Laptop Ban on Planes Came After Plot To Put Explosives in iPad (theguardian.com) 286
Last week, United States and United Kingdom officials announced new restrictions for airline passengers from eight Middle Eastern countries, forbidding passengers to carry electronics larger than a smartphone into an airplane cabin. Now The Guardian reports, citing a security source, the ban was prompted in part by a plot involving explosives hidden in a fake iPad. From the report: The security source said both bans were not the result of a single specific incident but a combination of factors. One of those, according to the source, was the discovery of a plot to bring down a plane with explosives hidden in a fake iPad that appeared as good as the real thing. Other details of the plot, such as the date, the country involved and the group behind it, remain secret. Discovery of the plot confirmed the fears of the intelligence agencies that Islamist groups had found a novel way to smuggle explosives into the cabin area in carry-on luggage after failed attempts with shoe bombs and explosives hidden in underwear. An explosion in a cabin (where a terrorist can position the explosive against a door or window) can have much more impact than one in the hold (where the terrorist has no control over the position of the explosive, which could be in the middle of luggage, away from the skin of the aircraft), given passengers and crew could be sucked out of any subsequent hole.
Thanks Samsung! (Score:5, Funny)
From where you think they got this "exploding electronic" idea, humm?
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And here I was going to guess Hollywood.
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Re:Thanks Samsung! (Score:5, Funny)
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Probably just left-handed.
Re: Thanks Samsung! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Thanks Samsung! (Score:4, Informative)
This ban has NOTHING to do with what logo is painted on the aircraft, but depends entirely on the airports involved.
Flying from Paris to Chicago? Middle-Eastern and American airlines have the same rules -- electronics allowed, even on a Middle-Eastern airline. Flying from Istanbul to New York? Once again, same rules for Middle-Eastern and American airlines -- no electronics, even on the American airline.
So, explain to me how this is supposed to prefer one airline over another? I am really waiting to hear this one.
Re: Thanks Samsung! (Score:4, Interesting)
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It could, but it kind of goes against the GP's narratives of middle eastern being better than "own shitty alternatives" because frankly most of the world's airlines are better than American ones, and there's a metric shitload of hubs to chose from.
Unless you think this was some mass global conspiracy designed by the USA to push profits to Asian / European airlines.
#americafirst.
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flight paths (Score:2)
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I don't know if it's true of all the impacted airports, but I believe that in most of the cases (it's certainly true of Istanbul and Dubai), there aren't any American passenger airlines that fly to them.
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Those are codeshared flights that are not operated by United or Delta. If you actually click on the "Check Your Flight" link next to United or Delta, you're taken to a page that does not include either airline in the dropdown.
For example, while you can buy a ticket from United to fly from New York to Dubai, you'll be flying on a Swiss Air aircraft from Zurich to Dubai, or a Lufthansa aircraft from Frankfurt, etc. Do a search for flights to Dubai on United's website and you'll get a whole bunch of flights, a
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From where you think they got this "exploding electronic" idea, humm?
/. probably. That's where I get all of my terrorist ideas from.
Plans to put explosive inside eye glasses! (Score:2)
Reminds me of a conversation with a colleague (Score:2, Interesting)
A colleague of mine was **adamant** that because he could quantify the amount of harm Bush had done to the country in terms of lost troops, money, etc. and could not do the same with Obama (Arab Spring, Benghazi, etc.) that Obama was simply not in the same league. My response was that Obama was actually worse because while Bush weakened the old order that kept a lid on the extremists in the name of spreading dumbocracy in the Middle East, he didn't help overturn regimes like the Mubarak or Gaddafi regimes w
Re:Reminds me of a conversation with a colleague (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think most people really understand why the West is (more or less) organised, developed, peaceful, democratic (more or less).
And I wish there was a simple answer. But the list of factors just keeps growing. There are many lands in the world where nation states just will not start up, no matter how much aid is given nor ordinance be dropped.
A major factor is the tribal nature of societies, which don't transition well into nationhood because its government institutions become tribal, nepotistic, and so simply raise resentment amongst the youth who are not well connected. Look at the global corruption index for a measure of why having fair, open, meritocratic, institutions are essential for countries to "work". And how do you make an institution meritocratic and fair if everyone you hire is tribalistic and used to the tribal loyalty and connections way of doing business?
Then, that's just one factor. And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying tribes are bad. They have been humanity's answer to social order for 50,000 years or more. It ain't going anywhere anytime soon.
