The security theater needs to go on. In the meantime batteries represent a much bigger risk with potential in flight fires but I guess nobody cares enough to do anything about it.
Let me get this straight. If the article is correct, the new capabilities are related to better detection of large liquid containers, not determination of whether or not the liquid is dangerous.
So - you couldn’t take large amounts of liquids previously because some liquids in large amounts might be able to be weaponized. If you were caught with too much liquid (in sum total, or in containers that are too large) they’d throw it out and send you on your way.
But now that they have the ability to detect larger containers, they… do what? Declare that it’s safe and send you on your way with it still in your possession?
Famously Steve Jobs had a story about shaving time off of boot-up and equating it to saving lives on the concept of people sitting their waiting for the computer to boot up just lost that much of their lives. [1] I actually do believe there is value in thinking this way and it is one of my biggest arguments against TSA. Everything has a cost, including 'security' and 'safety'. If you look at the very real human toll, and economic toll, that airport security has caused any potential gain is out the window in just one day of costs from screening, and that doesn't even get into the privacy destruction this has caused. I think I would get way to angry to comment on that in an intelligent way.
But that is just one argument. My real anger at airport screening is that we have found it possible to fund and implement this level of screening, at massive monetary, human and privacy cost, but I can't go to my doctor and for a few pennies (sorry, those don't exist now, how about for a few nickles?) get a body scan that does all the 3d segmentation, recognition, etc etc etc. We could actually save lives if we put effort into this technology for people instead of for a sense of security. But we probably won't. Because fear gets money but solving real problems that actually impact people doesn't.
> TSA needs consistency in alarm resolution, secondary screening rates, and officer workflows—otherwise “keep liquids packed” becomes a promise that varies by airport, terminal, and even time of day.
...what? These already vary in the same airport literally by adjacent lanes...
I have never understood how this was effective against a determined adversary. An arbitrary limit like 100ml is pointless when there is no limit to the number of times you can pass through the checkpoint.
I always thought the rule was about damage (liquid spilling onto your bag and other passengers' bags) rather than safety? That's based on how the rule was shaped: 100ml containers with no limits as long as in a sealed plastic bag.
I wonder if they'll walk this back? If you put a 2L water bottle in the overhead compartment and hit enough turbulence, it could open and drench the entire compartment and other people's luggage.
This just adds confusion as to the purpose of all this.
The motivation behind the liquid limits is that there are extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids. Average people have never heard of them because they aren’t in popular lore. There has never been an industrial or military use, solids are simpler. Nonetheless, these explosives are easily accessible to a knowledgeable chemist like me.
These explosives can be detected via infrared spectroscopy but that isn’t going to be happening to liquids in your bag. This reminds me of the chemical swipes done on your bags to detect explosives. Those swipes can only detect a narrow set of explosive chemistries and everyone knows it. Some explosives notoriously popular with terror organizations can’t be detected. Everyone, including the bad guys, knows all of this.
It would be great if governments were more explicit about precisely what all of this theater is intended to prevent.
> It would be great if governments were more explicit about precisely what all of this theater is intended to prevent.
The liquids requirement was in response to a famous (at the time) plot by people in Britain to smuggle a two part liquid explosive onto the plane. So the context was, at the time, obvious and needed no explanation.
It was always theater, Bruce Schneier did a great set of blogs and tests back in the 2001+ time showing flaws throughout the process. At the same time, he pointed out that humanity had already adapted their response to airplane hijackings _that day_ (the Pennsylvania flight). An airplane exploding from a bomb is definitely scary, but not as scary as airplanes being turned into missiles by a few suicidal passengers.
Modern airport x-ray machines use two frequencies and then estimate the density of objects and liquids. In theory, the can tell the difference between water and vodka. I wonder if the change reflects trust in this tech?
Is the capability of these explosives at a safe level if the liquid precursors are less than 3.5 fl ounces? If they are still capable of blowing a hole in the fuselage with less than 3.5 fl ounces then the limits on fluids are still pointless.
I remember reading something around the time these prohibitions against liquids were rolled out that said none of the two-part liquid explosives were powerful enough to take down a plane unless you were carrying an unusual amount of liquid to be traveling with, or storing your liquid in an unusual way. For instance, there should be no reason you couldn't carry an ordinary sized bottle of shampoo in your luggage. No idea how accurate this is, maybe somebody could set this straight?
Are these chemicals freezable? Because TSA lets through large quantities frozen matter that is liquid at room temp. E.g. you can bring through a liter of hot sauce if it's frozen when it passes through TSA.
After 4 years of Russia/Ukraine, does anyone think that a terror group would take down an airliner with anything other than a drone? Why take any operational risk of actually going through security?
It's designed to protect consumer confidence so the economy hums along. A single plane is a few hundred people, but the effects ripple out. This is a big country, you need air travel to make it reasonable to connect the coasts, and the more people traveling the more cohesive and economically balanced the country is. They were fine with letting 1M+ Americans die from COVID to protect the economy. That's really all there is to it.
