"flights to US could include" multi-stop flights. There is a non-stop flight from Singapore to USA i think, leaves airport there and lands here. Multi-stop flights have a stop in EU if they are coming from Asia to USA or they might stop at Japan or something. Eg: Nepal -> HongKong -> Japan -> USA
In which case the ban would apply to the final sector, but for all intents and purposes, passengers boarding at earlier airports would also be prohibited to bring electronics onboard as checking luggage during a flight connection is pretty much unheard of (unless of course it's an overnight stopover).
Your luggage is not with you from the beginning. And the carry on is definitely checked in connecting flights depending on the airport. HK and New Delhi used to have it up to two years ago. Unless they recently changed it.
They'd better have a very good reason for this (e.g. very credible threat). Otherwise even moderates that voted for Trump are going to suffer from serious case of buyer's remorse.
This sort of stuff spooks travellers from other countries also ("I saw a headline that said I wasn't allowed to take my laptop to America!"). End result is likely to be a drop in tourism and international students which will hit some industries harder than others.
Almost no one outside the tech or business communities will really care about this (beyond individuals annoyed with not having iTunes on a 14 hour flight). I don't think it's attention fodder (nor do I think it's a valid means of protecting flights). Not sure what this is.
TSA always fucks up my repack. I've had nicely-packed arts totally destroyed because of how they chuck shit back into my bag after they finish pawing through it.
I guess it's a shoutout to Trump's core supporters that he's still committed to doing "The Right Thing" by putting those brown people in their proper places.
(Totally not picked because they're muslim, I swear, wink wink.)
So who was Obama appealing to among his core supporters, when he attacked "brown people" in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen?
...Those people who can understand the difference between a temporary stopping of visa processes and a blanket ban that extends to legal green card holders?
> the ban will apply to nonstop flights to the U.S. from 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa
Personal electronics are near-indispensable. By restricting their carry from Muslim countries, freedom of movement to and from those countries is significantly curtailed. This is about getting around the illegality of the Muslim ban without banning any persons or groups. This is about "cultural protectionism" through isolationism, not terrorism, and it's not even trying particularly hard to pretend otherwise.
The premise you're going with doesn't make much sense. The devices aren't banned, you have to pack them in your luggage. It won't significantly curtail freedom of movement at all.
You're not wrong. I suppose I'd call my own statement a bit weak if this wasn't the third highly targeted policy in the past 2 months - in fact one of the few types of policies this administration has pushed all the way to action. It's possible my lens is broken, but it seems to me none of the policies considering the general populace of the middle east should be considered in isolation.
There's zero question it's intentionally narrowly targeting Islamic terrorism at best, and at worst is a staging ground for how much power of restriction they now have (or can get away with) when it comes to those sorts of things. The same way phone searches are a trial balloon that will inevitably spread to not just the general population at airports but the local / state law enforcement as well.
My point is specifically that I don't believe it'll impede freedom of movement meaningfully. People will simply pack their devices in luggage. Interestingly, it might result in fewer laptop searches at the airports (whereas they might have asked someone to open / turn on / provide a password), among that targeted population.
It will make espionage much easier: checked-in laptops will be trivially stolen as part of security checks (US authorities can and will open any checked-in bag they feel like opening, and now any involved Middle-Eastern authority will also be able to do the same).
> Interestingly, it might result in fewer laptop searches at the airports (whereas they might have asked someone to open / turn on / provide a password), among that targeted population.
I don't think that's right. Such demands are not generally made at airport security at the origin, but at the CBP checkpoint at the arrival airport. There, passengers have already retrieved checked bags.
interesting theory. but is keeping you from your laptop (but still allowing a smart phone) really much of a deterrent these days? most younger people are content without a laptop, using their phones quite a bit.
It would be for me. My laptop is my access to my work and without it I'm not traveling for work and I will not let it out of my sight without buying another laptop and doing a complete re-image. No way I'd trust it after passing it off for several hours. Paranoid? Maybe.
While some initially reported it as a 96 hour ban, some of those reports have been updated to say 96 hours allowed for airline compliance. I honestly don't know which one is right.
At least we can rest assured this has been as carefully prepared, vetted, and communicated as other recent policies. </s>
Subjecting a targeted group to repeated fear and uncertainty through changing rules seems to be more of the plan than an absurdity. A rule like this establishes precedent, even.
You put up this headline without any of the other political context and I am right there with you. But there is no shortage of context.
> This is about getting around the illegality of the Muslim ban without banning any persons or groups.
This was my first thought until I saw a Saudi airport on the list of originating airports that will be impacted by the ban. Trump avoided listing any countries where he had business connections with in his ban orders, so I'm more likely to believe this is the result of actionable intelligence than xenophobia/Islamophobia-related bullshit.
Still, I could be wrong and it could just be the current administration keeping on their anti-Islam crusade.
These parts of the article provides plausible explanation:
"Brian Jenkins, an aviation-security expert at the Rand Corp., said the nature of the security measure suggested that it was driven by intelligence of a possible attack."
"The ban would begin just before Wednesday's meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group in Washington. A number of top Arab officials were expected to attend the State Department gathering. It was unclear whether their travel plans were related to any increased worry about security threats."
Sounds like the threat is not about generic attack against airplanes, but more targeted towards specific people traveling from certain countries to US.
Somebody hiding in the laptop chassis some kind of object that can be used to harm others.
The X rays are certainly not perfect and there is certain probability something goes unnoticed. In normal case we just make a trade off between convenience and security. In this
special case somebody wants to play it safe.
To prevent passengers from having access to communication while going through customs. To limit pictures and social media posts in the time between when they get off the plane in the US until their retrieve their checked bags from baggage claim.
Seriously. He couldn't get his ban through (twice), so now he's just going to make it as inconvenient as hell for people from those eight countries to travel to the US. It's a big 'fuck you' to Muslims.
This is... crazy. I can't even recall the last time I travelled with checked luggage of any kind, and make a point of not letting my laptop/etc out of arm's reach while traveling. I guess this does make it easier to search/bug devices, though.
This is actually one of the few credible attacks a hijacker could perform, and reducing the size of the batteries (assuming most cellphones don't have 72Whr 6-cell batteries) is a practical method to prevent such an attack in the cabin. However, it doesn't seem to rule out the exact same thing happening in the cargo hold with a timer. It's less stupid than water restrictions.
> Was this a real threat? Yes, there was a very serious plot to blow up planes using liquid explosives in bombs that would have worked to bring down aircraft.
Yeah. With Nitroglycerin, the stuff that explodes when you move it too fast. You could still bring this on a plane undetected in 3.4oz containers. And you can check a bag with much larger amounts.
But there was not just "a plot" to blow up a plane with liquid explosives. There was a successful attack on a South Korean plane that killed everyone on board with liquid explosives, used in 1989. Yet they don't even mention this, probably because the policy was put in place after 9/11, partly as a fear tactic to get US citizens to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, partly to prevent fear from ruining the airline industry, and partly to support the new jobs program called the TSA (which was also created after 9/11).
Without fear and extensive unnecessary security measures, the TSA would not be the size it is, nor would it get the investment it gets. If you don't believe TSA is primarily a jobs program, consider that according to NPR in 2006, a government report showed that Research & Development programs were delayed when TSA funds were redirected in order to pay for personnel costs for screeners. And the TSA receives 8 billion dollars a year.
There are many ways to detect liquid explosives. By removing them from their container (or requiring specific kinds of transparent containers) and using laser scatter plotting or microwaves, or by detecting vapor emissions from an opened bottle, for example. But nobody cared about them when planes were bombed using them, and they're still not using any of these methods, 17 years after the policies were put in place. These policies are just tools used to control people.
Probably a really bad attempt to stop the stolen Trump Tower laptop from leaving the US. I almost didn't leave this comment because of how stupid this sounds, but then again...
You look at this and say to yourself, "this doesn't make any sense! i don't get how allowing cell phones and 'medical devices' (nebulous term) into carry ons, but demanding that laptops go into checked baggage is keeping us safe!"
And you're right! It isn't.
But then you realize that the special interests that came up with this policy were paid LARGE SUMS OF MONEY to impress Trump and all of his supporters and career politician allies. And then you once more realize how incredibly stupid this policy is in reality.
But then it dawns on you that Trump and his allies are either criminally idiotic, or criminally wasteful in their policy pursuits.
Does it make more sense than the previous security procedure that everyone passengers had to take off their shoes and have them scanned?
Or the current ban on liquids?
Or the even better idea I saw in Brussels airport of two semi-identical security checks; one to get into the airport and then the "regular" second one. I can only wait for the next improved version of three security checkpoints, which will add 50% more secure then the current two.
After 9/11, sensibility went out the window. This new move is quite far from the stupidest I have seen.
Multiple checks are not stupid at all. The screening is not 100% reliable and an independent repeat is a reasonable way to improve detections of weapons, which have been shown to get through sometimes in TSA and third-party experiments.
I recall reading that TSA has never actually stopped a real threat to a airplane. The screening is one of the least cost-effective security mechanism in use, so are we suggestion that doubling it and the costs is a reasonable way to improve detections?
A reasonable way to detect threats would be to hire more investigators and bomb dogs patrols. Both has shown to be cost-effective and to produce results, in direct contrast to the TSA screening method.
I'm not a fan of security theatre. But the TSA does not have to catch anyone to be very effective. In fact it its intended deterrence effect was effective it would never catch anyone at all.
So does the deterrence effect increase by the number of screenings? The physiological effect is not measurable in this case, and if we compare it to the placebo effect which is measurable, there is little proof that eating two fake pills has any benefit over eating one.
How big portion of terrorists is likely to completely ignore the fact of one screening but be deterred by the existence of a second one?
Rationally, the deterrence should increase monotonically with the chance of being caught.
With two serial 90% effective checks, you have a 99% effective system. Such a low chance of success means attackers should try something else instead.
Now, with probably not even close to 99% screening, along with cockpit doors and fight-motivated passengers, the deterrence seems powerful enough that we are seeing other kinds of attacks.
People don't believe 90% in a fake pill, and by eating two get to 99% belief. Either you believe the fake pill will work or you don't. The number of pills don't multiply the placebo effect.
Why believe that security theater, ie fake security, increase the physiological effect in multiplicate way based on the number of identical copies?
If the placebo effect could be multiplied in such a way, every sickness could be cured by just eating more and more sugar. If a fake pill had 1% placebo effect, eating ~500 fake pills would reach 99% effectiveness. That is obviously not how the placebo effect works.