A place like the UK started to rewrite the social rules starting with the Magna Carta 800 years ago. It has had time to work its way into the institutions.
Then, on top of that, you have a regional war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. They run proxy wars though all sorts of groups, in a region where population growth and failed modernity has provided a lot of young unemployed men who love the idea of brotherhood and so readily form militias and want to kick ass. All that weaponry funding is coming from somewhere, namely the Saudis and Iranians and in turn, their Western allies and their Russian and Chinese allies.
And that's just for starters, before we even get to the 100 shades of Islam and the authoritarian nature of that religion which on the one hand, makes people want to have a peaceful, ordered, highly moral life, yet on the other hand, is quite uncompromising and has a retro-revival ethos going, making it highly puritanical, and is being actively weaponised by various political and religious leaders.
And that's before we even get into more complex factors.
So basically, no, just repatriating migrants and getting tough with regimes isn't going to get very far.
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I don't think most people really understand why the West is (more or less) organised, developed, peaceful, democratic (more or less).
And I wish there was a simple answer. But the list of factors just keeps growing. There are many lands in the world where nation states just will not start up, no matter how much aid is given nor ordinance be dropped.
Well, we don't have to look to far to see historically what happened. There generally were a whole bunch of people with money that had a common enemy. Then they started up a war by themselves. Large geopolitical foes of the enemy then dropped some cash and troops to help them along.
Winning is a bit random (depends a bit on the relative strength and will of the large geopolitical forces), but if the small country won, the country needed to be rich enough to survive without the support once the large benef
Re:Reminds me of a conversation with a colleague (Score:5, Insightful)
A major factor is the tribal nature of societies, which don't transition well into nationhood because its government institutions become tribal, nepotistic, and so simply raise resentment amongst the youth who are not well connected. Look at the global corruption index for a measure of why having fair, open, meritocratic, institutions are essential for countries to "work". And how do you make an institution meritocratic and fair if everyone you hire is tribalistic and used to the tribal loyalty and connections way of doing business?
Two problems:
1) Tribalism is a massive problem because we (the west) didn't give any consideration to tribal boundaries when we carved the Middle East and Africa into "colonies", and we didn't try to correct that before we granted independence, so the modern countries share the same moronic borders as the old colonies
2) Tribalism isn't even the biggest problem -- we've continually interfered in the building of power structures in the quest for cheap mineral resources for our countries' companies. We've installed dictator after dictator, constantly destabilising the region decade after decade.
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Tribalism is a massive problem because we (the west) didn't give any consideration to tribal boundaries when we carved the Middle East and Africa into "colonies"
I always figured the west paid great consideration to it, then purposfully split things up to cause the maximal problems.
Tribalism isn't even the biggest problem -- we've continually interfered in the building of power structures in the quest for cheap mineral resources for our countries' companies.
There's dumping too. The we heavily subsidise agric
Re:Reminds me of a conversation with a colleague (Score:5, Insightful)
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You are totally correct.
People from Western countries have absolutely no idea that someone from a tribal culture that has had democracy somehow foisted on them simply cannot vote for someone who is not from their tribe. Given a choice between candidate A from their tribe and candidate B from some other tribe they will ALWAYS vote for candidate A, they effectively have no freedom to choose candidate B because it goes against everything they believe. Policies of the candidates don't even come close to being c
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set up a policy of aid in the form of both financing for repair in countries like Syria and direct military assistance to the damaged states to help them stamp out the Islamist uprisings quickly, brutally and with as little collateral damage to non-combatants as possible.
The third criteria is impossible when you include the first 2. A perfect example is the air-strike on a truck bomb that killed over 100 people in Mosul. And even without limiting damage to non-combatants it would take a hell of a lot longer than 6 months. Any form of "quick, brutal" military action whose stated goal is to stamp out an Islamic uprising would just cause even more uprisings to pop up, as well as quickly cause moderate or non-hostile Muslim nations to quickly rethink their positions re: the
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While I agree with much of what you wrote, I think there is a future problem caused by the why the coalitions are formed now. Daesh represents a common enemy, so it is easier to strike up a coalition to defend against it. However, once that common enemy goes away, Iraq and Syria will be left with several heavily armed groups which now have battlefield experience and no record of having worked in harmony among themselves previously except to defeat Daesh.