So, security through obscurity mostly as a smoke show for the public, not actual terrorist countermeasure. It's like the TSA being unable to detect most traditional weapon in carry-ons. Business as usual it seems.
I would not be surprised if this started out totally unrelated to explosives. Say that some toddler spilled an entire 3 liters of grape soda all over the plane. Or a hypochondriac brought cleaning agents aboard and gave everyone a headache.
Mostly sarcasm, but man do I see this pattern a lot. The risk mitigation apparatus is called in for something, they see an opportunity to overgeneralize and prevent an entire new category of potential mishaps, and the everyday folk end up really confused trying to reconcile the rules with their intent.
Reminds me of the parable about the bench guards. Is there an aphorism for this?
The motivation was that we've run out of other things to scaremonger about so we'll come up with what Bruce Schneier calls movie-plot threats and go with those instead. The few explosives that are liquid are also incredibly impractical to work with in most cases except for perhaps perchloric acid which is nitrogen-free so won't be detected but then persuading that to detonate from a seat in economy class is going to be quite a feat.
The country I'm in abolished the liquids nonsense for domestic flights (which they can do because it's domestic travel) around a decade ago with the reasoning that it wasn't serving any purpose.
Is it really unclear what the theater is actually for? It was immediately weaponized that any opposition placed you somewhere between 'anti-american' and a 'terrorist'. A perfect environment to pass any legislation, no matter how ineffectual and illegal.
See, when the shoe bomber or the guys doing chemistry 101 in the toilets of the plane were discovered, they put a ban on liquids and almost shoes.
I was hoping nobody comes out with an explosive you can build with cotton (and a nuclear reactor, but that would be a detail for the "security compliance" people who will come up with new restrictions). We would need to fly naked and this would be annoying.
I sure like to fly a safe plane. The problem is that I am sure the people who actually want to do something bad will use, like you mentioned, alternative solutions - and I will not even have the nail file they took from me when trying to to defend the plane during the hijacking.
This is funny because just a few months ago, I was forced at Heathrow to chug -- not allowed to pour out! -- my entire water bottle that I had filled prior to my flight. The security person watched me do it and added, "bathroom's over there".
there is actually a science change that happened, and it's not (entirely) just politicians changing their mind.
The big thing going from X-ray (2d) to CT (spin an X-ray machine around and take a ton of pictures to recreate a 3d image) did a lot to let security people see inside of a bag, but the hitch is that if you see a blob of gray is that water, shampoo or something else?
The recent advance that is letting this happen is machines who will send multiple wavelengths of X-ray through the material: since different materials absorb light differently, your machine can distinguish between materials, which lets you be more sure that that 2litre is (mostly) water, and then they can discriminate
Forgive my zooming out but the overton window on this topic is in the wrong place. Airport security is dehumanizing inconvenient and unacceptable. I’d only use planes in an emergency. The living memory of what air travel is supposed to be is just gone with the sands of time. I don’t accept the shit economy version starting #1 with the cattle screening.
1) Bodyscanners: body scanners are a scam
2) They took away my 100ml contain that clearly had less than 1 cm of liquid in it because it wasn't clearly labelled as "100ml". Any idiot could know it was like 10ml full.
3) They used to do actual xray basically on people.
4) You have to re-security to transfer on connections! You already could have blown up the incoming plane, why does this even matter?
I don't go there anymore. Waste of time and all security theatre without common sense.
Heathrow has the best Guinness+ in the world - those pumps just don't stop.
* if you don't like Guinness, DON'T try it if you've already had a different beer/ ale (whatever). Try it before anything else or it's worse than the very devil spitting on your buds (!).
On my last trip I bought some different deodorant, because my usual brand was .2oz over the limit. Not sure why the brand wouldn’t just go with the TSA limit to make life easy for everyone. The new stuff ended up staining all my shirts. I largely blame the TSA for having to buy all new shirts. Next time I’m going to less of a stickler for the rules and hope for the best, as following the rules yields poor outcomes. Hopefully by that time the new rules will filter out to more airports.
I had the luck of traveling by plane quite a bit before 2001 and I can tell you it was much more pleasurable. Now, the issues now-a-days are not only due to the security circus, it's true. But it does play a major role.
My GF is from East Asia and has travelled almost 100 countries, anything from rich first world to poor 3rd world countries.
She was absolutely shocked to find that liquid container limits were enforced in northern Europe. She would just put her makeup bag with cleansers and gels and everything in her carry-on and travel the world.
76 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 89.4 ms ] thread(PS. Still not going to fly there)
So - you couldn’t take large amounts of liquids previously because some liquids in large amounts might be able to be weaponized. If you were caught with too much liquid (in sum total, or in containers that are too large) they’d throw it out and send you on your way.
But now that they have the ability to detect larger containers, they… do what? Declare that it’s safe and send you on your way with it still in your possession?
I travel a lot - and never take out any liquids. Have nail clippers and scissors in my carry-on.