X-ray machine screenings are not placebo. They aren't perfect, but if you put a handgun in your carry on, there's a pretty good chance they'll find it.
And yes I know there are failures. But it's not reasonable to say that the current security check is placebo only. Ask yourself: would you put a gun or knife in your carry on to prove the point?
The 90% figure I made up as an example. I don't know the real figure. But I don't fancy my chances getting a weapon through security.
Even yourself called it security theater because people have looked at TSA security and never found a single case where it prevented a threat to a airplane.
To quote: "Security theater is the practice of investing in countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually achieve it"
Security theater do not cause 90% prevention. And to be clear, I know several personal cases where a knife has gone through the security check because the person carrying it had forgotten that it was even there. Its not effective, no research say its effective, and all benefits that security checks provide against threat to airplanes are the placebo effect.
Strong doors, investigators, and bomb sniffing dogs. Those are some real security measures found to be effective on airports, airplanes, as well as other places where dangerous people need to be stopped. They are used by both police and the military, and shown to be cost effective. The methods used by airport screening is used by airports, not by the police or the military, and the results are clear.
A attacker would be more likely to attack the points in society with lowest perceived security and highest value. As such, if they had a single security check at entering the airport, then the train station before the airport would be the target. If they extended the check to the train station, the highest density area outside the train station. and so on, and so on. Thus the assertion that multiple checks don't help when dealing with perceived security, as long there is a easier target somewhere else.
And the assertions are not mine. Security researchers has published multiple articles on it, and finding commonalities between police and military is just public data. There is not a single security expect that claim that airport screening is cost effective form of security. Feel free to prove me wrong.
Istanbul Atatürk has a security check to get into the airport. Guess what, the terrorists simply attacked the people in line at the first security check!
Well, both Obama and Trump inherited a pretty broken TSA. That doesn't mean we shouldn't pay attention to whether the organization is improving or getting worse.
Generally I doubt that a president deserves credit, positive or negative, for changes in random agencies like the TSA. Like, does Obama really deserve bonus points for us being able to use cell phones during takeoff+landing? But you have to admit that a country-specific ban has Trump written all over it. People are rightly pointing out why it's a misguided policy.
The TSA was an Obama issue when Obama was President. The TSA was a Bush issue when Bush was President. The TSA is a Trump issue because Trump is President.
The idea that we can't criticize someone because of X, Y, and Z is ridiculous. Trump is now President. It is now his problem to solve.
This is actually fairly rational. I mean, all this airport security stuff is stupid security theater. However, if you're going to do it, you should absolutely ban laptops.
They may not be responsible for past policy, but I don't think it unreasonable to blame successive executive branches if they make the policy even more irrational.
ill never forget the time when a national gaurd(?) member pointed (but not aimed) a military assat rifle at my little sister and seperated her from my family while they looked through her backpack for the electronics she forgot to empty. it was a scientific calculator, and she was 13 i think? so yeah, agreed. Airtravel hasn't been rational in a long time.
I can see where you are coming from. But isn't this a policy directly from the administration?
It seems they've taken a keen interest in making travel very painful for select foreigners. I don't think this is a policy from anyone other than the new government?
I appreciate the link, because the one I read said that the ban was indefinite, but that the airlines had 96 hours to implement.
I also respectfully need to say that any arrogance you perceived from me was something you were reading into in my opinion, rather than something in my words that directly showed arrogance.
I exist to provide logic based and relatively emotionless arguments, not too much cynicism or ill will to fellow commenters.
It's a little ironic how contentious your tone is in this thread, considering that there were many outlets that didn't follow along with the mischaracterization of the ban that you have based your commenting on.
(I understand that you did see the 96 hour temporary ban in some reports; but even 14 hours ago there were reports not saying that, reports you accused other people of not reading, apparently without reading them yourself (the Bloomberg article didn't contain a time frame when I read it last night, nor the Reuters article I linked in my other reply))
This is just asking for trouble... Between theft and potential battery fires, it almost feels like they want something bad to happen so they can say people coming from these countries are dangerous (using a hull fire as proof).
So, assuming this is because of some credible threat: does that mean DHS thinks that terrorists can't afford a couple of weeks lay-over in Amsterdam or Paris before traveling to the United States?
They might think airport security personnel at Amsterdam or Paris do their job better than their colleagues from those 8 Middle Eastern and North African countries.
And/or they might think Netherlands and France is just as attractive for the terrorists as the US, i.e. the terrorists won’t bother taking that second flight.
BTW, I think Russia should be the 9-th country on that list, as they have long history of sponsoring terrorism.
I'm ignorant of Russia's historical role in sponsoring terrorism; I'm only getting recent Ukraine / Syria links. Can you share some resources to learn more about it?
Both in Ukraine and Syria the Russians are supporting the legitimate government. Don't forget there was coup in Ukraine. Not very good governments but still.
They are doing that at least since foundation of USSR.
Russians ordered bombings in Warsaw, Poland in 1920-s.
Shipped weaponry to Irish Republican Army and Palestine in 70-s. Speaking about Palestine, some say Russians have invented plane hijacking as a terrorist tactic: http://web.archive.org/web/20130102051626/http://www.nationa...
Killed many political opponents abroad, Alexander Litvinenko in UK, Sulim Yamadaev in UAE, Stepan Bandera in Germany.
If you want more, read books and articles by Stanislav Lunev, Ion Mihai Pacepa, Viktor Suvorov. Those are high-ranking KGB officers who surrendered and were cooperative. Alexander Litvinenko also published stuff about state-sponsored terrorism in modern Russia, but he concentrated on domestic not international.
When I came to the US in 2000 it was a fairly optimistic and happy place. Now when I read stuff like this I always get reminded how this country went from pretty open to being scared, irrational and mean in the last 15 or so years.
My personal pet peeve is when people say things like "we live in a dangerous world now". No, we don't. At least, not more dangerous than before (which is the implication). We might be breathlessly focused on some dangers, but those dangers are LESS than before, not more.
I don't want anyone to suffer, and definitely don't want anyone to die. I'm not calling for turning our backs on every idea to improve safety. Just don't apply this safety under the false premise that things are more dangerous than they were.
Homicides are easy to document, and those are the stats used in the graphs. It's other crimes that are difficult to compare.
Find an old source saying "Blimey, we hath hadd 200 of thee black cryme of murder thys annus!" and cross-reference it against recorded population at the time, and there's your homicide rate.
If you look at terrorism in the UK and Ireland, Islamic extremists are quite safe compared to the IRA. There were estimated to be over 10,000 terrorist bomb attacks due to the Northern Ireland conflicts.
I wouldn't say nobody did. There was certainly enough anti-Irish racism to wrongly convict people (Birmingham Six, Guildford Four, Maguire Seven). And the goal of the Loyalists was not so much to "deport" Catholics living in NI - they were after all born there and British nationals - but to force them to leave. Ethnic cleansing.
The situation was very weird - a civil war within the UK, effectively, complete with troops on the street and armed checkpoints - but only in very specific areas. A quasi-democracy operated: Gerry Adams MP was permitted to be elected but not allowed to speak on television. Bobby Sands was elected while in prison.
That's mostly true, but Irish men did come in for a lot of extra screening at airports, being taken into rooms for interrogation and so on. Particularly young Irish men with longer hair.
R
Rightwing reporting of incidents did a lot to drive anti Irish sentiment, leading to forced confessions by innocent Irish people for terrorist attacks like in Bermingham and Guilford.
Political leaders who liked to use zero tolerance rhetoric like Margaret Thatcher did a lot to help the IRA recruitment cause.
It was different, but not completely different to what we see now in the US.
By coincidence onetime IRA commander Martin McGuinness died today, a man who's conversion to pursuit of political aims through diplomatic conciliation rather than hardline methods is one of the great examples of how the former works better to end conflicts.
Those of us who are 50+ remember The threat of nuclear war, and 60+ remember the reality of the Cuban Missile Crisis. When you've lived through "100 Million people could die in the next 24 hours" (like was a real possibility during the Cuban Missile Crisis), the current threat level just makes people look like panicked children.
mid-40s here, and I remember growing up under the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction. "a terrorist might get a small pocket of us" as a national fear is small-fry compared to "a superpower might lay permanent waste to our entire country"...
... and while terrorist strikes do happen and nuclear war doesn't, the fear of terrorist strikes is much greater than the danger they represent.
We still need to worry about that. We seemingly keep adding things to worry about, antibiotic resistance, climate change, big data, and not solving many. Hmm.
I would put that first number at 35+ or so. I'm 36 and the threat of nuclear war was a vivid part of my childhood.
It's really hard to understand how we went from tolerating MAD to freaking out about a handful of people with box cutters in only a decade. I guess people have really short memories.
On the A16Z podcast someone made the great suggestion that as the news cycle shortens the news gets more negative. Good things and progress tends to happen on a longer time down but in the long run wins out. Imagine a news paper that gets published every hundred years. Yes, it would certainly cover the world wars, 9/11, probably the cold war. However, massive increases in life expectancy, decrease in poverty, decrease in violent deaths from crime or war, incredible scientific progress would overshadow almost everything dreadful we are concerned about on a daily basis. It probably would be mostly uplifting to read such a news paper. Our news cycle instead is down to a point where it's hard to imagine it could get any shorter.
Let's be honest here. Osama Bin Laden won. The US as we knew it pre-911 doesn't exist anymore. He caused it, but the worst thing about it is that we did it to ourselves. First Bush, then Obama and now Trump is putting the nail in the coffin.
The US lost, but the US still supports Israel, still has troops in Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Middle East, and still supports various anti-Islamist fighters around the world, so no, Osama bin Laden did not achieve his goals.
If bin Laden's victory condition was "many overly-reductive Americans bemoaning negative events in their nation's existence by parroting that the sky is irreversibly falling, throwing in the entire towel, forgetting or never bothering to study several existential threats to the United States in its brief history, and shrugging that our doom is all due to a Big Bad who managed to take down the world's occasionally most powerful nation with four airliners," then sure, he won. Since it wasn't, your comment is pretty much meaningless despite its appearance of wisdom.
It's weird, for all this terminal rhetoric I read about the end of America I still drove to work this morning and still had faith in American values, not to mention a crazy belief that what's right will ultimately prevail in the face of great adversity. What's more, I feel uniquely empowered as an American to roll up my sleeves and create the America I want to see and believe is good for the rest of us, and I didn't even need Gandhi to teach me that one.