In such an environment, one would hope for central gov
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While I agree with much of what you wrote, I think there is a future problem caused by the why the coalitions are formed now. Daesh represents a common enemy, so it is easier to strike up a coalition to defend against it. However, once that common enemy goes away, Iraq and Syria will be left with several heavily armed groups which now have battlefield experience and no record of having worked in harmony among themselves previously except to defeat Daesh.
In such an environment, one would hope for central governments to provide for a common future, except that there is too much blood on Assad's hands and he's too Alawite to play well with the other groups in Syria, and Iraq's government is more or less Iran's poodle. The outside countries are willing to fight to the last Syrian and Iraqi, and they will not suddenly stop supporting their proxies.
The only avenue I see for those two countries are representative democracies with a separation of religion and state, but the tribal and the Islamic parasites running the mosques will never allow it, they have too much to lose...and it is so much fun telling everyone else how to live, without that, the parasites themselves see no reason to live.
In Syria's case there are only 2 paths to peace: Assad steps down or he wipes out the opposition. Sadly it seems as if it will head towards the second option, especially if Syria turns into a proxy war between US and Russia (domestic politics may inadvertently push Trump towards that in an attempt to distance himself from claims of being too cozy with Russia).
But my master's thesis touched on some of this: reintegration or disarmament of militias is one of the hardest parts of counterinsurgency operatio
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Yes, the answer to violence is usually more violence.
Unfortunately, in many cases, yes it is. Not everyone on this planet belives in tolerance, or that peace through compromise is a good thing. While I very much wish this wasn't the case, I also understand that wishes are not reality.
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Re:Reminds me of a conversation with a colleague (Score:5, Insightful)
And why do you think they want to kill everyone? Because they are just mean, mean people?
Yes.
How about 50 years of American imperialism turning their land to shit?
Ever heard of Boko Haram? The west never attacked them, yet they are an anti-west Islamic terrorist group who kidnapped 237 girls from a school to use as slaves/sex-trade objects.
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I have heard of these "peace treaties." That's the part where your enemy rebuilds their logistical infrastructure, buys more arms, and recruits more militants, right?
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Specifically, there are some problems that have only one answer, and that answer is violence.
It is not a comfortable truth, but a truth nonetheless. The problem with this is two fold.
One: Never try to fix a problem that requires the application of violence with another method.
Two: Once you have determined correctly that violence is the answer, it must be applied quickly and without reservation.
This methodology is scalable, from the individual to the intergalactic.
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I don't know if you're trolling or not, but almost every major conflict in human history has been resolved through violence. The only one I can think of that was truly major and didn't directly play out that way was the cold war. Even considering all the conflicts in asia that resulted, we thankfully never met the full potential of the cold war (several incidents where we came very, very close to nuking eachother). Of course, we're still dealing with the effects of the cold war, particularly with all the
Then why just 8 countries? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's assume this is a real threat And obviously it is doable, you could open up an ipod, rip out the guts, and put other stuff in its place. Why just 8 countries then? If its a real threat, its a global threat. Its not all that hard for someone to fly to another country first and then travel from an allowed airport. If this is a real threat, it should be from all airports. Otherwise its just games.
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Otherwise its just games.
First time flying?
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It's obviously bullshit. Why would you try to use one of the thinnest tablets available? Why spend all that money?
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It's obviously bullshit. Why would you try to use one of the thinnest tablets available? Why spend all that money?
THIS! If I was going to bring explosives on a plane it would be within an Alienware laptop.
Re:Then why just 8 countries? (Score:4, Interesting)
Let's assume this is a real threat And obviously it is doable, you could open up an ipod, rip out the guts, and put other stuff in its place. Why just 8 countries then? If its a real threat, its a global threat. Its not all that hard for someone to fly to another country first and then travel from an allowed airport. If this is a real threat, it should be from all airports. Otherwise its just games.
I flew from San Jose, CA to Salt Lake City, UT on Friday last week. I was "randomly" selected for slightly-enhanced screening, even though I was going through the TSA Pre-checked line -- and so were the two people before and after me. In this case the screening enhancement was to apply a bomb sniffer to all of my electronic devices, after they'd been xrayed. So, based on what I saw, at that airport on that day, the TSA had turned the random selection probability way up (perhaps 100% -- all five of the people I saw go through were "selected") and implemented a specific check for bombs in electronic devices.
