Old Methods Used to Detect Liquid Explosives 545
Bain writes "According to Wired News, the UK fear of terrorists using liquid explosives could be dramatically reduced by the use of some very old tech. Recent events have seen passengers forced to pack only the barest of essentials into clear plastic bags and the restriction on all liquids force even mothers with young children to have to test bottled milk to prove that it isn't a dangerous liquid." From the article: "For a machine to detect explosives in liquid or solid form, it bombards an object with energy -- such as radio waves or neutrons -- and in seconds measures the reaction, a response that differs depending on the material's chemical properties. Software in the machine is programmed to alert screeners if it detects chemical signatures known to match those of dangerous materials. A key question, though, is whether this kind of detection system can realistically block terrorists from bringing seemingly innocuous liquids past security and combining them later to deadly effect."
Basic Chem Pwns Bin Laden (Score:3, Insightful)
This is where a dry run fails (Score:2)
Re:Basic Chem Pwns Bin Laden (Score:5, Informative)
(As for acetone peroxide itself -- yeah, pretty exciting stuff, and doesn't need anything special in the way of detonators that a lot of the more stable nitrate-based explosives do. And because it isn't nitrate based, isn't detected by the nitrate-sniffers used in a lot of bomb detectors. I had a chance to play with a few grams of the stuff once (in its powder form). It doesn't take much confinement to go from "whoosh" of a fireball to "BANG!" of a detonation.)
Plenty of other possible liquid explosives too, of course. (Nitroglycerine is a liquid, although not one I'd want to carry around in a Gatorade bottle.)
Re:Basic Chem Pwns Bin Laden (Score:3, Interesting)
Small bottle of bleach, small bottle of ammonia. Won't pass a "sniff" test, but amounts in bottles small enough to pass unnoticed under clothes can still cause extensive problems [bbc.co.uk] especially in a closed, delicate system. Like an airplane in flight. I also doubt that the nitrate sniffers would be set sensitive enough to alert on a closed bottle of ammonia. Any excees outside should evaporate.
/ OMG, teh BBC is terrorist!!!11oneoneeleven
Re:Basic Chem Pwns Bin Laden (Score:3, Informative)
The inside of an aircraft isn't a closed system. The engines compress outside air and feed it in at the front of the plane. At the rear of the plane are pressure-valved exhaust vents. It's needlessly expensive to recycle the inside air when the outide air only needs to be compressed to 10psi to make it breatheable. A chlorine bomb would probably injure a few passengers right around it, but that's it. Being that the cockpit is "first in lin
Re:Basic Chem Pwns Bin Laden (Score:3, Informative)
I've always wondered why acetone peroxide was not used in airplane bombings. Now my thoughts are answered
Another cool method to explode airplanes may be by using alkali metals to produce hydrogen and make a volume explosion, 100-200 gramms of lithium will be quite enough to blow up an airplane. The best way to produce
Re:Basic Chem Pwns Bin Laden (Score:3, Informative)
A hydrogen explosion would be hard to manage, since you'd need a whole lot of it, and need to confine it somewhere in just the right
I'm glad you guys aren't the terrorists! (Score:3, Funny)
A shaped charge obviates this (Score:3, Informative)
Wrong. Basic first-year explosives training involves how to use and create a shaped charge, and quite frankly, your tray table convert
Trivial solution (Score:2)
Re:Trivial solution (Score:2)
Although I imagine a trained security guard (with a x-ray machine) will spot that stuff.
Re:Trivial solution (Score:3, Interesting)
The funny thing is, there is no society who is "safe". For example, we are doing many things in the same way as 1940's germany, USSR, and china. Yet, none of them were really that safe. Security for all of them were easily bypassed.