I guess I need a sandwich board instead, because what's the point? Are we merely South Canada now, waiting for an eventual invasion that will take our economic, military, scientific and cultural leadership away, leaving a skeleton of a sovereign state that barely made it out of puberty? What coffin do you think Trump is building? I'm about as disapproving of the current administration as you can get, but I've also studied just enough of the world to understand that things tend to endure, even when the situation looks most hopeless to all involved.
Look at the Big Bads that the British survived throughout their centuries of history. Sure, Pax Britannica and their colonial adventures around the world have come to a close, but I don't see any comments saying "the world won, Britain lost, might as well yield the Crown and just absorb into the EU." Nope: they still fight for what they believe to be good and properly British, including giving the finger to the rest of Europe when they feel it necessary. We should learn from that example, of those with the learned memory of an empire from which they descend, deflated by the world changing around it, yet avoiding the adoption of a fatalist nostalgia that impedes all progress and hope for the future.
If the British aren't a good example, look at the Germans who still live in the punchline of uncomfortable jokes. They're still here, still making some mean beer, and still a valuable member of the world. Not even a particularly misguided government pissing off the entire planet could get rid of a German ideal that lived in its citizens' hearts, and they had a God damned wall down the middle in the wake of that mess to constantly remind them of how hopeless it got.
We are due to be knocked down a couple more pegs than we already are. If you're of the mind to give up when that happens, then you can identify yourself as a member of the "winning" army. Saying UbL won and giving up makes him win. How do you not see that?
Let's put it this way: 9/11 achieved exactly what was intended - it sent the US into a tailspin, and it's dragging the rest of the first world down with it. The current condition of US politics wrt. terrorism is best described as acute case of autoimmune disease. The damage of overreaction being much, much worse than the original attack.
That doesn't mean Bin Laden won - history is not a game, the round didn't end yet. US can still recover - if it choses to.
Reframing the point from "sky is falling" to "tailspin" doesn't make the point correct. There is absolutely no indicator that the United States of America is in a tailspin and numerous indicators to the contrary. Just like there are people who believe our world supremacy to be unchallenged, others believe the challenging of our world supremacy is fatal and destroying the world. It isn't. Stop saying it is, or it'll start being true.
I am aware some feel that erosion of civil liberties in response to terrorism has destroyed what they feel to be America. We are still having a conversation about those very flaws and I'm not blindfolded before a firing squad for having an unacceptable opinion, so I think the rumors of America's death are greatly exaggerated by those who benefit the most from her continued protections. Before terrorism, it was communism^. We grow out of things because eventually sanity wins out. It always does.
Do not take that to mean it's time to kick back. Quite the opposite: sanity wins because people choose to be sane en masse.
^ The trend line on irrational national fears is interesting. After terrorism should be nice.
I'd actually argue that Bin Laden failed terribly at his stated goal - he wanted to make Americans stop for a second and consider why they are being targeted, and then hopefully discover all the atrocities their own government has inflicted on Bin Laden's people, and well, hopefully revolt.
But America in general didn't spend even a second considering this.
Well I suppose, in a sense, it would be wrong to significantly change our behavior towards alignment with OBL's goals. That would probably trigger a lot more terrorism.
Well, yes, of course. I'm not saying that we should have aligned with his goals - but the world certainly failed to get why the attack was done in the first place - for most, it only had a religious motivation, or they think that terrorists hate American freedom so they had to attack.
Like the comment I linked says - terrorist goal wasn't that you get patted down when traveling, or surrendering your privacy to the encroaching surveillance state. Those are goals of the US government, and here, the government is winning. The terrorists however, are definitely not.
This is the correct answer. We overreacted, sure, but we did not react the way he wanted. I could not agree more with that (excellent) commenter about cheapening the situation.
This started before 2000. I'd say we were going in a good directios .
Then someone had the idea to treat corporations as people and legalize bribery. Leadership sets the tone as they say in corporations, so what kind of tone do greedy politicians set?
Our upward progress was doomed to stall bigly thanks to that decision.
Literally nobody knows. The info hasn't been released, none of the airlines know who the other airlines notified are, and it seems very clear that Jordanian Air violated the "terms" of the bulletin by even making their announcement.
I believe the UK tried this once and I remember reading that thefts were skyrocketing as a result. I'm struggling to find a source though, so this is just my poor memory and hearsay right now.
Thank you for your reasonable comment. You're going to get down voted into oblivion for it though. The right to privacy, drone strikes, budgets, Russia, etc. aren't issues until the D after someone's name turns into an R. Get with the program or lose all your internet points, man.
Right? I would highlight the negative aspects of any policy from any administration, no matter who or what is involved.
I would then make rational suggestions on how to fix it.
When an administration routinely refuses to follow logic, compromise, betterment of humanity- this law doesn't even help Americans!- then that administration earns my cynicism and disrespect.
What? Republicans never had any problem with Obama's drone campaigns, and if you compile a list of Trump's policies Democrats have an issue with now, I doubt drones will be in the top #10. It would be nice if people kept talking about drone strikes and their victims, but we don't. Either under Obama or under Trump.
> Russia
You can't be seriously saying Obama had a Russian connection? Remember, "Hillary will start a war with Russia" was literally a major talking point by Trump supporters.
These senators filibustered for 12 hours in 2013 to protest Obama's drone strikes. It was kind of a big deal at the time. #StandWithRand ring a bell? Perhaps you're not old enough to remember.
You've been breaking the HN guidelines by posting uncivil and unsubstantive comments, and by abusing the site for political battle. We ban accounts that do these things, so please stop doing them.
EDIT: Also, no airline that I know of will insure these items when checked in for more than $100 on international flights (please correct if I'm wrong). So if you can get them in at all, like the article says, they will be stolen.
> Note that some airlines, like Delta, do not allow computers or lithium batteries in checked luggage [...] so this essentially means that other than phones, these things are completely banned and will have to be shipped separately or not shipped at all.
This is incorrect, only spare batteries aren't allowed in checked baggage, computers are fine. From your second link [1]:
> Lithium ion batteries installed in a personal electronic device can be transported as checked or carry on baggage. Lithium ion batteries not installed in a device (spares) must be in carry-on baggage and no more than two (2) spares between 100 and 160 watt hours are allowed.
The first link says: "Computers or computer-related equipment are not allowed as checked baggage. You can, of course, bring your laptop computers as carry-on." It's unclear between the two links which one applies. Anyway, I'd check with the airline before trying to check in such equipment.
I'm convinced this ban is motivated by a protectionist desire from the US-based airlines, to dissuade business travelers from flying on Middle Eastern airlines like Emirates and Qatar, which necessarily transit through countries like the UAE.
If you're someone who flies for work, there's no way you're going to take a flight where you can't use your laptop.
When I was passing through Singapore once, two Americans in front of me started taking their shoes off right before the security check. The security officer gave them a weird look and said they can put it back on because he uses a scanner and doesn't need to look inside everyones shoe. Fast forward 3 years and i'm reading comments on HN about double security check not being bad heh.
Checked in bag is not free. Checked in bags also get manhandled unless you pay hefty to get the fragile tag and insurance. For someone cheap like me who carries a backpack which is free so far, the extra cost is my biggest concern. Hope something like this doesn't happen in domestic flights.
> Checked in bag is not free. Checked in bags also get manhandled unless you pay hefty to get the fragile tag and insurance.
Assuming it arrives at all... it could be a very expensive bag. And laptops in checked luggage is just asking for them to walk off. There is absolutely no way I'd check my laptop, then again, I'm not planning on going to the United States before the madness stops and if I would I probably would not fly through any country that this is all about.
Even so, it does not strike me as a policy that has been thought about for a very long time. Having laptops in the passenger area means that if something bad does happen something could be done about it.
Having them in the cargo compartment means that if a fire should start it could get quite bad before it gets noticed and the extinguisher gets used.
If they're scared of bombs then they should not be on board at all, cargo hold or passenger compartment doesn't matter.
So I really don't understand the point of this, maybe time will bring me to see the reasoning but right now I can't.
...I feel like no one here read the article. Based on these comments, one might think that A) this had never happened before (it has), or B) it was permanent (it's a 96 hour ban).
I'm curious what threat an iPad poses that a cellphone doesn't and what a terrorist can't do with a chron job that they would otherwise do with a laptop. It's not like they use a teleporter when they check your bags. It's clear that if our regulations and bureaucrats are all we have to protect us from "evildoers" we're all doomed by their ignorance of the simplicity of working around this...
A cellphone is small, and doesn't have much room, that's all.
It's not the electronics per say, it's the difficulty of checking inside them. That's why only certain airports are included, those that check things properly are not.
This makes almost zero sense, and it's likely that there will be zero explanation as to why any of this is necessary.
If there's a threat this only introduces a minor inconvenience to those looking to carry out an attack. Is getting a connecting flight in some country like Germany going to be hard?
There have been some reports about UEFI-based malware, which can hook into the OS boot process. I guess this could also work even if the disk is encrypted. First Google hit for "UEFI malware":
VGA, Wifi module, Ethernet controller, BIOS (UEFI), power controller, heck, even battery all have chips inside them capable of running malware as well. It's naive to believe than NSA&co doesn't have its fingers on such techniques (remember Cisco devices interception). Modern laptop/PC is ridden with micro "PCs" all over.
You modify the bootloader to grab the password on next decryption. The bootloader is in cleartext on the disk, otherwise the machine couldn't boot.
More advanced versions would involve modifying the BIOS to add a SMM-mode hook. That way the malware runs completely outside the view of the OS. Alternatively, any device with DMA access could have its firmware altered to read sensitive information from memory.
Yes, lumping everyone from the same geographic area or ethnic group into one generic stereotype basket can be somewhat irksome.
Note: Not a snarky comeback at your post per se, just that a lot of people tend to be oblivious to generic stereotyping unless they are the subject of it, and I am hoping that others reading this thread may have an "Aha" moment.
Addendum: As big as the US is, if you pooled all land masses that have a majority Muslim population, I believe it would dwarf the USA.
This affects people from many countries, not just the seven or eight targeted initially. For example, I stay in India, and if I visit the US, I may fly via Dubai.
Which means, in turn, that I'm less likely to visit. Why take a 20-hour flight and subject myself to "extreme vetting"?
If it is going to place burdensome carry on restrictions on people the US government could at least explain why the measures are necessary.