So it appears to me that the TSA may actually have responded across all US airports, though not with more screening, not a device ban.
Re: Then why just 8 countries? (Score:2)
I believe the issue is the quality of the security screening in these countries.
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Risk assessment. Grinding a global economy to a halt also implicitly puts lives a risk. The low-hanging fruit in reducing the risk is banning from 8 countries; a number that could very well increase.
Meh. It could be "risk assessment," but in this case it's more likely to be a combination of security theatre (always a factor with "terrorism") and CYA. If an actual terrorist event happened using a method like this -- no matter how unlikely -- and it came out that the governments KNEW something like this had recently been discovered, all sorts of inquiries would ensue.
Politicians don't want that. So, they slap some limited ban together that showed that they "did something" even if it's worthless (and
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There's no way that banning countries has an effect on the global economy.
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I know that other cpuntries will xray your tablet, so such a plot will be obvious. They will also xray your laptop and such explosive will show up as a big incongruous block. I can't speak for those 8 countries but i would be surprised if they did not xray baggage.
1. The xray machines for carryon baggage can't easily distinguish modern explosives from lithium-ion batteries which take up a large part of the volume of modern electronic devices.
2. It's probably easier to get some confederates inside the security operation in these countries.
3. An explosion in an airplane hold inside a bag won't have as much force as a tablet held against a the cabin wall.
So, the authorities are just taking a limited countermeasure to this threat (not banning cabin tablets from everywher
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I know that other cpuntries will xray your tablet, so such a plot will be obvious. They will also xray your laptop and such explosive will show up as a big incongruous block. I can't speak for those 8 countries but i would be surprised if they did not xray baggage.
It's a bit of an open secret, this -- a laptop battery shows up on an x-ray as a big block, and an appropriately-shaped explosive device in a battery compartment is therefore not incongruous. This is why we had to switch on our laptops at security in the late naughties, and still do in some airports. What baffles me is how this latest move helps -- a laptop in hand luggage can easily be x-rayed, swab tested and sniffed by a dog. A laptop wrapped up in the middle of a hold bag is a lot harder to check.
Re:Then why just 8 countries? (Score:4, Insightful)
However pretending to yourself that your political opposition is stupid; now that says something about you.
No larger than a smartphone ?!? (Score:2)
Sucked out of an airplane? Not likely (Score:4, Informative)
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Mythbusters is not very reliable regarding busting myths.
http://www.ripleys.com/weird-n... [ripleys.com]
http://www.historyandheadlines... [historyandheadlines.com]
I guess if you modify the search a bit, you find plenty of more incidents.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Sucked out of an airplane? Not likely (Score:5, Informative)
That wasn't the myth they were testing. As other people have pointed out, people can and have been sucked out of airplanes. As I recall, the episode you're talking about even mentioned that fact.
What they were testing was that a bullet hole in a plane could lead to "explosive decompression" and cause a large hole to suck people out. Specifically the myth that a terrorist with a gun shoots a hole in a window and that causes a large hole that people get sucked out of. And they determined that such a scenario just wouldn't work: airplane glass won't fracture like that, and the hole the bullet creates wouldn't be large enough to cause enough suction to suck people out.
But they never tested anything like an exploding iPad or laptop. They were specifically testing shooting holes in a plane with a gun.
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But they never tested anything like an exploding iPad or laptop. They were specifically testing shooting holes in a plane with a gun.
In fact they also tested [youtube.com] blowing up a window with explosives, and then blowing out the side of the plane with a very large explosive. They still concluded that modern planes are very structurally sound and that it would suck for the person sitting next to the explosives, but everyone else will just get a bunch of air rushing past. Also covered in the more extreme scenario of a spacecraft decompressing in zero atmosphere [nerdist.com] by Kyle Hill of Because Science.
Re:Sucked out of an airplane? Not likely (Score:5, Informative)
Aloha Airlines flight 243 [faa.gov] lost the forward section of its fuselage. The flight attendant standing in row 2 near the front of the failed section was hit in the head by debris and fell to the floor [ntsb.gov]. The flight attendant standing in row 5 near the rear of the failed section, with all the force of the cabin air behind her, was blown out by the decompression.