In fact, we have much less chance of being secured since we are such a mixed society (whereas 99.99% of Chinese are Asian and look it (there are chinese causcasians)) and such things as racial profiling really does not work. Even if we r
Re:Trivial solution (Score:3, Insightful)
We're not talking about kids from Afghanistan, we're talking about kids raised in, say, suburban London. Should your kids care that those kids are being taught that your daughters should be thought of as prop
Re:Basic Chem Pwns Bin Laden (Score:3, Informative)
Besides, organic peroxide explosives do not react with the human body well. I think anything that could be urinated is either too neutral for bomb-making purposes or needs a strong base to react with, and anything 'too strong' would kill the attempting terrorist prior to 'detonation'.
Re:Basic Chem Pwns Bin Laden (Score:2)
Sounds like too much trouble.
Personally, from banning liquid containers, I think the next step is a terrorist plot to smuggle liquid explosives onto a plane in balloons shoved up their assholes. Once this happens, say goodbye to the airline industry...
What about a bottle within a bottle? (Score:2, Insightful)
And with that aside, how are we protecting the nation's railways, malls, gas stations, and all other manner of targets?
Is it THAT big a problem?? (Score:2)
I'm only able to guess this hits chicks more than it does guys, with all the makeup and such they carry in purses on board. And seriously, how often are they gonna have an emergency 'make up situation'....just pac
Re:Is it THAT big a problem?? (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah, most places you land will have a store you could get most/all of the stuff in, but usually when I travel for business I'm busy with meetings, and don't have time for shopping. And when I travel for vacation, I'm there for vacation, not shopping. I don't travel hundreds/thousands of miles and burn vacation days, just so I can shop at the local K-Mart
Re:Is it THAT big a problem?? (Score:3, Interesting)
On a related note, some persons have opined that carry-on luggage and personal electronics shuold be eliminated entirely from the cabin. This, I believe, is not a realistic solution, not only due to above-implied personal care issues, but the extre
Re:Is it THAT big a problem?? (Score:3, Informative)
The clueful among us long ago invested in a $10 TSA-approved combination lock. These locks have both a combination and a keyhole; the keys are held by the TSA agents, and anyone who has managed to get a copy of one. However
Re:Is it THAT big a problem?? (Score:2)
Re:Is it THAT big a problem?? (Score:2)
Re:Is it THAT big a problem?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Is it THAT big a problem?? (Score:2)
I know the "liquids" issue got all the press, but didn't they ban electronics too? I mean, you are aware that the lithium battery in your laptop is basically indistinguishable from a bomb, right?
Re:Is it THAT big a problem?? (Score:2)
Water, water is nice. Gettings drinks from the stewerdess is a hassle and lately nothing is included in the ticket price. Often they don't "have" water except in the bathroom, it's uncommon to have none but common for it to be gone by the time it gets to you. It's alwa
It's not just explosives (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's review some notably successful attacks and see if we can learn something...
There is an awful lot of effort being expended protecting us from complex high-tech attacks, when the demonstrated pattern has been for Al Qaeda to use relatively low-tech methods and strike at targets that are easy to hit and achieve significant headlines. If we should learn anything from this, it is that Al Qaeda spends its terrorist money well, getting maximum effect for a minimum of resource.
What we need is more thought and less hasty action, so that we too, might be capable of effective action in return. Pointless blustering actions like this, intended to reassure the public and sustain existing administrations' terms in office, do more to aide and abet the enemy than to frustrate them. We need reason and logic as our allies, instead of keeping them locked in the basement.
Re:What about a bottle within a bottle? (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. If you were a terrorist, why go to the bother of smuggling stuff past x ray machines, suspicious security guards, fellow passengers etc. Wouldn't be simpler and just as effective to blow up a truck outside a random office block? Or a cineplex? Or (ironically) right beside the huge snaking queue waiting to go through airport security.
Re:What about a bottle within a bottle? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the real key. Blowing up a store is not as big a deal. They have store everywhere. Put airplanes are part of the symbol of western technological power. We think very little of getting into a big steel container, then soaring through the sky for a few hundred miles, then landing and complaining about leg room. The shock of having that modern invention reduced to rubble (with a few hundred people inside) is what they are going for.