At the rate we are going, it's not going to be long before you will not be allowed to bring any carry on luggage at all when flying from certain airports. Maybe everyone should fly naked. Who knows, someone might have plastic explosives sewn into their clothes. Wait, what if someone swallows the explosives? Maybe everyone should be forced to take an emetic and get a colonoscopy before flying.
They did explain why they're necessary. You wouldn't know that from the cynical comments on HackerNews though. From the CNN article about this:
>The official said the move is partly based on intelligence that they believe indicates Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is close to being able to hide explosives with little or no metal content in electronic devices in order to target commercial aircraft.
It's a particular concern at these airports because of screening issues and the possibility of terrorists infiltrating authorized airport personnel, the official said. Flight and cabin crews are not covered by these new restrictions.
In February 2016, a bomb hidden inside a laptop detonated aboard a Daallo Airlines flight out of Mogadishu, Somalia. The bomber was killed and a hole was blown in the side of the fuselage. The aircraft landed safely.
If they allow phones at all, then the threat cannot be an issue of a passenger sending a command out of one of these. The threat has to be the device itself.
Now, a standard issue iPad is no threat, so we're talking about a customized device made to look like on.
Except, if terrorists are going to the trouble to do this, they can just as easily put whatever bad thing they want to put into the case of an insulin pump, and bypass the ban.
As much as I enjoy a good conspiracy theory, there's just not enough time for that, with the timing as tight as it is. A particular target with a focused scan, sure. Mass surveillance dragnet? No way. Not unless the NSACIAFBI have a way of dumping a hard drive without turning on the machine at speeds faster than a disk can even dump itself.
(Try pouring out your biggest spinning rust drive out over any port that can keep up with the drive. It takes hours nowadays. SSDs can bottleneck at the port instead of the drive, but you can't count on your target having one yet, nor can you count on the fastest ports being available. And we're certainly not going to mass-disassemble laptops to dump their drives.)
Keep you busy at CBP, keep the bag from the belt when you first land... plenty of opportunities to physically attack the device when the person can't keep it on them and keep an eye on it.
To both of your who replied, yes, there are various other attacks, but that's a different issue that what I was replying to.
And, still, at bulk these things aren't feasible, or even necessary. You're not taking your cynicism far enough. Why does the government need to sorta kinda hope that you might maybe take a flight with your gear someday when they're already capturing all your email and web browsing anyhow? It's a ridiculous theory that you're only entertaining because our trust has decayed to the point that the mere fact that something is an accusation against our government is all but proof that it must be true, no matter how silly it is.
No, the government is not going to set out to physically attack every laptop passing through an airport, because what would that give them that they don't already have, except huge operational costs and risk of detection?
Or just their ass. People can fit amazingly large things in their ass and it would bypass all airport detection. There is no real security with such big loopholes.
Millimeter scans only happen in US airports -- they're banned in ~Europe~ the EU and not really used anywhere else.
Also you're very wrong. You can defeat a millimeter scan just by placing the contraband between your palms while your hands are clasped above your head.
You're right, it's just the EU. I fixed my comment.
The point is their technology is terrible and they are easy to defeat, as has been proven many many times.
They are security theater and they were only put in place because the guy in charge of what scanners were allowed at US airports happened to have a financial interest in the company that made the millimeter wave scanner.
> They are security theater and they were only put in place because the guy in charge of what scanners were allowed at US airports happened to have a financial interest in the company that made the millimeter wave scanner.
Yup. I have been to many airports in Africa and SE Asia that have only a metal detector, manned by someone who barely cares enough to stand there, and no one has successfully committed an act of terrorism (a la 9/11) with a plane due to it.
Also when I was traveling in Japan, they had machines that could scan the contents of your water bottle so you didn't have to empty it or throw it away while going through security.
I'm mildly convinced other countries don't have this because the beverage industry can sell more water/soda you're forced to throw it away when you go through security.
I've also stopped arguing about going through the machines. I know they do nothing, but it's not worth the hassle security employees give you to opt out. Just stand there, knowing it's pointless, and move on.
> I'm mildly convinced other countries don't have this because the beverage industry can sell more water/soda you're forced to throw it away when you go through security.
That makes sense, Japanese airports have distinctly non-airport prices for food and drinks even past security.
Anecdata: Japanese airport staff are also humans, and treat you like a fellow human. Most pleasant immigration experiences I've had were at Narita. My own country (AU) treats me like a criminal on _departure_.
To be fair, the threat model of those countries doesn't include terrorist hijackings. You will surely experience a thorough screening in Israel or Frankfurt.
Every major U.S. airport I've been to in the past 5 years has had ample bottle filling stations.
> You will surely experience a thorough screening in Israel or Frankfurt.
I think Israel is special, because they use behavioural profiling on you as well.
I've been through Frankfurt on an inter-EU flight, and we were put into the priority lane because things were quiet. The priority lane only had (has?) a metal detector, no body scanner.
So if the body scanners were really about security, why would they have a lane that allows you to bypass them completely?
I once flew from Frankfurt to Barcelona without anyone checking my passport (I am not European but have a valid residence permit for an EU country). Did online checkin and printed my boarding pass. No checked luggage, and automated boarding pass scanners at the gate. So yeah, really thorough...
Frankfurt and Barcelona are both in the Schengen zone. Just like you can drive from Austria to Hungary without a passport, you can fly from Germany to Spain without one. It's only on the edge of the zone that they check your passport.
> It's only on the edge of the zone that they check your passport.
I am aware. My point wasn't clear. I wasn't surprised I was not asked for my passport, however I was surprised I was able to fly from Germany to Spain without anyone verifying I was the person my boarding pass said I was.
I could have given my ticket to a friend and they would have been able to fly under my name, because at no point did anyone ask for government ID to confirm I was the same person as my boarding pass.
I value the freedom of movement Europeans have very highly, but it just goes to show how dead easy it is for someone to travel undetected (e.g. have an associate buy your ticket).
If you are flying to a destination outside the Schengen zone from Frankfurt, you have a strong chance of receiving a close frisk. The frisk is far beyond what is acceptable in U.S. culture and norms.
Rapiscan, the maker of the device, was a client of Michael Chertoff's consulting company, and he was the head of Homeland Security when the scanners were put in place by his department.
I can say that I was required to use one to get back into the U.S. while transiting through Schiphol back in October 2013. No opt out, just the scanner and "I'm not forcing you to fly today - you can stay here." Pretty rude, too.
Since then, I always transit through Heathrow. It's a logistical nightmare with all those buses, but they've never coerced me to go through a scanner. Those biometric checkpoints, on the other hand...
[Note: This was with Dutch staff for British Airways; not sure if that's relevant.]
I experienced this at Schiphol as well, a bit after you. I told them I couldn't because of a medical condition, they gave me a pretty thorough pat-down, and let me on.
I don't know why you say that, while there are not scanners on every security lane at Heathrow they _cannot_ be refused, there is no pat-down alternative like in the US.
I believe this was previously the case, but it is now possible to opt out. I flew from Heathrow (Terminal 2) on Friday, refused the mm-wave scanner and had a pat-down in a private room instead.
The only alternative that can be offered to a scanner is a private search which allows for a more extensive hand-search than usual. Passengers will be escorted to a different location in the airport from the main search area (eg a private search room). The private search may involve the loosening and/or removal of clothing. A person undergoing a private search may ask to be accompanied by a witness.
This alternative screening method will take significantly more time than passing through a security scanner.
They are used all over Europe. Maybe some countries have opted not to use them, but I go through them every time I fly. In some cases there might be an opt-out for passengers, but they are certainly not banned.
I tried researching this a while back and opted for the molestation (at least one qualified for that term). I recently went back to zapping out of cumulative annoyance. Any good resources that review the radiation type and dose?
Uh, no. Many physicists don't like the now-discontinued X-ray backscatter machines, but the mm wave devices are not ionizing radiation. Some guy explained why non-ionizing radiation isn't a problem in 1905; won the Nobel Prize for it, too.
The science is only still out if you believe that mobile phones are causing cancer as well- ie for those who can't, or refuse, to understand science. For everyone else it's throughly settled
"The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is part of the World Health Organization (WHO). Its major goal is to identify causes of cancer. The IARC has classified RF fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans,” based on limited evidence of a possible increase in risk for brain tumors among cell phone users, and inadequate evidence for other types of cancer."
Good chat, despite it's mildly aggressive nature. Here's what:
So, an organisation that basically labels everything in the world as either a potential carcinogen or carcinogen [0] when the second lowest score they award still reads as 'potential carcinogen' is more powerful than actual evidence, accrued across enormous longitudinal studies, first from scandinavia [1] but backed significantly by australia [2] and integrated into a plausable mechanism for increases in >70 year olds [3] combined with a finding that would actually revolutionise physics and biology for suggesting a new mechanism for the interaction of electromagnetism and biology?
Alarmists are everywhere [4]. But that doesn't mean they are right. It's easy to listen to fear, but just because someone is screaming and crying doesn't make them right. Serious claims deserve to be looked at seriously, and this one has been throughly examined, in research that is continuing. And it continues to be debunked by huge datasets - not just the referenced studies but also the million woman study [5][6] and others.
So yes, I repeat, for anyone versed in science, physics and with their head screwed on straight, the science is settled, and I challenge you to demonstrate either a mechanism or a throughly vetted dataset that proves otherwise.
And i'll remind you that hitting the first answer on google does not constitute research.
You never know what might end up becoming the "radium dial" of this generation. People like to say shit is settled "just ask all the physicists! it's safe!" - uh no - shit isn't settled until 20/20 history can be the judge. "Hey, I wonder why all these workers are getting phossy jaw?" ...hmm? Their jaws were literally falling off their skulls. Nobody was wiser. All this cancer going around is definitely not a coincidence.
It's a pretty thin bow to draw, but could be - so could general increase in average population blood glucose as more of the population suffers from metabolic disorder/T2DM but again that's promoting tumour growth not necessarially causing cancer.. and there certainly isn't enough evidence to say that. Studies are continuing but again when early weak studies show a positive result, and later good studies show no result, the chance of drawing a positive p value become lower and lower
No. Millimetre wave (and backscatter x-ray) imagery won't penetrate skin and certainly won't reveal the presence of contraband inside a human.
There's commercially available penetrating X-ray human body security scanners, but afaict those just have been used in prisons, not in airports (yet!).
Scanning the workers. A full body scan is low enough dosage that it is safe to be scanned every ~3 days (IIRC), so 30% of workers would be randomly selected for a whole body scan each day when they leave the mines.
Since then it has been repurposed for extreme cases like unconscious car crash victims in order to determine the extent of injuries. Or so I learned in a medical imaging elective.