Airline fuselages are designed to suffer decompression only in a small section [wikipedia.org]. You literally design weak sections surrounded by a lattice of strong sections, so a crack or failure cannot unzip the skin around the entire plane as it did in Aloha 243. The failure aboard Aloha is suspected to have started on the left side (one of the passengers noticed a crack by the door while boarding). And the theory is the crack failed producing a small hole. The flight attendant was blown towards the hole by outrushing air, and her body momentarily plugged the initial hole [honoluluadvertiser.com]. This caused a pressure hammer from the air behind her rushing forward towards that hole blew out the entire forward cabin overhead.
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More relevant to me, that's a pretty big hole in the plane
1 person dead, the make a hole and suck people out strategy is not very effective. Probably why it hasn't been tried.
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Take a look at this picture: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tTab0Xt... [ytimg.com]. That "roof" was the upper half of the cylindrical fuselage skin, from the cabin floor up. The flight attendant was blown out by a multi-hundred-knot wind.
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Mythbusters does less science than the catholic church.
Not surprising, given that the entire university system was invented by Catholic monks who sought to uncover the physical rules of the universe. (Investigating the rules of physics was seen as investigating God's work, and therefore a holy endeavour.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's my fault. I tried to get a laptop ban through security but it got spotted because it failed the laughtest, so they confiscated it and incarcerated it into their procedures.
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Nah. Just ramp up whole body scanners. We can make them, they're just a bit slow. A couple of years of research, a couple of billion dollars in grants and you can get on a flight for your well earned vacation only to find that you have terminal cancer.
Progress!
Re:so we're basing these on inventiveness? (Score:5, Insightful)
we still dutifully strip off our shoes and throw out our bottled water in homage to the all mighty security theatre.
Not me! Paid the $85USD fee, and for the next 5 years leave my shoes on, laptop in bag, and pass through xray only security in 5min. (ps, no fully body scanning)
Do you work for the TSA or something? Because the fact that Americans have to pay $85 to be afforded basic 4th-amendment rights (and common decency in their privacy) should be something you LAMENT, not lord over the plebs who haven't paid up to get basic freedom back.
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Way to stick it to the man.
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$85 was not the only price you paid.
Fakes (Score:2)
Do counterfeit iPads even exist, ala the community of Hackintosh tinkerers?
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Yes and no.
I saw a counterfied iPad on my last trip to Thailand, but as I "knew" all model types of iPads, I recognized imediatly that it is not an iPad. (It was an Android tablet with Apple Logo etc. on it, made from plastics ... but looked quite convincing on the first glance, but the formfactors etc. were all wrong).
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I'm wondering if it's more like a real iPad inside a fake extended battery + case. The iPad will function at the security check. And the explosive material disguised as an extended battery might appear convincing enough to pass.
Wouldn't it be more likely to be actual iPad externals with maybe a small Pi-type computer driving a small iOS fake (you really only need to simulate power-up, lockscreen/home screen, etc in case they turn it on), replacing most of the internals with explosives? Only issue with that I can see is having to make sure that it physically resembles an iPad when x-rayed. Since tablets in the US can remain in your bag when passing through security, using a specially designed case could help with that as well.
Will increase risks of cargo hold fires (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Will increase risks of cargo hold fires (Score:4, Insightful)
"There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know." - Donald Rumsfeld
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"There are known knowns. There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know." - Donald Rumsfeld
But are there unknown knowns? Are there things we know but don't know that we know?
Inquiring minds want to know.
"Combination of factors" = "We are lying to you" (Score:2)
Why are we giving these people any kind of power at all? They are a clear and present dangers to freedom and society.
Yeah, this was tried. (Score:5, Interesting)
On a Somali flight (Daallo Airlines Flight 159). A laptop full of explosives was smuggled aboard a flight and detonated against the airplane's hull, blowing a hole in it. The only fatality was the bomber, who was sucked out the hole.
The issue was that, in order to get this laptop around checked bag security in Mogadishu (which isn't too good, but enough so that the terrorists didn't risk carrying it through), they had to have an airport employee carry it in and hand it to the passenger. Now if this is what the USA and GB are worried about, we have a really big problem. If an airport employee can sneak in a laptop, they can sneak in anything up to the allowed carry-on size. It doesn't have to be electronics. It could be a hollowed out bible or koran. The only way to protect against this kind of threat would be to shut down all flights originating at or passing through an airport suspected of being compromised.
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If an airport employee can sneak in a laptop, they can sneak in anything up to the allowed carry-on size. It doesn't have to be electronics. It could be a hollowed out bible or koran. The only way to protect against this kind of threat would be to shut down all flights originating at or passing through an airport suspected of being compromised.