Although I've always wondered why they didn't go for more of a solo sniping attack. The panic and fear created by Malvo during his sniping spree on the I-95 corridor between Richmond and D.C. was unbelievable if you lived in that area (I live in Richmond). Two guys, one rifle, one car. You could keep that going for weeks or months at a time, never knowing when it's going to happen, have a few operating in different cities... that would really shake things up.
I really just don't get how the terrorists operate.
-stormin
Re:What about a bottle within a bottle? (Score:2)
Re:What about a bottle within a bottle? (Score:2)
One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:5, Insightful)
Please remember:
The planes that were crashed into the WTC where hijacked with carpet cutters. The current threat was discovered when "classic police work" lead to an arrest in Pakistan.
The war against terror is not fought with technology and will never be won by technology. There is no way to guarantee safety from terrorists any more than there is a really secure computer system. The only way to live safely would be in a bunker, and that's no live.
Terror has to be fought by international politics. Anything else will fail, because there will always be loopholes left.
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:2)
You know that never made sense to me. If someone started threatening me with a box cutter I would break his wrist and then poke his eyes out with a pen. Heck even with a standard pen knife the blade is only barely long enough to hit a vital area in an average sized adult male, let alone in an american overweight male. A box cutter is only effect againist the juglar or femoral artieries, both targets easily defended again
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:2)
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:2)
As far as I remember the hijackers killed one stewardess in one of the planes when the pilot refused to open the cockpit. Till 9/11 most hijackings were solved peacefully (i.e. without anyone being killed), so protecting the crews/passengers live from a (minor) deadly threat like a carpet cutter was the "logic choice". Nobody had yet internalized the possibility of turning a whole passenger plane into a suicide bomber.
Today you couldn't hijack a plane with a knife alone, even if you killed someone with it
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:3, Interesting)
Ah. So, truckers from New Hampshire or Oregon or New Jersey don't feel the need to protect themselves? What, they're too metrosexual to own a firearm? Out of curiosity, how exactly to you define "redneck?" Someone dumber than you are? Someone not afraid to get their hands dirty? Someone with a southern accent? Someone who makes six figures driving millions of dollars worth of expensive prototype electronics t
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:3, Funny)
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:2)
So now the question on your mind as a passenger when you finally got your wits (and they already got the plane) would be: "can I stop them and regain control of the plane before they crash it into the ground." Keep in mind
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:2)
Remember, standard procedure for hijackings until 9/11 was to cooperate, fly the plane to whatever airport the hijacker wanted, and negotiate for safe return of plane, passengers and crew. The possibility that the hijackers might be more interested in doing a kamikaze run wasn't part of the equation.
And given that, if the hijacker has grabbed a stewardess an
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:2)
I really hate to be so calous, but given her or the other almost 100 people on board, she can die. Hell if it were me, let him take me out and then take him out. Better than getting an upfront view of what's about to happen.
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:3, Insightful)
It would make perfect sense if you knew anything about hijackings pre-9/11.
Pre-9/11, SOP for hijackings was to cooperate so as not to be hurt until the plane landed, when negotiators would take over. That was the way things worked. On three of the flights, that's what the passengers did, expecting that by cooperating they would escape unharmed. Clearly they were wrong. The fourth flight was behaving similarly, until the passengers discovered what the fate of the prev
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:2)
The vast vast majority of the time when someone would try to take over a plane, they would demand it fly to some other country that the hijackers wanted to go to. Usually it ended up with the airplane going to a very unscheduled destination, and the other passengers had themselves a little adventure. Usually just costing them several hours or an extra day of travel. Not something you want to happen, but hardly worth getting into a knife fight over. So a
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:3, Insightful)
You know what never made sense to me? The security changes after 9/11. The reason that the planes were hijacked was policy. The policy was to essentially encourage hijackers, do whatever they wanted, then negotiate later. Hijackings would be nearly impossible if the only change was to make the policy "never let anyone hijack a plane, and never do anything they ask if they do manage to hijack the plane." We'd still have pocket knives, scisors, nail clippers and suc
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, heaven knows what would have happened if they'd smuggled the soft cushions aboard.