The technology behind it is really cool! By using temporal separation for the different parts of the image they reduce scattering blur, allowing them to use a much lower dose to get the same image quality.
I had a colleague fly through Amman last night. They had him remove 100% of everything from his briefcase and checked everything for bomb residue. If I had to guess, the US has intelligence that someone is going to bring a bomb (or some other weapon) on board a plane using a Laptop Form factor. I'm also guessing that the type of damage one can do with a device in the Cabin is greater than that can be done in the luggage hold (which is why the Laptop can be checked, but not brought through carry on.)
Though, I'm open to the alternative theory that having people place their laptops in checked luggage gives them greater opportunity to do targeted surveillance without their target being aware.
That's some strong criticism, especially since you're not even considering that someone already successfully detonated a laptop bomb on a plane.
From the CNN article on this new policy: >The official said the move is partly based on intelligence that they believe indicates Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is close to being able to hide explosives with little or no metal content in electronic devices in order to target commercial aircraft.
It's a particular concern at these airports because of screening issues and the possibility of terrorists infiltrating authorized airport personnel, the official said. Flight and cabin crews are not covered by these new restrictions.
In February 2016, a bomb hidden inside a laptop detonated aboard a Daallo Airlines flight out of Mogadishu, Somalia. The bomber was killed and a hole was blown in the side of the fuselage. The aircraft landed safely.
The point made was that it's idiotic because bombs can be shoved into anything. Copy pasting the same bit about the likely existence of laptop bombs only matters if you believe that 1. it's harder to use something other than a laptop, or 2. moving a bomb to the luggage compartment will help.
I think you've posted this like 15 times in this comment section. This is a terrible argument: what happens when next month someone hides a bomb in a bottle of liquor, or a child's toy, or an iPhone? This kind of reactive security is a sure way to inconvenience everyone and not actually improve security in any meaningful way. Every security professional knows that if you only "fix" the narrow cases that have caused problems in the past, you will never prevent another attack. I don't know what a better solution looks like, because I'm not an expert on counterterrorism or explosives detection, but this certainly isn't it.
I imagine that a bomb in a bottle of liquor is not easy to conceal from a scanner. On the other hand, I can see a laptop "battery" being a great vehicle for an explosive hidden in plain sight. There's also immediate threats to think about. If you have intelligence about an imminent attack by a certain method, you can stop it with targeted reactive measures. Good security requires both proactive and reactive approaches.
The Big 4 Middle East/Gulf airlines (Emirates, Etihad, Qatar, Turkish) have been giving legacy US carriers a lot of grief lately, since they're both cheaper and better on essentially all counts, so I can't help but wonder if they have their finger in the pie here. Few businessmen will opt to fly long-haul if they can't use their laptops, and they're specifically targeting 9 airlines here, not just airports or countries.
It's also beyond bizarre that the US trusts Abu Dhabi's security enough to locate its only Middle Eastern Customs/Immigration preclearance facility, but not enough to let passengers who have gone through security bring tablets...
That's incredibly evil, but I'm sad to say that after some thought I believe you. It's hard to think of another reason why the ban would be given as a list of specific airports —
and it just so happens that American carriers don't fly direct to any of the specified cities. (AA sells flights to a few but they are all codeshares, thanks JamilD for correcting my previous statement.)
> Plus, can confirm that the ME airlines are highly competitive. They're subsidized by their governments
That's not true, at least not for Emirates and Etihad, which were the main airlines accused.
Delta and other US airlines did accuse them of violating the Open Skies agreement, yes. Which is quite hypocritical since Delta (like other US airlines) has also taken direct subsidies from the US government.
But, as Emirates showed in their subsequent lawsuit, their financial records prove that they have never taken government subsidies, despite Delta's accusations. Etihad did, but long before Open Skies was signed (1999).
This behavior isn't unusual; the Big Four are just using this as an easy way to smear their biggest competitors, while ignoring other airlines that have similar financial history (China Southern, etc.). But China Southern isn't (currently) drawing passengers away from the Big Four, whereas Emirates/Etihad/Qatar are.
The Gulf aiflines are more efficient than the US airlines because they exclusively serve one city - Emirates, for example, flies only flights to or from Dubai (with a couple of tiny exceptions). That makes it a lot easier to provide excellent service and cheap flights.
It says that other carriers will be informed on Tuesday, so maybe they aren't aware yet. But yes it's sounds a bit weird to ban it on only some carriers...
> It's also beyond bizarre that the US trusts Abu Dhabi's security enough to locate its only Middle Eastern Customs/Immigration preclearance facility, but not enough to let passengers who have gone through security bring tablets...
Indeed I didn't read the sentence correctly my apologies.
However, I don't see that as a vote of confidence in them since they are still permitting flights.
I think similar could be said of the TSA in the US - the DHS trust them enough to let passengers who have gone through security bring shampoo as carry on but not enough if those shampoo bottles are greater than 3.4 ounces, despite having gone through their security.
I think its less about a vote of confidence and more about absurdist theater.
> I think similar could be said of the TSA in the US - the DHS trust them enough to let passengers who have gone through security bring shampoo as carry on but not enough if those shampoo bottles are greater than 3.4 ounces, despite having gone through their security.
This is not about DHS trusting TSA, since the specific part of DHS that makes that regulates that is...TSA.
The parallel I was trying to draw was that they don't trust the own systems and procedures, hence things like arbitrary liquid distinctions and now anything with a battery except cell phones.
And the bizarreness is that they're simultaneously trusting them enough to handle immigration, but not trusting them enough to handle passenger screening.
As an anecdote, I've flown United and Turkish across the Atlantic and it's a world of difference.
In 2016, the United airplane I was in still did not have a seatback screen and they expected all 200+ passengers to connect to the wifi to try to get in-flight entertainment. Of course no one got on. So all of us were left craning our necks trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was on the CRT in the aisle.
Meanwhile, Turkish Airlines has a touchscreen interface with beautifully done transitions and an amazing selection of movies and music. I remember seeing Radiohead's Kid A on there, along with the Blade Runner soundtrack.
Next month, I'm flying to Berlin via Turkish even though it will take 4 more hours because the price and comfort are worth it. Only problem is, this electronics ban may compromise my electronics.
(And yes, I'm aware of early adopter pitfalls and government subsidies for airlines, but United has no qualms treating non-status passengers like trash.)
Not sure about TA, but my experience is that 95% of this is just about when the planes get bought. Entertainment systems solve the "keep people happy problem" for relatively cheap. But it's pretty expensive to replace all the seats just for that.
JAL/ANA have very new planes with cool entertainment systems, but they also fly their older planes on some routes with a bunch of stuff that looks like it's powered by VCR.
To your question: they probably don't for their major international flights.
It's not new. I had a 4-hour wait at the terminal to get to a KLM plane in Chengdu a bit over 10 years ago, this was perhaps 2006. The reason became clear when they informed us upon boarding that "the in-flight entertainment system is unfortunately not available, but it is not connected to flight systems and has no impact on flight security".
The entertainment system on the seat backs was Linux in a reboot loop.
It sounds like you were on a fairly old United plane (CRTs in the aisle). While there are newer planes with seat-back screens, their newest planes eschew any sort of seat-back entertainment completely. At least on domestic flights, it's been a while since I've flown internationally.
This is a deliberate decision that airlines are starting to make. If most passengers are bringing a wifi-capable device (ipad, phone, etc), then why go to the extra expense (and weight) to support seat-back screens?
Now, my main experience with this has been flying within the US where none of the newest planes have screens. Internationally, there may still be screens included in newer planes, but when screens = weight, and weight = $$$, it's not surprising that they are getting removed. Moreover, screens = depth, which when removed can make room for more rows, which means more money.
If this electronics ban takes hold though, I'd expect for there to be a big rethink about this.
Spirit airlines has the thinnest seats I've ever seen on an airplane. It's a metal sheet with thin foam and leather over it. Certainly no room for any seat-back entertainment.
I'll gladly let the airline shove more seats in by thinning them out, than by reducing my leg room any further.
The problem was the wifi was incapable of handling all the passengers trying to connect throughout the entire flight from SFO to LHR. Even if I wanted to pay them money to watch a movie, I couldn't.
So United saved costs by not retrofitting their airplanes with seatback screens and by offering shit wifi.
I'll never fly United again. I had a similar experience for 14 hours. It isn't just the in flight entertainment. In my experience their staff are rude and borderline incompetent. There must be a poor culture in the company as a whole. My wife just flew with them and went nearly 10 hours without a meal while she was flying with our two year old.
Yeah! I have been flying for decades. Delta seems to have a cycle of climbing to excellence and falling. United Air Lines has always made me miserable reliably.
Don't get me started on United. I refuse to fly with them (LHR to SFO about 4 times a year) for a myriad of reasons, not limited to: food quality, delays, total failure of in-flight entertainment system and taking an extra 1.5 days to get me home (direct flight cancelled, so shunted via Dulles). I'm a tolerant person, but United excelled at pissing me off.
My favorite United moment, immediately following a hard landing. Flight attendant (loud enough for a lot of people to hear): "That was the worst landing all year. They really should teach these guys to land the planes before they let them fly them."
Agreed. Nearly every time there will be stewardesses who look like they have some kind of job guarantee or something and they don't even pretend to be polite. So much different from Southwest or even the other dirt cheap airlines (e.g. Frontier).
I flew United frequently before 2016 to Africa, Europe, and Asia and all the flights had full size screens in economy and economy plus. The handheld streaming is common for domestic flights.
In last 2 years Turkish Airlines had 3 serious accidents. In 2015 they have seriously damaged their plane twice during landing in Kathmandu and Istanbul. In 2017 they lost plane that they have been operating which killed all 4 crew members and at least 34 people on the ground when it crashed in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.[1]
Also their primary hub Istanbul Ataturk Airport (IST) was attacked in 2016, which left 45 people killed and more than 230 people injured.[2]
I am not sure what criteria they use to issue this award, but they do not look safe enough to me to be on the 7th best position in the world.
I knew of the attack at Ataturk Airport and I'm fine with a layover there. I'd even change to a stopover to hang out in Istanbul again, but don't have the time this trip. If you can get over your fears and fly the two airlines, I'm sure you'll find Turkish to be a better experience than United.
I'm not an expert here, but Kindles (readers, not tablets) seem like the most harmless things. They are almost the perfect devices for long haul flights since the battery life is so long. I usually devour books on long-haul flights on my Kindle.
