Someone has mastered the art of casting and forming explosives into shapes that look like batteries. Put a small battery in to turn device on, and al-Qaeda indulges its love of planes.
The Trump administration might be prone to racist paranoia panics but I don't see what objective this ban accomplishes unless there's some sort of legitimate intel.
What happened to the turn on test? Or something. Or background checks on the passenger manifest. Or some other article of clothing that can be 'shaped'.
Pretty soon we'll need to ride naked.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd start thinking that this isn't out of concerns for safety, but instead an attempt to stop international travel; stop the free flow of thought and people.
It occurs to me at this point that airlines probably love the idea of passengers not being allowed to take any entertainment on board with them - that way they'll have to pay 8.99$ to rent a terrible quality movie.
Can thin batteries really cause huge explosions? Can't they just ban laptops thicker than a certain amount? "TSA-approved size" would become a line in spec sheets, and things would get back to normal in a few months.
The alternative is a serious hit to worldwide commerce flows.
The more I think about this, the more I feel like "As long-established trade routes become unsafe, the empire slowly crumbles..."
> "As long-established trade routes become unsafe, the empire slowly crumbles..."
To be fair, laptops are a fairly new arrival to these long-established trade routes.
> The alternative is a serious hit to worldwide commerce flows.
One way to go about this is to segregate US citizens traveling to the US from everyone else -- literally, different flights. Allow everyone to carry laptops. If a plane explodes from a laptop-bomb, then it's very clear who the public should blame and the incentive for would-be non-citizen terrorists is pretty low.
If a citizen blows up the citizen's plane, then, well, that's pretty much the same as domestic terrorism at that point. Ban laptops for everyone?
The batteries may not catastrophically explode, but if they catch fire, and burn in that enclosed cabin, it will very quickly fill with toxic smoke. It's not very easy to open a window to vent out the cabin mid-flight.
This has nothing to do with the battery. The claim is that they have solid intelligence that someone is trying to fit a bomb inside a laptop/tablet and it would be hard for screeners to tell the difference between legitimate devices and bombs.
However, aviation experts have weighed in and stated that even a full pound of pure explosives detonated in the cabin of a modern airliner is unlikely to bring the plane down. So you could just ban very heavy laptops and leave the rest alone.
You know what HAS brought two 747s down in the last decade? Lithium battery fires in the hold. UPS and FedEx no longer permit bulk shipments of L-Ion batteries by air because of the risk. So they want to move devices from the cabin (where if they catch fire someone will notice and they can be dealt with) and put them all together in the hold where fires are harder to detect and impossible to fight!
On top of that, if screeners can't tell the difference between legitimate devices and bombs in a carryon, why would they be able to do any better for checked bags? Bombs in the cargo hold are still bombs.
One explanation I'd heard was that checked bag screening areas are more secure, while for carryons a rogue gate employee could wave through a suspicious laptop without any further backup checks... or even a rogue food-service employee could smuggle something in and hand it off to a passenger. But that could happen with any 'container object,' not just laptops. And it's hard to square that a ban expanding to major European airports.
Serious question. At what point is it an airlines responsibility vs. the FAA? I mean, private planes aren't required to do this. Then there are the shared (I forget the name) private plane companies where lots of people are in a pool of users of the planes. Where is the line between private plane, where the pilot/owner decides the risk, and public airline and FAA decide the risk?
The only constructive thing I can say is that there is no constructive criticism for the TSA. When are we going to put an end to this security theater that has been proven over and over again to do nothing? I stopped flying years ago. Not every one has this luxury.
The problem is this isn't for theater. A Somali passenger plane was bombed this way back in January, and the only reason it didn't cause a loss of life is the person did it at 10,000ft which is too low to cause catastrophic decompression.
This has nothing to do with the TSA. It comes straight from the Department of Homeland Security. The TSA would have to enforce the ban of course, but it ain't their idea.
The whole campaign against the TSA is idiotic and it is entirely based on some people's nefarious plans to replace the TSA at various airports with private companies that will be able to extract monopoly fees from airlines and passengers. Let's not confuse the two issues.
I don't think either airlines or airports wish to get rid of the TSA entirely. The TSA provides a nice excuse for extracting security fees and subsidies from the public. They just want looser rules on screening so they can pocket more of the fees rather than fork them over as wages to screeners.