ok, serious point: every time a terrorist plot is foiled with a particular type of weapon, that is blocked so no-one can do it again. Yet they always think up new ways... perhaps we should be looking at ways to detect new weapons and stop the shoe-checking, the milk-checking, etc etc, which only serves to inconvenience the 99.99999% of people
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:5, Insightful)
You are absolutely right, there is no way to 'guarantee' safety from terrorists anymore than you can't 'guarantee' I won't die in a car wreck. However, I certainly won't buy a car without seatbelts, crumple zones, and airbags. Each of those technological innovations gives me a much better chance of surviving. In the same way, technology is an absolutely essential part of fighting the war on terror. One important part of fighting terrorists is ratcheting up the costs and the difficulty of being a terrorist. You certainly won't get rid of the terrorists, but you can definitely make them less effective. You do this by going at them on all possible fronts.
We have to make the costs of terrorism higher. We do that by (i:
1) Police work: Make it more difficult to succesfully PLOT acts of terrorism. This is what the case in the UK did, terrorists now have to think more carefully about who they surround themselves with. This isolates terror groups, and limits the resources they can leverage to kill people. While this makes it harder to find these groups, it also makes them greatly less effective. It limits how well they can share knowledge and evolve their tactics.
2) Technology: Make it more difficult to EXECUTE acts of terrorism. Facial recognition, bomb detection, etc... are all important tools in combatting terrorists (disclaimer: It is definitely important to balance privacy and security, that's not what this post is about). By increasing the costs of subverting the technological barriers to terrorism, we can eliminate a HIGH percentage of potential terrorists. Most terrorists lack the money or the smarts needed to subvert technological solutions. Not all, but the goal here isn't total elmination but simply thinning the herd of potential terrorists.
3) Politics: Make it more difficult to WANT to be a terrorist. Do this by working with other governments to crack down on terrorist cultures within their borders (which the U.S. has done fairly effectively) and create a geo-political climate which removes the incentive to be a terrorist (whith the U.S. has failed miserably at).
Terrorism has been with us since the dawn of man, and its not going anywhere. There is not solution that guarantees our safety, but a variety of solutions that can help to minimize the danger.
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the part that I haven't figured out. Why do they keep attacking planes? Wouldn't it be smarter to attack the technology? Blow up all the security stations; by the time they detect the bomb, that's the same time it blows up. With the crowds waiting to get through the security stations, you'd probably injure quite a few people, too.
If that happens often enough, it won't be long before you can't find anyone willing to work anywhere near the checkpoint. And it would have the added benefit of completely shutting the airport down for a significant time (how long does it take to cleanup the mess and install a new security station?).
The technology is only good for preventing passage of material through the checkpoint. It won't do any good if the material is destined to end there.
I am not advocating doing this! I am just curious why all the focus is on the plane itself. I would be more scared to stand in the line at the security station than I am of getting on a plane.
I can't think of any solution to that, though. After all, are you going to add a security check to process people so they can go stand in line at the next security check?
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:3)
Either "they" are very stupid or "they" have rather different motives than those being attributed to the Al-Quaeda Global Conspiracy.
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:5, Insightful)
But you know, pouring billions of dollars of taxpayer money into local security firms makes everybody feel safe, because politicians can say "$X million is being spent on airport security" and for large enough values of X, TV tells Joe Sixpack to be happy.
Lousy society, so quick to be scared and browbeaten into acceptance by those in power, we deserve everything we get. When the government can usurp power and money simply by declaring "war" on an concept such as "terror" or "drugs", it's a sure sign we're on our way out unless some serious changes come along.
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming that that it isn't possible for them to trivially choose another target. When employing "technological barriers" it is important to ensure than you don't do the equivalent of putting a bank vault door on a tent. (Or even the lock from a bank vault on a tent...) It is all to easy for designers to technologically sophisticated systems to fail to consider "low tech" counter measures. e.g. it's a good idea to talk to a makeup artist before spending too much time and money of computer based facial recognition. It's also only going to be of any use if you know exactly who you are looking for in the first place.