It already happens in the US. Remember a year or so ago the 2 US airline employees arrested for running guns into New York? One would be booked on a flight and the other would bring a bag full of guns in to work and would pass them off in the bathroom.
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and if that shoe bomber would of pulled it off then we may all be getting a free colonoscopy at the airport.
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You don't even need that.
A teenager was able to get over the airport fence at San Jose airport a little while ago. I doubt that this airport is unique in not having effective perimeter security.
If you can get over the fence, then anything is possible.
The obvious conclusion is that there are no real terrorists in the USA. None other than the FBI-invented bomb plots.
Imaginary plot (Score:2)
Sorry but the whole thing smells badly. I have seen the TSA xray of my ipad pro and you cant hide shit in these devices without setting off the detectors. They could even see I had a SD card inserted.
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I have seen the TSA xray of my ipad pro and you cant hide shit in these devices without setting off the detectors. They could even see I had a SD card inserted.
Trouble is though that plastic explosives look much like lithium polmer innards. If you replaced the lipo cells with nice rectangular lumps of explosives the same size, it'd be very hard to tell the difference. It'd be even easier to pull off with those laptop batteries which use 18650s.
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Terrorists don't know about connecting flights? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a good thing Terrorists don't know about connecting flights, otherwise instead of taking a flight direct from a banned city to the USA, they'd take their iPad on a flight that connects through a non-banned city, perhaps even transferring from a Middle Eastern airline to a Western airline so they punish even more westerners.
Which is the same problem the USA has with domestic flights -- an attacker doesn't have to breach security at a large airport, they just need to bribe some random TSA worker in any of thousands of small airports to smuggle a box full of "drugs" that's really the explosive or weapon he wants. The person doing the smuggling doesn't even need to be in on it, they can think they are a well paid drug mule while they deliver a box of explosives to someone at JFK.
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Or this has nothing to do with security? It's funny that only airports that don't have American carriers were targeted by this ban. So now if I have to go to one of these cities I can take one of these foreign carriers and not have access to my electronics or I can take an American carrier to have access to my electronics on the long part of the flight with a short connection flight. Wonder what a lot of people will do.
If they were really worried about a fake iPad holding explosives they could have worked
Details? (Score:2)
Without further details, this story of a plot sounds as though it could be just that - a story. One created to justify further restrictions that lead to further reflexive obedience to authority. I'm not saying there wasn't a plot; but without further information and confirmation, the whole things smacks of propaganda.
oblig xkcd (Score:4, Funny)
They all come from the factory with a bomb. [xkcd.com]
Come on, they wouldn't do that with an Apple (Score:2)
It'd void the warranty.
I thought they already had measures for this? (Score:2)
You're already required to prove that your devices are genuine, but turning them on and operating them in view of a security agent. Is that not enough?
To me this seems more of a "our existing security theatre isn't working anymore. Time to dial it up another notch" maneuver.
Re:plausible? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not an explosives expert, but maybe someone who is can comment on the plausibility of this? It seems like an ipad or laptop couldn't carry enough explosives to take the plane down.
You don't need to take the plane down, causing enough damage will suffice (think sudden decompression).
That said, I call bullshit on this one. At least here ("Large European City", second airport in the country traffic wise) they always ask you to power on notebooks, tablets and even cameras to verify that they're real. Heck, I even had to turn on my camera and let the man wave his hand in front of it to check that it was actually his own hand showing on the display! ;-)
RT.
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I never was aksed to activate my dedvices ... :D
Perhaps I look more geeky than you and they knew my devices are always on
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They used to ask me to power on devices, they no longer do that, but they do swab them for explosives....
The real tell though that this is BS is that they targeted specific origin locations, and not a blanket ban. I doubt any terrorist who was planning to do this can't come up with some way to get to a different airport.
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They've been saying this for the best part of 20 years, and only now has it become a credible threat? Terrorists don't read the internet enough....
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Maybe it's not as easy as it seems.
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X-ray images would likely defeat both of your ideas, because the battery cell would look different on an X-ray than the explosive material. If it's all uniform, then it would probably be easier to get it through.
Of course with the average attention span of a poorly-paid TSA agent going into hour number 6 of staring at bags going by on the conveyor, they may not spot anything anyway.
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if you get a window seat you just need a hole big enough to suck a bunch of people out. maybe a seat by the wing and you can blow the wing off
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Mythbusters tried the explosive decompression thing.
