She’s full of advice for terrrarists on state of matter. Now in addition to confiscating our toothpaste, the security people at the airport are going to make us pee into a chromatograph before they let us on the plane.
Let’s just end the slow, lingering buildup and cut straight to the final requirement. Before we can fly, make us all strip naked, take a diuretic and laxative and purge ourselves, and then shackle us to our seats before takeoff.
I suggest to sedate all passengers, and stack them like cordwood.
You can’t have lip gloss, yet they don’t screen the CARGO. Yep, the cargo goes on unexamined.
But there’s no way something could be smuggled on the plane in a huge unexamined crate, so its the lip gloss we need to worry about.
It’s all BS, it’s theater, it’s CYA mixed with political propaganda aimed at making people FEEL safer, but more importantly to make people think that elected officials are making them safer.
For almost five years now I’ve wondered “but how would that address me strapping a glass or obsidian blade to my leg?”
It wouldn’t, and that’s just an idea a non-techie came up with within the first few minutes.
Oh yes, I just remember a recent flight from Tampa to NY I took.
Guy in the seat next to me had a large gas/powered r/c car in is carry on. He showed it to me.
Lets see – electronics, ignition source, radio control, gas tank. (He’d siphoned out pretty much all of the gas, he thought.) Screeners OK’d it. That’s a BOMB. Which is what he said and we both sat there laughing about how we’d both had to take our sneakers off to get on the plane.
Also, Americablog has pointed out that we’re still doing squat with regards to trains, mass transit, etc.
PZ wrote as follows:
In other words, the CIA approach?
I’ll give $10 to anyone who tries to go through airport security with a cooler full of frozen bottled water, etc. “But these aren’t liquids…”
I liked this:
http://craphound.com/images/liquids-on-a-plane.jpg
I had my shoes subjected to a GC/MS on the way through Gatwick once. Surreal experience.
I had my shoes subjected to a GC/MS on the way through Gatwick once. Surreal experience.
Alex, on my last trip down from Buffalo, they had installed new machines in the airport… you step in to a chamber, it seals itself off from outside air, then little puffer jets shoot you all over, sort of like in a fun house… then for a minute or two you stand there while it sniffs to see what particles it has dislodged.
Then, hopefully, the light goes green, the doors open and you step out.
I was told it was designed by students at U.B.
It was actually kinda neat.
I had my shoes subjected to a GC/MS on the way through Gatwick once. Surreal experience.
I wonder if sales of “Odor Eaters” have gone up since 9/11?
better get my broker on the horn…
Alex, on my last trip down from Buffalo, they had installed new machines in the airport… you step in to a chamber, it seals itself off from outside air, then little puffer jets shoot you all over, sort of like in a fun house… then for a minute or two you stand there while it sniffs to see what particles it has dislodged.
Sounds like one of those neat new DESI or DART mass spec sources. My experience was less dramatic, involving some swabbing, and a metal box with a flap on top. Such is England.
I also think someone should try to go through security with a frozen beverage. I’ll volunteer if someone buys me a round trip ticket to someplace nice.
Even before september 11th, I was *always* subject to the “random search.” First I was black, then I was punk, now I often travel in the company of my Muslim father…so when people complain about airport security my initial reaction is kind of like “welcome to my life, suckers!”
But, as someone noted above, it’s particularly infuriating because the cargo is still barely screened if at all. It’s like mending the knees on a pair of pants with the ass torn out.
The bladder full of explosives was my first thought upon learning of the new “no liquids” restriction, too. It’s reminiscient of athletes who try to beat a drug test by filling their bladder with clean urine before the test.
My second thought was an entire business suit made of nitrocellulose in one of those suit carry-on bags, or worn by a suicide bomber. Somebody’s gonna try it, one of these days. Sure, you’d smell like a bomb to a dog, but if you can get by them you’re in the clear. Forced nudity on flights may not be too far away, after all.
I actually wrote a post the other day called all the interesting science is in terrorism these days. I’m anxiously awaiting my FBI interview – I think it might be fun!
I just read they’re banning gel inserts in your shoes. This strikes me as too much…can’t they make you put those on the scanner with your shoes? If they can’t tell whether or not your gel inserts are a bomb…how can they tell if your shoes are a bomb?
And I pity the people in the UK. I can only imagine the riots in business class when people found out they couldn’t bring their laptops and PDAs.
It seems to me that if we keep going in this direction then the logical conclusion is to not have any flights at all. The safest passenger is one who never gets on the plane.
Gel inserts? Oh for chrissakes. Thats not even a liquid. I’m not even sure they’ve actually a GEL.
What’s next – breast implants?