Politics: Make it more difficult to WANT to be a terrorist. Do this by working with other governments to crack down on terrorist cultures within their borders (which the U.S. has done fairly effectively) and create a geo-political climate which removes the incentive to be a terrorist (whith the U.S. has failed miserably at).
This really should be the first item on the list.
Also when it comes to cracking down on "terrorist cultures" governments tend to be highly selective about exactly which terrorists they go after. In the case of many countries (definitly including all five permenant members of the UNSC) some terrorists are actually supported. This weakens any kind of "crack down". Especially when law enforcement happens to capture the "wrong" type of terrorists.
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:3, Interesting)
Worse than 'failed miserably'; they have given huge incentives to terrorists. Probably without meaning to, I'm no conspiracy nut.
If some anti-social group, such as is commonly referred to as 'terrorists', wanted to cause disruption they don't actually need to create a real threat any more; all they need do is to create the rumor among so-called 'intelligence' communities of some hypothetical
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:3, Insightful)
Go back about 4 years, change Iran to Iraq, and you end up in the exact situation we have now.
And that's turned out SO well, hasn't it. Is that you GW?
Re:One problem solved, an infinite amount remains (Score:3, Insightful)
Right, because Iran is teeming with terrorist training camps... oh shit, wait, that's Pakistan.
So you are in favor of killing roughly a quarter of the Iranian citizenry. (Assuming you define support narrow
False positives and common materials (Score:4, Informative)
"Homeland security analyst Brian Ruttenbur of Morgan Keegan also points out that the technology still produces a relatively high number of false alarms."
and
"A key question, though, is whether this kind of detection system can realistically block terrorists from bringing seemingly innocuous liquids past security and combining them later to deadly effect.
"Certainly, some common ingredients in liquid explosives can be programmed into the detector. But Kant, at Rapiscan, said he would not discuss the vulnerabilities of that approach. 'Whether it detects the components of explosives and which ones, there's no way I'm putting that in print,' he said."
We still allowed fertilizer to be transported by truck after the Oklahoma City bombing. I really don't know how we can expect people to transport any substance by airplane if there's even a slight chance that it could be used in a clever bomb-making scheme.
Re:False positives and common materials (Score:3, Insightful)
How else are we going to transport it? The fucking teleporter?
Entirely new risks (Score:4, Insightful)
The risks still add up, even when you use this machine:
So, you end up putting a lot of money into doing something that will help very few flights, incovenience a large total number of innocent people, and possibly not protect the public at all.
detecting the wrong thing (Score:4, Funny)
1. You stop every person that has access to the plane, every person getting on the plane for any reason, etc. (already almost doing that)
2. Determine if they're a terrorist somehow. (??? step)
3. Success! No more plane bombings.
Re:detecting the wrong thing (Score:3, Interesting)
A brain scan - identify which parts of the brain are active - maybe suicidal terrorists
will have different areas active to ordinary people.
Technology can't solve a people problem (Score:3, Insightful)
"A key question, though, is whether this kind of detection system can realistically block terrorists from bringing seemingly innocuous liquids past security and combining them later to deadly effect."
The answer to that is of course, no. You can't design an idiot proof system because they keep coming up with better idiots. No only that, I believe some hacker guy called Kevin hypothesized that you can't firewall a system to be 100% secure, because social engineering is the exploit to overcome any hole in a system.
I know this isn't a political discussion about the matter of liquid bomb sniffers for airports, but we should be crying bloody murder [abandonedstuff.com] that the government is letting the terrorists win this time without them firing a shot. Mothers tasting their baby formula again? I recall an airport employee doing that years ago to a mother with breatmilk in a bottle, and she sued didn't she?
Re:Technology can't solve a people problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't recall that particular incident, but this is utterly and completely absurd.
If a terrorist is so intent on killing people that they would lace breast milk/formula with the requisite chemicals then it's fairly clear that their family's immediate welfare is not of particular concern. Do you honestly think they would blanche at sipping a little bit o
The old sniff sniff bark method (Score:3, Informative)
Training costs... (Score:2)
What's sad... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What's sad... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're assuming that the purpose of the airport security checks is to prevent terrorists from taking bombs onto planes.