It's a myth.
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Didn't bother to read the summary? There's a reason why they are restricting from the cabin and not the cargo hold - if you can put one of these things right next to a window, there's a far better chance of creating a breach than if it's in the middle of a suitcase, in the middle of the fuselage.
Short version, since you appear to be attention challenged: Aircraft windows are weaker than fuselage, and if you can't put it next to a window, then there's a better chance of the aircraft surviving the detonatio
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funny I just went on a plane (not in the US) and I was not allowed to put anything with a lithium ion in the cargo hold, it had to go in the cabin.
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I am no explosives expert either but it seems to me that if you really wanted to bring some explosives on the plane and you where going to go to the effort putting C4 in a laptop so it still looks like a laptop in an X-ray. Putting in the lining of a jacket (or maybe your undepants) and sticking blasting cap in you pocket seems like a much more sensible option than hiding it in a laptop which goes through a scanner and last time went to the US (I along time a go I admit) the did a chemical swab on (I assume
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Too much Hollywood. I can't be the only person on /. that remembers Aloha Air 243 [wikipedia.org]
You're not going to get a large enough explosion out of a device the size of an iPad that's going to blow any where near the 1/3 of the top off of a 737 like there was in that case. That flight was at 24k feet. The only person who was "sucked out" of the plane was a flight attendant who I believe was standing under the part that came off of the plane. There were injuries, but the plane landed. While the pressure is certainly
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Pressure at 30,000 feet is about 1/4 that of sea level, so while it's not "the vacuum of space", it's closer to vacuum than it is to ground level. Even taking in cabin pressurization, it's about 1/3 the pressure outside the cabin vs in.
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Too much Hollywood. I can't be the only person on /. that remembers Aloha Air 243 [wikipedia.org]
You're not going to get a large enough explosion out of a device the size of an iPad that's going to blow any where near the 1/3 of the top off of a 737 like there was in that case. That flight was at 24k feet. The only person who was "sucked out" of the plane was a flight attendant who I believe was standing under the part that came off of the plane. There were injuries, but the plane landed. While the pressure is certainly different at high altitude, it's not like these planes are flying in the vacuum of space.
that was from 1988 wasn't there an explosion mid-air rather recently that only the terrorist got sucked out and the plane landed with no other deaths.
Man sucked out of passenger jet after bomb exploded was suicide bomber who smuggled his device on board in his WHEELCHAIR, claim investigators [dailymail.co.uk].
The bomb they think was in his wheel chair and it didn't really make that big of a hole considering.
Re: plausible? (Score:5, Insightful)
airliners are built to be dirt cheap
Dirt cheap? Seriously? How much gold is there in your dirt?
Aviation in general is ridiculously expensive. Large airliners go into the hundreds of millions, which make them about 100 times more expensive than cars, pound for pound. I work in the field and if there is a word that doesn't describe the industry, it's "cheap".
The reason flying is cheaper nowadays is not because planes are built cheaper. That's because they are more efficient and require less maintenance. Plus everything that is not directly related to the plane itself such as : cabin crew, airport fees, service, taxes, yield management, etc...
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Plus everything that is not directly related to the plane itself such as : cabin crew, airport fees, service, taxes, yield management, etc...
Don't forget the little bags of pretzels. Significant savings can be made by only serving 8 pretzels in a bag instead of 9.
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It is hard to take seriously a report about the feasibility of explosives causing issues on airplanes when apparently, the report says people could get sucked out. Basic physics. Flow is from high pressure to low pressure because of the pressure differential. Blown out, not sucked out. If they don't even know that, how can we believe them about explosives?
If someone starts off inside a plane, passes through a hole and ends up on the outside of the plane screaming as they plunge to their doom, does it really matter whether they're blown or sucked?
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If someone starts off inside a plane, passes through a hole and ends up on the outside of the plane screaming as they plunge to their doom, does it really matter whether they're blown or sucked?
The point is, why should we care? If the bomb only kills a couple of people but fails to bring down the plane, then it is no worse than the mayhem a lone gunman could cause on the ground. In fact he could probably cause more death and economic chaos by blowing himself up in an airport choke point.
The reality is that well-funded, competent terrorists who are knowledgeable enough to plan a mission like this and suicidal enough to carry it out are really, really rare. Rare enough that I would be happy if we
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