I wonder if including Kindles is more a jibe against Bezos. Perhaps this is a stretch.
This seems like the most likely explanation to me.
Abu Dhabi security was far more stringent than anything I have been through in Europe, (and ironically Brussels, when I was in the Brussels airport in transit when it was attacked).
487 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 386 ms ] thread"cellphones and medical devices were excluded from the ban."
That's kind of a massive segment of the population.
(Totally not picked because they're muslim, I swear, wink wink.)
Personal electronics are near-indispensable. By restricting their carry from Muslim countries, freedom of movement to and from those countries is significantly curtailed. This is about getting around the illegality of the Muslim ban without banning any persons or groups. This is about "cultural protectionism" through isolationism, not terrorism, and it's not even trying particularly hard to pretend otherwise.
My point is specifically that I don't believe it'll impede freedom of movement meaningfully. People will simply pack their devices in luggage. Interestingly, it might result in fewer laptop searches at the airports (whereas they might have asked someone to open / turn on / provide a password), among that targeted population.
I don't think that's right. Such demands are not generally made at airport security at the origin, but at the CBP checkpoint at the arrival airport. There, passengers have already retrieved checked bags.
Neither Bloomberg nor this Reuters article mention the period it will be in effect.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-airlines-electronics-i...
At least we can rest assured this has been as carefully prepared, vetted, and communicated as other recent policies. </s>
http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2017/03/21/electronics-ban-on-...
You put up this headline without any of the other political context and I am right there with you. But there is no shortage of context.
This was my first thought until I saw a Saudi airport on the list of originating airports that will be impacted by the ban. Trump avoided listing any countries where he had business connections with in his ban orders, so I'm more likely to believe this is the result of actionable intelligence than xenophobia/Islamophobia-related bullshit.
Still, I could be wrong and it could just be the current administration keeping on their anti-Islam crusade.
"Brian Jenkins, an aviation-security expert at the Rand Corp., said the nature of the security measure suggested that it was driven by intelligence of a possible attack."
"The ban would begin just before Wednesday's meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group in Washington. A number of top Arab officials were expected to attend the State Department gathering. It was unclear whether their travel plans were related to any increased worry about security threats."
(just guessing, if at all "it was driven by intelligence of a possible attack")
The X rays are certainly not perfect and there is certain probability something goes unnoticed. In normal case we just make a trade off between convenience and security. In this special case somebody wants to play it safe.
Also, the one time I came into the US, I carried my checked bags through customs.
Seriously. He couldn't get his ban through (twice), so now he's just going to make it as inconvenient as hell for people from those eight countries to travel to the US. It's a big 'fuck you' to Muslims.
The POTUS is a 3 year old in a man's body.
https://xkcd.com/651/
Yeah. With Nitroglycerin, the stuff that explodes when you move it too fast. You could still bring this on a plane undetected in 3.4oz containers. And you can check a bag with much larger amounts.
But there was not just "a plot" to blow up a plane with liquid explosives. There was a successful attack on a South Korean plane that killed everyone on board with liquid explosives, used in 1989. Yet they don't even mention this, probably because the policy was put in place after 9/11, partly as a fear tactic to get US citizens to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, partly to prevent fear from ruining the airline industry, and partly to support the new jobs program called the TSA (which was also created after 9/11).
Without fear and extensive unnecessary security measures, the TSA would not be the size it is, nor would it get the investment it gets. If you don't believe TSA is primarily a jobs program, consider that according to NPR in 2006, a government report showed that Research & Development programs were delayed when TSA funds were redirected in order to pay for personnel costs for screeners. And the TSA receives 8 billion dollars a year.
There are many ways to detect liquid explosives. By removing them from their container (or requiring specific kinds of transparent containers) and using laser scatter plotting or microwaves, or by detecting vapor emissions from an opened bottle, for example. But nobody cared about them when planes were bombed using them, and they're still not using any of these methods, 17 years after the policies were put in place. These policies are just tools used to control people.
And you're right! It isn't.
But then you realize that the special interests that came up with this policy were paid LARGE SUMS OF MONEY to impress Trump and all of his supporters and career politician allies. And then you once more realize how incredibly stupid this policy is in reality.
But then it dawns on you that Trump and his allies are either criminally idiotic, or criminally wasteful in their policy pursuits.
Or both!
Why would a laptop go into checked when an equivalently sized battery not be allowed?
Further discrepancies that show we don't have a rational executive branch.
[1] https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...
Or the current ban on liquids?
Or the even better idea I saw in Brussels airport of two semi-identical security checks; one to get into the airport and then the "regular" second one. I can only wait for the next improved version of three security checkpoints, which will add 50% more secure then the current two.
After 9/11, sensibility went out the window. This new move is quite far from the stupidest I have seen.
A reasonable way to detect threats would be to hire more investigators and bomb dogs patrols. Both has shown to be cost-effective and to produce results, in direct contrast to the TSA screening method.
How big portion of terrorists is likely to completely ignore the fact of one screening but be deterred by the existence of a second one?
With two serial 90% effective checks, you have a 99% effective system. Such a low chance of success means attackers should try something else instead.
Now, with probably not even close to 99% screening, along with cockpit doors and fight-motivated passengers, the deterrence seems powerful enough that we are seeing other kinds of attacks.
People don't believe 90% in a fake pill, and by eating two get to 99% belief. Either you believe the fake pill will work or you don't. The number of pills don't multiply the placebo effect.
Why believe that security theater, ie fake security, increase the physiological effect in multiplicate way based on the number of identical copies?
If the placebo effect could be multiplied in such a way, every sickness could be cured by just eating more and more sugar. If a fake pill had 1% placebo effect, eating ~500 fake pills would reach 99% effectiveness. That is obviously not how the placebo effect works.
And yes I know there are failures. But it's not reasonable to say that the current security check is placebo only. Ask yourself: would you put a gun or knife in your carry on to prove the point?
The 90% figure I made up as an example. I don't know the real figure. But I don't fancy my chances getting a weapon through security.
To quote: "Security theater is the practice of investing in countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually achieve it"
Security theater do not cause 90% prevention. And to be clear, I know several personal cases where a knife has gone through the security check because the person carrying it had forgotten that it was even there. Its not effective, no research say its effective, and all benefits that security checks provide against threat to airplanes are the placebo effect.
Strong doors, investigators, and bomb sniffing dogs. Those are some real security measures found to be effective on airports, airplanes, as well as other places where dangerous people need to be stopped. They are used by both police and the military, and shown to be cost effective. The methods used by airport screening is used by airports, not by the police or the military, and the results are clear.
If you were in charge of a plot, would you base your plan around getting a gun through airport security?
Nope. You'd do something else where you are more likely to succeed.
And the assertions are not mine. Security researchers has published multiple articles on it, and finding commonalities between police and military is just public data. There is not a single security expect that claim that airport screening is cost effective form of security. Feel free to prove me wrong.
Generally I doubt that a president deserves credit, positive or negative, for changes in random agencies like the TSA. Like, does Obama really deserve bonus points for us being able to use cell phones during takeoff+landing? But you have to admit that a country-specific ban has Trump written all over it. People are rightly pointing out why it's a misguided policy.
And if Trump admin disagreed with it, they wouldn't implement it.
The idea that we can't criticize someone because of X, Y, and Z is ridiculous. Trump is now President. It is now his problem to solve.
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/651/
this was sometime in the months following 9/11.
It seems they've taken a keen interest in making travel very painful for select foreigners. I don't think this is a policy from anyone other than the new government?
Chill.
What if they wait more than 96 hours? What does checking electronics into bags do to keep us safer?
The subtle arrogance in you asking for the threat Intel is utterly astonishing.
I also respectfully need to say that any arrogance you perceived from me was something you were reading into in my opinion, rather than something in my words that directly showed arrogance.
I exist to provide logic based and relatively emotionless arguments, not too much cynicism or ill will to fellow commenters.
Bullshit.
Why do you think you know more about international counterterrorism than... Well, anyone?
(I understand that you did see the 96 hour temporary ban in some reports; but even 14 hours ago there were reports not saying that, reports you accused other people of not reading, apparently without reading them yourself (the Bloomberg article didn't contain a time frame when I read it last night, nor the Reuters article I linked in my other reply))
And/or they might think Netherlands and France is just as attractive for the terrorists as the US, i.e. the terrorists won’t bother taking that second flight.
BTW, I think Russia should be the 9-th country on that list, as they have long history of sponsoring terrorism.
Russians ordered bombings in Warsaw, Poland in 1920-s. Shipped weaponry to Irish Republican Army and Palestine in 70-s. Speaking about Palestine, some say Russians have invented plane hijacking as a terrorist tactic: http://web.archive.org/web/20130102051626/http://www.nationa...
Killed many political opponents abroad, Alexander Litvinenko in UK, Sulim Yamadaev in UAE, Stepan Bandera in Germany.
If you want more, read books and articles by Stanislav Lunev, Ion Mihai Pacepa, Viktor Suvorov. Those are high-ranking KGB officers who surrendered and were cooperative. Alexander Litvinenko also published stuff about state-sponsored terrorism in modern Russia, but he concentrated on domestic not international.
I don't want anyone to suffer, and definitely don't want anyone to die. I'm not calling for turning our backs on every idea to improve safety. Just don't apply this safety under the false premise that things are more dangerous than they were.
Find an old source saying "Blimey, we hath hadd 200 of thee black cryme of murder thys annus!" and cross-reference it against recorded population at the time, and there's your homicide rate.
The whole thing was a much smaller scale than Syria, but still generated a "flood" of refugees: http://www.thejournal.ie/northern-refugees-ireland-state-pap...
The situation was very weird - a civil war within the UK, effectively, complete with troops on the street and armed checkpoints - but only in very specific areas. A quasi-democracy operated: Gerry Adams MP was permitted to be elected but not allowed to speak on television. Bobby Sands was elected while in prison.
Rightwing reporting of incidents did a lot to drive anti Irish sentiment, leading to forced confessions by innocent Irish people for terrorist attacks like in Bermingham and Guilford.
Political leaders who liked to use zero tolerance rhetoric like Margaret Thatcher did a lot to help the IRA recruitment cause.
It was different, but not completely different to what we see now in the US.
By coincidence onetime IRA commander Martin McGuinness died today, a man who's conversion to pursuit of political aims through diplomatic conciliation rather than hardline methods is one of the great examples of how the former works better to end conflicts.
I've been thinking about that, and trying to put my finger on when things changed, and I realized it's not the US that changed, it's the internet!