I wonder if it occur to them that such things as these exist? We know there are female suicide bombers.
Of course, there’s now the opportunity for various corporations to make one-use sized bottles of things like saline solution, or individual packets of moisturiser and sell them to airlines to give [ha!]/sell at a huge mark-up to desperate passengers on board.
Anybody know if they’re letting diabetics carry glucometres? Or letting people carry Epi-pens? I’m bothered by the British only-enough-medication-for-the-flight rule – what if one’s baggage with the next dose[s] goes astray?
Hah! Wouldn’t that be the laugh… I can just imagine the sight of a slightly singed fedayeen in his undies running to the nearest toilet…
See, there are two nice things about nitrocellulose: It doesn’t really generate a lot of heat, and it doesn’t burn explosively. What it does is generate a lot of N2 and C02 (and maybe some NOx).
That makes it a really neat explosive to work with, because you don’t risk cashing your ticket to Heaven too early (although the synthesis does involve highly concentrated inorganic acid).
Only catch being that you need a solid container in order to get the loud noises and flying scrapnel, so unless they smuggle on an f-load of pepsi bottles (and wouldn’t that be cute), they’re not going to make much of a bang.
– JS
“I wonder if it occur to them that such things as these exist? We know there are female suicide bombers.”
I laughed hysterically when I heard a report that they among the things not currently banned was breast milk. Like they had actually considered it for a moment.
For almost five years now I’ve wondered “but how would that address me strapping a glass or obsidian blade to my leg?”
Ever read Snow Crash?
“On an airplane, there’s nowhere for the blood to go.”
“Today, the FAA announced a ban on Pop Rocks, citing concerns that they could be swallowed and combined with carbonated beverages served to passengers to created a human bomb.”
I could TOTALLY see that.
“Anybody know if they’re letting diabetics carry glucometres? Or letting people carry Epi-pens?”
I wondered along the same lines. What about diabetics with built-in insulin pumps? And epi-pens, oh my gosh. Not only is it a liquid, but with a sharp syringe tip that is designed to shoot through clothing on contact? Scaaaaaarrrry. Oh my god! The flight attendant just got jabbed! She’s going to get the shakes for a few minutes! The horror!!!!
Okay. so they’ve banned taking Diet Coke on the plane. How long will it be before they ban the Mentos?
I agree that this is for theater. I don’t think it’s to make us feel safe, though, but rather to keep us scared. Let’s keep thinking of all the possible ways we can be attacked… after all we do have an important election coming up.
Phew… I gotta hop a plane to St. Louis in a month. Dammit.
But a frozen beverage in a bottle can be used as a CLUB! I’d better hide, but not under my bed because there’s a terrorist and a really old communist under there already!
Last month I used my carry-on to transport my complete set of china. I wonder how they would react to that now.
I laughed hysterically when I heard a report that they among the things not currently banned was breast milk. Like they had actually considered it for a moment.
i’m pretty sure they meant breast milk *not* currently in the breast, lol. Maybe there will be an increase in mothers whipping out the boob right there on the plane? Much more convienient, imo. Now if only I could have, say, one boob for the baby and one boob that gave out mountain dew or cherry coke for me.
Seems like the Intelligent Designer ought to have some kind of user feedback mechanism for just those kinds of enhancements to the next release, doesn’t it?
Personally, I’d go for two boobs that dispense red wine, but it seems like it ought to be configurable by the user.
Hmm, good idea, a couple of politicians doing a useful job for a change.
Oh sorry, wrong type of boob.
Of course, the airlines only want to keep bombs off planes because planes are expensive and take time to replace. They don’t care about the passengers at all.
Evidence? Making people toss fluids in bins without doing any of the following:
1. Sniffiing/GC/Inspecting the bottles.
2. Putting a Hazardous Materials Response Team in the vicinity, in case things start to bubble and fume.
3. Putting the bins in the middle of crowds.
When Terrorists realise is that their target should be the security line, not the airplane, you’ll see binary poisons going in those bins, like say, a bunch of “mints” made of potassium cyanide and a glass bottle of strong acid “dropped” a little too hard.
As a disturbing, added bonus, dead bodies in plane crashes mid-ocean are essentially invisible. Dead bodies in an airplane terminal are hard to keep off the evening news. Also, you get to not only wipe out a business traveller, you might get their spouse and children, too.
Fortunately for the terrorists, the airlines are doing their part to make sure those terminals are as crowded as possible, so the inevitable terminal attack will result in massive casualties.
Way to march right on to the killing floor, morons.
It’d be just like prepping for a colonoscopy, except they wouldn’t do the test. Or maybe they’d only offer that option to first-class and business-class passengers.
