Object Lessons: Evan Booth's Post-Checkpoint Airport Weapons 208
Jah-Wren Ryel writes "In early-2013, independent security researcher, Evan 'treefort' Booth, began working to answer one simple question: Can common items sold in airports after the security screening be used to build lethal weapons? As it turns out, even a marginally 'MacGyver-esque' attacker can breeze through terminal gift shops, restaurants, magazine stands and duty-free shops to find everything needed to wage war on an airplane."
We mentioned Evan's work several months back; now his not-just-a-thought-experiment exploration of improvised weapons has been cleaned up and organized, so you don't have to watch his (fascinating) talks to experience the wonders of the Chucks of Liberty (video) or the Fragguccino (video).
Wondering (Score:3, Interesting)
After watching the videos... did I just put myself on a list somewhere?
good news, bad news (Score:4, Interesting)
the good news is that he's made and excellent point. the bad news is that a shortsighted authority figure is going to loose his shit over this and evan is going to need a lawyer.
welcome to the dystopian present.
Re:So, time to scrap TSA/airport security checks (Score:4, Interesting)
Again, a popular opinion but again, naive.
What's naive is your blind trust in the government. I find it so naive that it disgusts me throughly.
What 'rights' are you violating making a search.
Your privacy, and it also violates the fourth amendment; those are the obvious violations. Where in the US constitution does it give the government the power to molest people who want to get on a plane? Nowhere.
I don't want to be harassed by worthless government (or private) thugs just because I want to get on a plane.
There are ways to make a proper search
You can't violate everyone's rights just because some people may be terrorists. I don't even think you can selectively violate people's rights. Just leave people alone.
people have been doing it for years, it's an accepted method of protection.
I don't care how long it has been around or how accepted it is; I think it's absolutely immoral and disgusting. If you cared about freedom at all, I dare say you'd feel the same way.
Go and do even a modicum of international air travel then imagine what it would be like if there were no checks.
I think freedom is more important than security to anyone with a brain. With that said, the terrorist bogeymen are largely nonexistent; you've been duped.
While I abhor the reports for TSA (I won't fly to the USA because of this nonsense) and I agree that most of the way the checks are done by them is 'theatre', having professionally trained, and accountable 'agents' (or whatever you want to call them) making appropriate searches at borders of countries is sensible.
I disagree that randomly searching people can ever be appropriate or sensible. Freedom is simply more important to me than your or my ability to feel safe.
We do not have such shrill protestations (at least as far as I can tell) in Europe
That sounds like a problem to me.
where frankly many of those countries have had a far more thorough search regimen than the USA
Yeah, definitely sounds like a problem.
Re:So, time to scrap TSA/airport security checks (Score:5, Interesting)
Even while cumbersome I much prefer sitting in an airplane where people had to pass a check than one without. Honestly, what would be your preference?
Honestly, I'd prefer that to travel without being subject to a warrantless search with no probable cause. I'd rather take a statistically insignificant risk and retain my Constitutional and human rights, as opposed to existing as an insignificantly-safer coward. I can't see the bogeymen in the shadows that the ruling class want me to fear; I only fear for our liberty.
If there were an airline that allowed passengers to board after passing through an old-style, cursory weapons check — the type of security that's still used at small municipal courts — or even no security, other than a reinforced cockpit door, I would have kept flying during the past seven years. The feelings I experience when my rights are violated are such that it isn't worth it for me to fly anywhere, for any reason. Until the Fourth Amendment and all-around sanity returns to US airports, I'll have no part in that degrading and unconstitutional display of cowardice.
Re:So, time to scrap TSA/airport security checks (Score:5, Interesting)
It is not naive the TSA is naive. If you want security you can have it by doing real security screening and not "security theater." Ask the Israelis about it some time. I flew out of Amsterdam the day after a scare, it was the first security screening I have ever had. Someone looked me dead in the eye and asked my why half of my passport was in Arabic. He looked at me, listened to me, and made a real judgment. It is all bullshit anyway post 9/11 everyone knows that even if the terrorists are able to kill 90% of the people of the plane they are still not going to be able to kill all the passengers plus the external target. By making the risk=damage*likelihood equation infinite they have closed that door for ever. Someone tries to hijack the plane I am on and I am reciting "we few, we happy few" and the then going to stomp those fuckers to death with evey other top level predator on the plane. I will feel bad if they cut the stewardess' throat but that is not going to stop me wrapping my coat around my forearm and pulling the handle out of my luggage and reminding him has he dies that I will bury him in pigskin with his feet pointing to Mecca.
Re: A Textbook False Dichotomy (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So, time to scrap TSA/airport security checks (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you think that the heightened security level has ...
Nope, it doesn't. Hardened locked cockpits and passengers will to aprehend and beat the shit of of scoflaws will do that.
Re:So, time to scrap TSA/airport security checks (Score:5, Interesting)
It is true that they may now start to resort to tactics that were not imaginable just a few years ago, ...
The sooner you realise that your attitude to a minuscule terrorist threat is actually the problem here, the better.
I would suggest you are suffering from a form of mental illness similar to that of obsessive compulsives who refuse to touch door handles for fear of picking up "germs". You cannot see the obvious facts for what they are: there is no significant threat from terrorism, and there never was one. The fact that you are willing to drive around in cars, or ride on the subway when a) there is a far higher risk of you dying from non-terrorist causes doing that (and pretty preventable causes too, given TSA-like funding) and b) terrorists could just as easily attack those as well, is plainly deluded when the price you pay in return for "safety" on a plane is so utterly disproportionate.
The sheer Owellian nature of what is going on in the minds of Americans like you is amazing. Land of the free? Don't make me laugh.
Re:Thanks a lot (Score:4, Interesting)
What he *should* have tested is whether or not the TSA's security rules are more effective than the old security rules. That is to say, could you construct a better weapon, one that's actually effective, under the old rules but not the new rules? I don't think so, but that isn't what he tested.
Re:So, time to scrap TSA/airport security checks (Score:4, Interesting)
That certainly doesn't mean that the TSA is the best approach ... something like Israel's methodology would make more sense.
Bulldozing the houses of anyone committing anything that could remotely be interpreted as an act of terror, with their elderly relatives still inside, would surely strike sufficient fear into other 'terrorists' that they wouldn't dare do anything!
(yeah I'm aware you are talking about the Israeli airport screening, which is demonstrably effective, just pointing out that the Israeli 'follow through' is nowhere near effective as a deterrent, just makes their opponents angrier).
Re:So, time to scrap TSA/airport security checks (Score:5, Interesting)
My job is also mostly about risk identification and mitigation as well. I am not a believer in root cause analysis. Proximate cause analysis is more interesting and more useful, which is why its what the legal system usually aims for. Your root cause analysis may be correct. We might indeed prevent a considerable portion of future international terrorism by dealing with the military industrial complex and putting in some cooler heads to run the CIA.
That would not do anything to address all the other crazy reasons someone might decide to use an airliner as guided missile. Root cause analysis fallaciously assumes there is some single point up a decision tree that lead to branch where the event was possible. In the real world there is often more than one way to get somewhere.
The proximate cause of the towers getting hit on the other hand was "passengers were able to gain the ability to alter the flight path of the aircraft" A secured cockpit door addresses that. It addresses it no matter if the would be perp does it because the CIA install an oppressive regime that denies him his freedom in east whocaresisatan or because the voices in my head tell me to smash things.