If that were the case, why were the current restrictions only put in place last week, when the existence of liquid-based bombs has been known for years, and the police claim to have been following the people they have now arrested for some weeks? Any why are the restrictions now being relaxed, if there is a danger from other unknown groups of people using the same methods?
I'm sure airport security deters a certain number of unintelligent crackpots, and it certainly shows the travelling public that "something is being done". But the ultimate answer to the problem is a political one, not technological.
Re:What's sad... (Score:2)
As for puffers. Puffers are really intended to scan a person, not a bag. For bags there are trace machines with swabs... which take a considerable amount of time. For many of
Terrorism (neé Re:Perspective...) (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't understand what Terrorism is all about, evidently. Mass murder, as a different motive from Terrorism, is about killing lots of people. Terrorism is about inducing terror in the masses. Very few, if any, deaths are required to produce terror. In fact, the goals of the Islamofacists are to disrupt our economy and society through acts of terror
"Old tech" for sure (Score:5, Insightful)
"One big reason is that it is not easy to integrate the explosive-detecting machines, some of which can cost $250,000, into existing security checkpoints. Because each briefcase, purse or other carry-on bag has to be put in a special drawer for analysis, using the detectors could significantly bog down passenger screening. [...] the technology still produces a relatively high number of false alarms."
Chemistry is capeable of some fascinating things. Two extremely dangerous and deadly chemicals combine to make a tasty food additive (salt). Still, I am not aware of any liquid explosives that are completely invisible to explosive detection in component form.
X rated rays (Score:4, Funny)
So the x-ray glasses advertised in comic magazines really do work. I was always wondering about that. How is this a problem?
Mixed it all together... (Score:3, Funny)
It's simple. Have them mixed all the stuff together. If it goes BOOM, that's bad. If it doesn't, no problem.
Re:Mixed it all together... (Score:2)
What about our canine companions? (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen dogs in O'Hare for sniffing out imported fruit/veg pick up people who've eaten a bananna.
Surely these are better than any mechanical screening device.
"Old tech" (Score:2, Insightful)
I wouldnt mind flying (Score:5, Insightful)
Even? (Score:5, Informative)
No Mentos Either (Score:2, Funny)
Re:No Mentos Either (Score:2)
Re:No Mentos Either (Score:2)
That's new. (Score:2)
Yeah, as history shown us that works.
Companies from the article (Score:4, Informative)
Rapiscan Systems [rapiscansystems.com]
and
HiEnergy Technologies, Inc. [hienergyinc.com]
They both have interesting product portfolios.
The ban on liquids seems a bit silly (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps random rectal and mouth exams are in order. Also passengers should sedated and cuffed nude with their arms outstretched for the duration of the journey.
Do you lock your door? (Score:3, Insightful)
What's to stop someone breaking into a house through a window? Yet most people lock doors to homes.
Just because there is always a more exteme way to do something does not mean that no precautions should be put in place - especially when precautions are tailored to actual plans found laid out.
You can't get rid of all risk but you can reduc
Did you know... (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Bombard it with energy, and measure the reaction seconds later? For some reason, an image keeps popping into my head of putting the substance in a 1.5-kilowatt microwave, zapping it for five seconds, and seeing if it explodes or not.
I guess there would have to be some blast deflectors around the microwave.
steve
Latest news... (Score:2)
When asked, airlines felt this was a little incovenient, but helped save on staffing and reduce the need to provide food to the passengers and also would save on providing other expensive forms of
Quite a few gotchas: (Score:3, Interesting)
Applying the Squeeze (Score:3, Insightful)
You could always have two lines- one for those who want to bring in beverages, one for those who don't.
But how exact would the masking be? Would a man be able to strap a small vial to the underside of his genitals, or a woman hide something in her cleavage (and, uh, other places)?