Once I even had an opinel pocket knife in my laptop bag for a couple of months.
Travelled through Tokyo, Taipei, SFO, DEN, PHX, LAX, BOS, JFK, FRA, AMS, MUC, LHR - nobody noticed.
I seriously had forgotten it was there, so I don't do that now, but still...
Also, no large water bottles or similar. Unless on domestic flights in Japan, where this is totally fine.
IDK - security theater. But if it helps.
But that is just one argument. My real anger at airport screening is that we have found it possible to fund and implement this level of screening, at massive monetary, human and privacy cost, but I can't go to my doctor and for a few pennies (sorry, those don't exist now, how about for a few nickles?) get a body scan that does all the 3d segmentation, recognition, etc etc etc. We could actually save lives if we put effort into this technology for people instead of for a sense of security. But we probably won't. Because fear gets money but solving real problems that actually impact people doesn't.
[1] https://danemcfarlane.com/how-steve-jobs-turned-boot-time-in...
Anyway, signage required us to empty our refillable water bottles. Odd. Thankfully we eventually found a refill station.
The scanners flagged a still sealed can of ginger ale left over from our incoming flight. It was "fine" but she still swabbed it. Shrug.
...what? These already vary in the same airport literally by adjacent lanes...
[0] https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2016/05/out-of-line-how... -- "The study also identified an easy way to make people a less attractive target — improve ticketing and security operations so that crowds of people aren't waiting in line."
> - fewer stoppages caused by liquids mistakes
> - fewer tray-handling steps per passenger
> - less variability at peak banks (which is where hubs like LHR get punished)
Didn't know ChatGPT has started to call itself "John Cushma".
I wonder if they'll walk this back? If you put a 2L water bottle in the overhead compartment and hit enough turbulence, it could open and drench the entire compartment and other people's luggage.
The motivation behind the liquid limits is that there are extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids. Average people have never heard of them because they aren’t in popular lore. There has never been an industrial or military use, solids are simpler. Nonetheless, these explosives are easily accessible to a knowledgeable chemist like me.
These explosives can be detected via infrared spectroscopy but that isn’t going to be happening to liquids in your bag. This reminds me of the chemical swipes done on your bags to detect explosives. Those swipes can only detect a narrow set of explosive chemistries and everyone knows it. Some explosives notoriously popular with terror organizations can’t be detected. Everyone, including the bad guys, knows all of this.
It would be great if governments were more explicit about precisely what all of this theater is intended to prevent.
The liquids requirement was in response to a famous (at the time) plot by people in Britain to smuggle a two part liquid explosive onto the plane. So the context was, at the time, obvious and needed no explanation.
Mostly sarcasm, but man do I see this pattern a lot. The risk mitigation apparatus is called in for something, they see an opportunity to overgeneralize and prevent an entire new category of potential mishaps, and the everyday folk end up really confused trying to reconcile the rules with their intent.
Reminds me of the parable about the bench guards. Is there an aphorism for this?
The country I'm in abolished the liquids nonsense for domestic flights (which they can do because it's domestic travel) around a decade ago with the reasoning that it wasn't serving any purpose.
I was hoping nobody comes out with an explosive you can build with cotton (and a nuclear reactor, but that would be a detail for the "security compliance" people who will come up with new restrictions). We would need to fly naked and this would be annoying.
I sure like to fly a safe plane. The problem is that I am sure the people who actually want to do something bad will use, like you mentioned, alternative solutions - and I will not even have the nail file they took from me when trying to to defend the plane during the hijacking.
Makes you wonder.
The big thing going from X-ray (2d) to CT (spin an X-ray machine around and take a ton of pictures to recreate a 3d image) did a lot to let security people see inside of a bag, but the hitch is that if you see a blob of gray is that water, shampoo or something else?
The recent advance that is letting this happen is machines who will send multiple wavelengths of X-ray through the material: since different materials absorb light differently, your machine can distinguish between materials, which lets you be more sure that that 2litre is (mostly) water, and then they can discriminate
1) Bodyscanners: body scanners are a scam 2) They took away my 100ml contain that clearly had less than 1 cm of liquid in it because it wasn't clearly labelled as "100ml". Any idiot could know it was like 10ml full. 3) They used to do actual xray basically on people. 4) You have to re-security to transfer on connections! You already could have blown up the incoming plane, why does this even matter?
I don't go there anymore. Waste of time and all security theatre without common sense.
Heathrow has the best Guinness+ in the world - those pumps just don't stop.
* if you don't like Guinness, DON'T try it if you've already had a different beer/ ale (whatever). Try it before anything else or it's worse than the very devil spitting on your buds (!).
I had the luck of traveling by plane quite a bit before 2001 and I can tell you it was much more pleasurable. Now, the issues now-a-days are not only due to the security circus, it's true. But it does play a major role.
She was absolutely shocked to find that liquid container limits were enforced in northern Europe. She would just put her makeup bag with cleansers and gels and everything in her carry-on and travel the world.