Every single complaint and little thing now has a wide wide audience. The good stuff does not however, since it's [relatively] boring.
Talk to some people 40+ and ask them when they thought things went downhill, then ask them when they started using social networks.
We were told the world had changed and that we had to fear the unknown. We have been a nation of frightened children ever since.
... and while terrorist strikes do happen and nuclear war doesn't, the fear of terrorist strikes is much greater than the danger they represent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Soviet_nuclear_false_al...
We still need to worry about that. We seemingly keep adding things to worry about, antibiotic resistance, climate change, big data, and not solving many. Hmm.
I remember being a kid in the 1980s and my dad explained why there were air raid sirens.
And then the wall fell and all was peaceful until around September 11. For some reason the regular Irish troubles never really registered.
It's really hard to understand how we went from tolerating MAD to freaking out about a handful of people with box cutters in only a decade. I guess people have really short memories.
older, 22 Nov '63.
It's sad to watch the country I was born in dying, but it's a lot safer doing so on the other side of the world.
It's weird, for all this terminal rhetoric I read about the end of America I still drove to work this morning and still had faith in American values, not to mention a crazy belief that what's right will ultimately prevail in the face of great adversity. What's more, I feel uniquely empowered as an American to roll up my sleeves and create the America I want to see and believe is good for the rest of us, and I didn't even need Gandhi to teach me that one.
I guess I need a sandwich board instead, because what's the point? Are we merely South Canada now, waiting for an eventual invasion that will take our economic, military, scientific and cultural leadership away, leaving a skeleton of a sovereign state that barely made it out of puberty? What coffin do you think Trump is building? I'm about as disapproving of the current administration as you can get, but I've also studied just enough of the world to understand that things tend to endure, even when the situation looks most hopeless to all involved.
Look at the Big Bads that the British survived throughout their centuries of history. Sure, Pax Britannica and their colonial adventures around the world have come to a close, but I don't see any comments saying "the world won, Britain lost, might as well yield the Crown and just absorb into the EU." Nope: they still fight for what they believe to be good and properly British, including giving the finger to the rest of Europe when they feel it necessary. We should learn from that example, of those with the learned memory of an empire from which they descend, deflated by the world changing around it, yet avoiding the adoption of a fatalist nostalgia that impedes all progress and hope for the future.
If the British aren't a good example, look at the Germans who still live in the punchline of uncomfortable jokes. They're still here, still making some mean beer, and still a valuable member of the world. Not even a particularly misguided government pissing off the entire planet could get rid of a German ideal that lived in its citizens' hearts, and they had a God damned wall down the middle in the wake of that mess to constantly remind them of how hopeless it got.
We are due to be knocked down a couple more pegs than we already are. If you're of the mind to give up when that happens, then you can identify yourself as a member of the "winning" army. Saying UbL won and giving up makes him win. How do you not see that?
That doesn't mean Bin Laden won - history is not a game, the round didn't end yet. US can still recover - if it choses to.
I am aware some feel that erosion of civil liberties in response to terrorism has destroyed what they feel to be America. We are still having a conversation about those very flaws and I'm not blindfolded before a firing squad for having an unacceptable opinion, so I think the rumors of America's death are greatly exaggerated by those who benefit the most from her continued protections. Before terrorism, it was communism^. We grow out of things because eventually sanity wins out. It always does.
Do not take that to mean it's time to kick back. Quite the opposite: sanity wins because people choose to be sane en masse.
^ The trend line on irrational national fears is interesting. After terrorism should be nice.
But America in general didn't spend even a second considering this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/wcpls/z/c5cabqo
Like the comment I linked says - terrorist goal wasn't that you get patted down when traveling, or surrendering your privacy to the encroaching surveillance state. Those are goals of the US government, and here, the government is winning. The terrorists however, are definitely not.
Then someone had the idea to treat corporations as people and legalize bribery. Leadership sets the tone as they say in corporations, so what kind of tone do greedy politicians set?
Our upward progress was doomed to stall bigly thanks to that decision.
I see. You missed out on the Reagan years.
That's impossible since neither Saudi nor Jordan were on the old list.
I would then make rational suggestions on how to fix it.
When an administration routinely refuses to follow logic, compromise, betterment of humanity- this law doesn't even help Americans!- then that administration earns my cynicism and disrespect.
OK, I'll give you that.
> drone strikes
What? Republicans never had any problem with Obama's drone campaigns, and if you compile a list of Trump's policies Democrats have an issue with now, I doubt drones will be in the top #10. It would be nice if people kept talking about drone strikes and their victims, but we don't. Either under Obama or under Trump.
> Russia
You can't be seriously saying Obama had a Russian connection? Remember, "Hillary will start a war with Russia" was literally a major talking point by Trump supporters.
Rand Paul (R)
Ted Cruz (R)
Marco Rubio (R)
Mike Lee (R)
Pat Toomey (R)
John Thune (R)
John Barrasso (R)
Tim Scott (R)
John Cornyn (R)
Jerry Moran (R)
Ron Johnson (R)
Jeff Flake (R)
Mitch McConnell (R)
Saxby Chambliss (R)
Mark Kirk (R)
Sen. Ron Wyden (D)
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13918493 and marked it off-topic.
EDIT: Also, no airline that I know of will insure these items when checked in for more than $100 on international flights (please correct if I'm wrong). So if you can get them in at all, like the article says, they will be stolen.
This is incorrect, only spare batteries aren't allowed in checked baggage, computers are fine. From your second link [1]:
> Lithium ion batteries installed in a personal electronic device can be transported as checked or carry on baggage. Lithium ion batteries not installed in a device (spares) must be in carry-on baggage and no more than two (2) spares between 100 and 160 watt hours are allowed.
[1] https://www.delta.com/content/www/en_US/traveling-with-us/ba...
If you're someone who flies for work, there's no way you're going to take a flight where you can't use your laptop.
Checked in bag is not free. Checked in bags also get manhandled unless you pay hefty to get the fragile tag and insurance. For someone cheap like me who carries a backpack which is free so far, the extra cost is my biggest concern. Hope something like this doesn't happen in domestic flights.
Edit: typos
Assuming it arrives at all... it could be a very expensive bag. And laptops in checked luggage is just asking for them to walk off. There is absolutely no way I'd check my laptop, then again, I'm not planning on going to the United States before the madness stops and if I would I probably would not fly through any country that this is all about.
Even so, it does not strike me as a policy that has been thought about for a very long time. Having laptops in the passenger area means that if something bad does happen something could be done about it.
Having them in the cargo compartment means that if a fire should start it could get quite bad before it gets noticed and the extinguisher gets used.
If they're scared of bombs then they should not be on board at all, cargo hold or passenger compartment doesn't matter.
So I really don't understand the point of this, maybe time will bring me to see the reasoning but right now I can't.
>The ban was indefinite, said the official.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-20/some-elec...
It's not the electronics per say, it's the difficulty of checking inside them. That's why only certain airports are included, those that check things properly are not.
If there's a threat this only introduces a minor inconvenience to those looking to carry out an attack. Is getting a connecting flight in some country like Germany going to be hard?
http://www.pcworld.com/article/2948092/security/hacking-team...
More advanced versions would involve modifying the BIOS to add a SMM-mode hook. That way the malware runs completely outside the view of the OS. Alternatively, any device with DMA access could have its firmware altered to read sensitive information from memory.
Physical security is an unsolved problem.
Mine isn't - I have GRUB installed to my BIOS chip, and I decrypt the single encrypted partition from there.
>More advanced versions would involve modifying the BIOS to add a SMM-mode hook.
That one could still get me though, yeah.
Afraid of an iPad being used on a plane.
Also, America is a big place [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Americas
Note: Not a snarky comeback at your post per se, just that a lot of people tend to be oblivious to generic stereotyping unless they are the subject of it, and I am hoping that others reading this thread may have an "Aha" moment.
Addendum: As big as the US is, if you pooled all land masses that have a majority Muslim population, I believe it would dwarf the USA.
Which means, in turn, that I'm less likely to visit. Why take a 20-hour flight and subject myself to "extreme vetting"?
At the rate we are going, it's not going to be long before you will not be allowed to bring any carry on luggage at all when flying from certain airports. Maybe everyone should fly naked. Who knows, someone might have plastic explosives sewn into their clothes. Wait, what if someone swallows the explosives? Maybe everyone should be forced to take an emetic and get a colonoscopy before flying.
>The official said the move is partly based on intelligence that they believe indicates Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is close to being able to hide explosives with little or no metal content in electronic devices in order to target commercial aircraft. It's a particular concern at these airports because of screening issues and the possibility of terrorists infiltrating authorized airport personnel, the official said. Flight and cabin crews are not covered by these new restrictions. In February 2016, a bomb hidden inside a laptop detonated aboard a Daallo Airlines flight out of Mogadishu, Somalia. The bomber was killed and a hole was blown in the side of the fuselage. The aircraft landed safely.
If they allow phones at all, then the threat cannot be an issue of a passenger sending a command out of one of these. The threat has to be the device itself.
Now, a standard issue iPad is no threat, so we're talking about a customized device made to look like on.
Except, if terrorists are going to the trouble to do this, they can just as easily put whatever bad thing they want to put into the case of an insulin pump, and bypass the ban.
This. Is. Bullshit.
(Try pouring out your biggest spinning rust drive out over any port that can keep up with the drive. It takes hours nowadays. SSDs can bottleneck at the port instead of the drive, but you can't count on your target having one yet, nor can you count on the fastest ports being available. And we're certainly not going to mass-disassemble laptops to dump their drives.)
[0] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/06/building_retr...
And, still, at bulk these things aren't feasible, or even necessary. You're not taking your cynicism far enough. Why does the government need to sorta kinda hope that you might maybe take a flight with your gear someday when they're already capturing all your email and web browsing anyhow? It's a ridiculous theory that you're only entertaining because our trust has decayed to the point that the mere fact that something is an accusation against our government is all but proof that it must be true, no matter how silly it is.
No, the government is not going to set out to physically attack every laptop passing through an airport, because what would that give them that they don't already have, except huge operational costs and risk of detection?
Or maybe make even more feel yet more in fear of terrorists. Which the cynic in me thinks might be the point
Also you're very wrong. You can defeat a millimeter scan just by placing the contraband between your palms while your hands are clasped above your head.
were.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2014/04/19/bodyscanners-zo-gaat-he...
The point is their technology is terrible and they are easy to defeat, as has been proven many many times.