And in any event, the security theater will remain as cover and a scapegoat for politicians, airports, and airlines in the [inevitable] case of a security breech.
That said, the screening at San Francisco International is managed by a private company and they do a pretty good job, avoiding many of the really stupid problems exposed at airports elsewhere. It's still security theater, but done relatively competently.
> I don't think either airlines or airports wish to get rid of the TSA entirely. The TSA provides a nice excuse for extracting security fees and subsidies from the public.
More importantly, it transfers liability for failures from airlines to the public, which is the major reason the function was nationalized.
Somewhere there is an airline in-flight entertainment manager rubbing his hands greedily "Aha! We'll rent approved devices and make people pay for shows on those devices".
In Langley, VA someone in a dark office is also excited "Aha, we'll grab the laptops when they are checked in and root their firmware. It is almost too easy".
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 77.4 ms ] threadhttps://techcrunch.com/2017/05/12/heres-how-the-laptop-ban-w...
Edit: I'm pretty sure the battery in my phone is bigger than the kindle, btw.
The Trump administration might be prone to racist paranoia panics but I don't see what objective this ban accomplishes unless there's some sort of legitimate intel.
Pretty soon we'll need to ride naked.
If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd start thinking that this isn't out of concerns for safety, but instead an attempt to stop international travel; stop the free flow of thought and people.
Or, rather, have won.
On a serious note, I hope they will get a serious pushback.
The alternative is a serious hit to worldwide commerce flows.
The more I think about this, the more I feel like "As long-established trade routes become unsafe, the empire slowly crumbles..."
Even so, the US isn't the first to do this. China won't let you take Li+ batteries beyond a certain mAH in your carryon.
The US already has energy limits for batteries in carry-ons[1], they're just not so boneheaded as to preclude laptops.
[1]: https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/as...
Various airlines and countries also had limits for years now. 100Wh seems to be a common number.
To be fair, laptops are a fairly new arrival to these long-established trade routes.
> The alternative is a serious hit to worldwide commerce flows.
One way to go about this is to segregate US citizens traveling to the US from everyone else -- literally, different flights. Allow everyone to carry laptops. If a plane explodes from a laptop-bomb, then it's very clear who the public should blame and the incentive for would-be non-citizen terrorists is pretty low.
If a citizen blows up the citizen's plane, then, well, that's pretty much the same as domestic terrorism at that point. Ban laptops for everyone?
However, aviation experts have weighed in and stated that even a full pound of pure explosives detonated in the cabin of a modern airliner is unlikely to bring the plane down. So you could just ban very heavy laptops and leave the rest alone.
You know what HAS brought two 747s down in the last decade? Lithium battery fires in the hold. UPS and FedEx no longer permit bulk shipments of L-Ion batteries by air because of the risk. So they want to move devices from the cabin (where if they catch fire someone will notice and they can be dealt with) and put them all together in the hold where fires are harder to detect and impossible to fight!
Smart, so smart!
One explanation I'd heard was that checked bag screening areas are more secure, while for carryons a rogue gate employee could wave through a suspicious laptop without any further backup checks... or even a rogue food-service employee could smuggle something in and hand it off to a passenger. But that could happen with any 'container object,' not just laptops. And it's hard to square that a ban expanding to major European airports.
We need some sanity somewhere.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14312210
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14345574
The whole campaign against the TSA is idiotic and it is entirely based on some people's nefarious plans to replace the TSA at various airports with private companies that will be able to extract monopoly fees from airlines and passengers. Let's not confuse the two issues.
And in any event, the security theater will remain as cover and a scapegoat for politicians, airports, and airlines in the [inevitable] case of a security breech.
That said, the screening at San Francisco International is managed by a private company and they do a pretty good job, avoiding many of the really stupid problems exposed at airports elsewhere. It's still security theater, but done relatively competently.
More importantly, it transfers liability for failures from airlines to the public, which is the major reason the function was nationalized.
It has not been prove to do anything. That's not the same as being proven to do nothing.
In Langley, VA someone in a dark office is also excited "Aha, we'll grab the laptops when they are checked in and root their firmware. It is almost too easy".