Something I've been wondering as we ramp up security to make flying a nightmare for everyone- aren't many of these processes making investigation work harder? We keep instituting new restrictions, and the terrorists would just find a way around them. We're playing a reactionary game, putting systems in place only after something happens (no more small knives after 9/11, check all shoes for bombs after that one guy, no more liquids after this foiled attempt), and all it's doing is slowing down everyone.
Not that we should remove all security checks- heaven forbid someone is able to walk onto the airplane with a kilo of C4. But if we keep making our security tighter, then so will the terrorists, and that means less of a chance messing up, which is usually how detectives/investigators find out about stuff and catch them. If the terrorists have a lax atmosphere, then they will be more lax, and more prone to mistakes.
How does the saying go? "The tighter you squeeze the more they will slip through your fingers"?
I hope it can resolve Deadly DiHydrogen Monoxide. (Score:2)
"Old Tech"??? (Score:2)
Fact is, there will probably never be a foolproof "bad material" detector, since there are simply too many substances that can be combined to form something dangerous. A better approach would probably be to have a "whitelist" of permissible substances whose identity could be verified. Eve
Re:"Old Tech"??? (Score:2)
The article talks about devices that are being developed now, based on ideas someone had 10 years ago. Apparently, Slashdot land "very old tech" means anything older than 1997.
Who feels this is making them safer? (Score:2)
Does anyone have links to polls of the general community that ask questions like:
"do you feel that the security measures being taken in airports are appropriate?"
and
"does the ban on liquids on a plane make you feel safer?"
Maybe I just live in and with abnormal people, but NO ONE I know seems to feel that this is a reasonable course of action for our country to
Just be thankful... (Score:2)
Land of the Safe, and Home of the Afraid... (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder when exactly the Airlines forgot they needed to obey the Constitution. A State cannot give an artificial legal entity priviledges it doesn't have, such violating the security of our persons, papers and effects.
Re:Land of the Safe, and Home of the Afraid... (Score:4, Insightful)
Gee, I dunno, maybe when The Airlines quit being a branch of the government?
An airline is a private business. If you don't like the rules, ride a bus.
Step One -- Water Detector (Score:2)
(Yes, a terrorist could hide something else in a false bottom. However, a terrorist could hide a similar quantity of whatever substance anyway unless he's strip-searched and anal-probed).
How real was the threat ? (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Look sufficiently like a regular liquid (the police don't seem to know if we were talking water or gel / paste here)
2. Be easily and quickly detonated with a primitive home-made detonator (camera flash was bandied about?)
3. Be able to carry enough onto a plane to cause significant structural damage without causing concern about the amount of this particular liquid that they are carrying.
Most of the explosives / high heat exchange chemicals that I am familiar with don't fit many of these criteria, let alone all, but I freely admit to being ignorant in this field.
Re:No outside food or drinks (Score:2)
Unfortunately I'd still rather carry certain gadgets like my laptop with me or else mail them in advance, which sucks but it's doable.
Re:No outside food or drinks (Score:4, Insightful)
Right, because no one ever smuggles contraband food or drinks into a movie theater.
And how would you feel if you went to the movies and then once it let out, you went to pick up your car from the mandatory valet parking only to find out that they misplaced it, and would bring it by if and when they ever find it again? People don't bring huge carry-ons into the cabin because they need two changes of clothing and a full toiletry kit during the flight; they do it because they don't trust the airline to have their checked luggage ready for them when they arrive.
I'd rather sacrifice my precious water bottle on a long flight than end up crashing into a building any day.
That's a false dichotomy.
Re:No outside food or drinks (Score:3, Insightful)
End of carry-on (Score:2)
I think you are right. On the bright side getting rid of carry-on luggage will make security checks, boarding and deplaning much faster and safer, especially in an emergency. The problem of timed explosives in checked bags remain however. The main reason people are averse to checking baggage is the efficiency of the process. Perhaps this is an opportunity for that to improve. Another improvement would be to repl
Re:But what about privacy? (Score:2)
Re:Barest of essentials... (Score:2)
No, but you may need to provide a friendly TSA agent a sample "strictly for uh, verification purposes Miss"
Re:Mid-Term Elections (Score:2)