They are security theater and they were only put in place because the guy in charge of what scanners were allowed at US airports happened to have a financial interest in the company that made the millimeter wave scanner.
Yup. I have been to many airports in Africa and SE Asia that have only a metal detector, manned by someone who barely cares enough to stand there, and no one has successfully committed an act of terrorism (a la 9/11) with a plane due to it.
Also when I was traveling in Japan, they had machines that could scan the contents of your water bottle so you didn't have to empty it or throw it away while going through security.
I'm mildly convinced other countries don't have this because the beverage industry can sell more water/soda you're forced to throw it away when you go through security.
I've also stopped arguing about going through the machines. I know they do nothing, but it's not worth the hassle security employees give you to opt out. Just stand there, knowing it's pointless, and move on.
That makes sense, Japanese airports have distinctly non-airport prices for food and drinks even past security.
Every major U.S. airport I've been to in the past 5 years has had ample bottle filling stations.
I think Israel is special, because they use behavioural profiling on you as well.
I've been through Frankfurt on an inter-EU flight, and we were put into the priority lane because things were quiet. The priority lane only had (has?) a metal detector, no body scanner.
So if the body scanners were really about security, why would they have a lane that allows you to bypass them completely?
I once flew from Frankfurt to Barcelona without anyone checking my passport (I am not European but have a valid residence permit for an EU country). Did online checkin and printed my boarding pass. No checked luggage, and automated boarding pass scanners at the gate. So yeah, really thorough...
I am aware. My point wasn't clear. I wasn't surprised I was not asked for my passport, however I was surprised I was able to fly from Germany to Spain without anyone verifying I was the person my boarding pass said I was.
I could have given my ticket to a friend and they would have been able to fly under my name, because at no point did anyone ask for government ID to confirm I was the same person as my boarding pass.
I value the freedom of movement Europeans have very highly, but it just goes to show how dead easy it is for someone to travel undetected (e.g. have an associate buy your ticket).
Since then, I always transit through Heathrow. It's a logistical nightmare with all those buses, but they've never coerced me to go through a scanner. Those biometric checkpoints, on the other hand...
[Note: This was with Dutch staff for British Airways; not sure if that's relevant.]
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/jan/26/new-body-scanners...
From Heathrow's security FAQ page (http://www.heathrow.com/more/help-with-this-website/faqs/sec...):
The only alternative that can be offered to a scanner is a private search which allows for a more extensive hand-search than usual. Passengers will be escorted to a different location in the airport from the main search area (eg a private search room). The private search may involve the loosening and/or removal of clothing. A person undergoing a private search may ask to be accompanied by a witness.
This alternative screening method will take significantly more time than passing through a security scanner.
I think the person at the monitor wants to look at my weiner.
The science is still out on whether it's harmful or not. I got TSA pre so I can just avoid it, but before that I always opted out.
"The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) is part of the World Health Organization (WHO). Its major goal is to identify causes of cancer. The IARC has classified RF fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans,” based on limited evidence of a possible increase in risk for brain tumors among cell phone users, and inadequate evidence for other types of cancer."
I would not call that "thoroughly settled".
So, an organisation that basically labels everything in the world as either a potential carcinogen or carcinogen [0] when the second lowest score they award still reads as 'potential carcinogen' is more powerful than actual evidence, accrued across enormous longitudinal studies, first from scandinavia [1] but backed significantly by australia [2] and integrated into a plausable mechanism for increases in >70 year olds [3] combined with a finding that would actually revolutionise physics and biology for suggesting a new mechanism for the interaction of electromagnetism and biology?
Alarmists are everywhere [4]. But that doesn't mean they are right. It's easy to listen to fear, but just because someone is screaming and crying doesn't make them right. Serious claims deserve to be looked at seriously, and this one has been throughly examined, in research that is continuing. And it continues to be debunked by huge datasets - not just the referenced studies but also the million woman study [5][6] and others.
So yes, I repeat, for anyone versed in science, physics and with their head screwed on straight, the science is settled, and I challenge you to demonstrate either a mechanism or a throughly vetted dataset that proves otherwise. And i'll remind you that hitting the first answer on google does not constitute research.
[0] http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/299632-cha...
[1] https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.d6387
[2] http://www.cancerepidemiology.net/article/S1877-7821(16)3005...
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15378499
[4] http://theconversation.com/new-study-no-increase-in-brain-ca...
[5] http://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2014/05/14/back-in-t...
[6] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24078152
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1994795/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25251956
Perhaps it doesn't cause cancer per se, but promotes tumor growth or otherwise creates a more favorable environment.
There's commercially available penetrating X-ray human body security scanners, but afaict those just have been used in prisons, not in airports (yet!).
Since then it has been repurposed for extreme cases like unconscious car crash victims in order to determine the extent of injuries. Or so I learned in a medical imaging elective.
The technology behind it is really cool! By using temporal separation for the different parts of the image they reduce scattering blur, allowing them to use a much lower dose to get the same image quality.
Though, I'm open to the alternative theory that having people place their laptops in checked luggage gives them greater opportunity to do targeted surveillance without their target being aware.
From the CNN article on this new policy: >The official said the move is partly based on intelligence that they believe indicates Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is close to being able to hide explosives with little or no metal content in electronic devices in order to target commercial aircraft. It's a particular concern at these airports because of screening issues and the possibility of terrorists infiltrating authorized airport personnel, the official said. Flight and cabin crews are not covered by these new restrictions. In February 2016, a bomb hidden inside a laptop detonated aboard a Daallo Airlines flight out of Mogadishu, Somalia. The bomber was killed and a hole was blown in the side of the fuselage. The aircraft landed safely.
It's also beyond bizarre that the US trusts Abu Dhabi's security enough to locate its only Middle Eastern Customs/Immigration preclearance facility, but not enough to let passengers who have gone through security bring tablets...
(Plus, can confirm that the ME airlines are highly competitive. They're subsidized by their governments: http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2015/03/airline-subs... (thanks hueving)).
American doesn't fly to any Middle Eastern cities but they partner with both Etihad and Qatar, who do.
That's not true, at least not for Emirates and Etihad, which were the main airlines accused.
Delta and other US airlines did accuse them of violating the Open Skies agreement, yes. Which is quite hypocritical since Delta (like other US airlines) has also taken direct subsidies from the US government.
But, as Emirates showed in their subsequent lawsuit, their financial records prove that they have never taken government subsidies, despite Delta's accusations. Etihad did, but long before Open Skies was signed (1999).
This behavior isn't unusual; the Big Four are just using this as an easy way to smear their biggest competitors, while ignoring other airlines that have similar financial history (China Southern, etc.). But China Southern isn't (currently) drawing passengers away from the Big Four, whereas Emirates/Etihad/Qatar are.
The Gulf aiflines are more efficient than the US airlines because they exclusively serve one city - Emirates, for example, flies only flights to or from Dubai (with a couple of tiny exceptions). That makes it a lot easier to provide excellent service and cheap flights.
This is not correct Quatar has one as well.
I'm also unsure why you would find this "bizarre" as all of the Emirates are incredibly wealthy.
> It's also beyond bizarre that the US trusts Abu Dhabi's security enough to locate its only Middle Eastern Customs/Immigration preclearance facility, but not enough to let passengers who have gone through security bring tablets...
It's a good question.
However, I don't see that as a vote of confidence in them since they are still permitting flights.
I think similar could be said of the TSA in the US - the DHS trust them enough to let passengers who have gone through security bring shampoo as carry on but not enough if those shampoo bottles are greater than 3.4 ounces, despite having gone through their security.
I think its less about a vote of confidence and more about absurdist theater.
This is not about DHS trusting TSA, since the specific part of DHS that makes that regulates that is...TSA.
And the bizarreness is that they're simultaneously trusting them enough to handle immigration, but not trusting them enough to handle passenger screening.
In 2016, the United airplane I was in still did not have a seatback screen and they expected all 200+ passengers to connect to the wifi to try to get in-flight entertainment. Of course no one got on. So all of us were left craning our necks trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was on the CRT in the aisle.
Meanwhile, Turkish Airlines has a touchscreen interface with beautifully done transitions and an amazing selection of movies and music. I remember seeing Radiohead's Kid A on there, along with the Blade Runner soundtrack.
Next month, I'm flying to Berlin via Turkish even though it will take 4 more hours because the price and comfort are worth it. Only problem is, this electronics ban may compromise my electronics.
(And yes, I'm aware of early adopter pitfalls and government subsidies for airlines, but United has no qualms treating non-status passengers like trash.)
This just depends which plane you get. They all have new and old planes, you can get unlucky on any airline.
JAL/ANA have very new planes with cool entertainment systems, but they also fly their older planes on some routes with a bunch of stuff that looks like it's powered by VCR.
To your question: they probably don't for their major international flights.
The entertainment system on the seat backs was Linux in a reboot loop.
This is a deliberate decision that airlines are starting to make. If most passengers are bringing a wifi-capable device (ipad, phone, etc), then why go to the extra expense (and weight) to support seat-back screens?
Now, my main experience with this has been flying within the US where none of the newest planes have screens. Internationally, there may still be screens included in newer planes, but when screens = weight, and weight = $$$, it's not surprising that they are getting removed. Moreover, screens = depth, which when removed can make room for more rows, which means more money.
If this electronics ban takes hold though, I'd expect for there to be a big rethink about this.
I'll gladly let the airline shove more seats in by thinning them out, than by reducing my leg room any further.
https://www.sanspotter.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/las_sa...
So United saved costs by not retrofitting their airplanes with seatback screens and by offering shit wifi.
Of course Louis CK would say: https://youtu.be/ZFsOUbZ0Lr0
Edit: spelling
Also their primary hub Istanbul Ataturk Airport (IST) was attacked in 2016, which left 45 people killed and more than 230 people injured.[2]
I am not sure what criteria they use to issue this award, but they do not look safe enough to me to be on the 7th best position in the world.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines#Incidents_and... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Atat%C3%BCrk_Airport_atta...
I knew of the attack at Ataturk Airport and I'm fine with a layover there. I'd even change to a stopover to hang out in Istanbul again, but don't have the time this trip. If you can get over your fears and fly the two airlines, I'm sure you'll find Turkish to be a better experience than United.
I wonder if including Kindles is more a jibe against Bezos. Perhaps this is a stretch.
Abu Dhabi security was far more stringent than anything I have been through in Europe, (and ironically Brussels, when I was in the Brussels airport in transit when it was attacked).