"I'm genuinely perplexed about why they haven't."

Because the threat is greatly exaggerated. Were there (especially suicidal) hell-bent terrorist throngs just poised to strike, so many soft targets abound -with high visibility and potential casualties - there would be no way to stop them from constant strikes. We are "protecting against" Hollywood-style plots; those are simply the easiest for most folks to imagine without much effort. Big explosions, aircraft drama, heroes, negotiations. Attrition and guerrilla warfare are proven tactics and much easier to pull off - if the intent is to inflict damage. Just fear, that's another set of tactics altogether.

But, hey; I may be perplexed, too.

What decade are you living in? Or, to be kinder, someone already took your super autopilot idea and kicked it up a notch: auto-take-off, auto-to-destination, and auto-land are standard. Your pilot (on commercial flights) is a robot (several to be more precise). The humans are there for moral support, to communicate issues to the ground, to reoprt the weather conditions to the ground, and as final backup in case the FCS (n+2) all go bad. Rockwell Collins That may initially seem unsettling (the airlines seem to thing you would think so), but I think it's probably safer and offers a better flying experience. Whenever I fly in some corner of the world using very old aircraft and no FCS, you have a noticable difference in landing especially.

Also, this gear is nowhere near new, has been standard since the 90s... that, of course, raises assumptions, hypothesis, and the like. Don't read too much into that, it can get rather maddening.

Rockwell Collins FCS-700 and accessories - for Boeing, similar models for other aircraft. Soon to be similar tech in cars, as well - but that's old news.

Are we stuck in a view that the US Govt cannot be considered terrorist despite their actions? "They" are on all of our side.

Wait, are you and I even on the same "side"? Are you Red or Blue? (I wouldn't pick "Other" if I were you...) But, no, I'm probably just paranoid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_United_States_law

Maybe YOU don't have that right, like if you're incarcerated. Are you? Incarcerated?

No worries, the next round of Presidential candidates will have one leading candidate offer to get rid of Guantanomo Bay, er oops, I mean the illegal (unconstitutional) searches... Also, not to be a pessimist, but there isn't much that people are willing to do that will be able to undo this. You think marching in the streets in hundreds of thousands will change it? Voting in the next election? Angry chatroom posts? Ranting on your blog? Just having a drink and pretending like it's not that big of a deal? I doubt it. But good luck and godspeed.

Perhaps the most important element in maintaining relevant citizenship and participatory democracy; however, apparently not important enough to summon people to count votes (like jury duty) or even have "officials" manually count all votes with observation, oversight, and verification. I love techno gadgetry and innovative doodads - but when it comes to voting on what our government does and how it acts I go Luddite. I mean paper and pencil on a form simple - not even "scantron" bubbles. Illiterate or otherwise unable to cast a ballot with paper and pencil? Issue your votes to two election officials or come up with some better idea. Every vote ought to be manually counted in the presence of officials with double verification. People volunteer for this kind of thing - hell, even if it costs thousands of dollars for the full day of counting (likely less, done by precinct) it seems like a small price to pay to keep the potential for corruption out of our political institutions (or this area of them at least). Even computer scanned bubble ballots could be (relatively) easily manipulated in the posted results. Simply keep the margin out of the range that triggers manual recounts and there are not legal grounds for reviewing the archival hardcopies. Why risk it?

Not really addressed in BttF, agreed. Primer, however, is another story. They depict a time travel method that is working in time with atomic movements incrementally (roughly speaking) and therefore succinctly addresses the matter of relative proximity shift. Of course, their approach did not allow a simple method of traveling across millennia...

there is no need for computer technology to be incorporated into voting. in fact, it unnecessarily opens the system to fraud. ANY database solution is inherently open to corruption on a massive scale without the ability to audit the results. people (around the globe) have been casting votes for hundreds of years without the need of a black box intermediary. in america, as most places there are plenty of volunteers who will monitor polling stations and tally the ballots. should staffing ever become a problem, summon citizens in a manner similar to jury duty. (although, i seriously doubt this in any where near being problematic.) the volunteers count ballots using the basic count/recount/audit methods used by most schools selecting asb officers (albeit with any additionally required security measures?). this process is incredibly simple and causes "election rigging" to require massive manpower and coordination to achieve - in contrast to electronic voting (including scantron and every other method i've heard of) which is moderately complicated to coordinate and opens the possibility of fraud without recourse. no need for punch cards. no need for electronic terminals. no need for databases. paper, pen, volunteers, calculators, supervisors.