane that may have been hijackers. Since there were millions of weapons that have been able to pass security in the past, we needed to find a different way to detect these harmful and dangerous weapons before they get on the plane. New technologies and machines were created to detect these destructives items and weapons. Now the amount of dangerous tools on the plane have drastically decreased since the attacks of September 11th. When going through security you now also have to go through some new procedures since the devastating day. Removing shoes was never part of security but since many bombs were detected in the soles of shoes they had to add it to the list of part of the routine. Also, they also had to ban liquids from being on the plane. In past events liquids were a major ingredient in making bombs. Sadly, this had happened to often they had to make this decision. For the passengers safety cockpits were fortified majorly. Especially in popular airlines, bars were installed and cockpit doors were strengthened so that hijackers could not enter the plane (USA Today Cockpit Article). Also, for the pilots safety they are now allowed to carry guns and first class curtains are sometimes dropped if they don’t feel safe (9/11 to Now:Ways we have Changed Article). After 9/11 many changes were considered in airports after the attacks of the World Trade Center (Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001 Article). Another change in society is government laws.
One of these acts is very controversial and not everyone agrees with the idea of the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act is where the government can access your personal information without your approval. This is mainly for a terrorist investigation but has been used for other reasons such as drug cases. Another is the Attorney General Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations Act. Since September, 11th the FBI is now able to do intrusive investigations based on less evidence and proof of wrongdoing in the past. They are allowed to do a 24 hour physical surveillance without any factual information. One last act is the US Customs and Border Protection and Department of Homeland Security Act. This allowed suspicionless searches of documents and electronic devices carried by US citizens returning for an overseas travel. Before this act, the government could only go through documents if there was actual facts and proof for wrongdoing. Now, they can go through any documents or entire laptops without any proof. This is another change in society after the attacks of 9/11 (How 9/11 Changed the Law
Article). After the sad tragedy of innocent people’s lives of the attacks of the World Trade Center many changes such as laws and airport security were changed to improve the safety around the United States and even the world.
Many of the changes could be argued to be unnecessary but many things still have not been changed that should have been after the attacks. However, we have still improved. Sadly, there are still some horrid terrorist attacks still happening all over the world, it has definitely decreased since these new laws were introduced. In the future I hope that even more laws and routines are changed for the good to help improve our society and to decrease the amount of bad happening all over the
world.