Another reason why the ban on liquids is BS: plastic explosives are hand-malleable and require a detonator. This means you can easily pack the stuff in anywhere there’s a void space — for instance, the steel tubing used in folding baby carriages and luggage carts.
DominEditrix mentioned silicone falsies. Are the airlines going to check for them? Are women who use them as post-mastectomy prostheses going to have them confiscated? If not, all it takes is a flat-chested female terrorist or a talented male cross-dresser to get a significant amount of plastique on board.
Visual inspection plus metal detection is simply not going to catch this stuff. One of the things the news networks are carefully not pointing out is that the Bush Administration has cut funding for explosives detection, and has been dragging its feet on evaluating Japanese chemical sniffers. It would be nice if one of these days we could have a government that actually cares about security.
When Terrorists realise is that their target should be the security line, not the airplane, you’ll see binary poisons going in those bins, like say, a bunch of “mints” made of potassium cyanide and a glass bottle of strong acid “dropped” a little too hard.
Wow, I never even thought of that. That’s sort of terrifying. It’s true, the bajillion hour wait at the security line has basically created a vulnerable captive audience for bombs like that. You don’t even *need* to get through security to do something like that.
Wasn’t there a terrorist attack in an Italian Airport in the 70’s?
Didn’t even use a bomb the just strolled in and started shooting.
Indeed. Those kind of terrorist attacks are quite literally impossible to predict and defend against. And they’re also much cheaper than the ones that involve four simultaneous hijackings preceeded by months of flight training.
So why don’t they happen? Why isn’t America subject to daily or even monthly terrorist attacks?
Maybe it’s because terrorism is a paper tiger cooked up to frighten the masses, hm?
plucky punk: “Now if only I could have, say, one boob for the baby and one boob that gave out mountain dew or cherry coke for me.” – just wait a few years. Someone will find a way. Maybe with all that stem cell research. :)
Well, planes do have these convenient huge supplies of flammable material already on board, but they’ve pretty much dried up that well already. The next successful huge terrorist attack will come from an unexpected direction and probably be completely unrelated to aircraft. That’s just basic strategy – go around the heaviest resistance and attack the weak point.
Of course, we may be waiting another century or so for the next successful huge terrorist attack, because huge attacks are much easier to detect and intercept (it takes really catastrophic stupidity or an unshakable belief in your own infallibility – or both – to fail to stop them), and therefore aren’t attempted that often in the first place. A continuous program of small to medium attacks like is already going on in Iraq etc. is easier to carry out, harder to counter and does just as much damage.
Huge attacks do have disproportionate PR value, though. How many people even know the relative level of casualties in 9/11 and the Iraqi civil war?
(Of course the current fearmongering isn’t going to make anyone safer or make anyone feel safer. Anyone who attempts to claim that it will should not be taken seriously, any more than a flat Earther or YEC. Fearmongering has one purpose, to create fear. Ironically, that’s the exact same goal as terrorism itself…)
A bomb went off in a locker at LaGuardia in 1975. At least one person died. My girlfriend’s sister’s boyfriend happened to be there when some poor guy’s head went rolling like a soccer ball across the terminal floor right in front of him.
Bringing down a plane (or a building) is spectacular and costly, but the point of terrorism has never been big-ticket items or infrastructure. Maybe that has changed over the past 30 years. Blowing up restaurants they way they used to in Algiers just isn’t news anymore.
Anyway, I sure hope no terrorists are reading this thread. Ahem.
Craig:
Every time I fly and they make me take off my shoes, I wonder what exactly it is they’re looking for that
a) Doesn’t show up in a metal detector
b) Shows up in X-rays
c) Can fit inside the sole of a shoe
d) Can’t be duct-taped to ones’ leg
So far, I’ve come up empty.
Dude. You’re forgetting about the failed shoe bomber.
Tried to light that baby with a lighter.
Steve_C:
You mean the guy who, if his explosive actually worked, would’ve blown himself up by walking from the parking lot to the security check?
Last I checked, it was still okay to bring a book of matches.
I was just saying that’s why go through the whole shoe dance.
Not that it does any good.
Anyway, I sure hope no terrorists are reading this thread. Ahem.
Don’t worry, some news reporter will be more than happy to read this thread instead, then babble it on some global news network… Both my parents, and me, have a real dim view of the press when it comes to both under reporting anything vaguely positive about practically “everything”, then five minutes later dropping a long list of new places their “experts” think are vulnerable to being blown up, attacked or taken over by terrorists… They take sensationalism too seriously and treat basic common sense, not to mention **factual** content and honesty about who tells the truth, vs. who is a complete wacko, about as seriously as the makers of shows like Robot Chicken take writing detailed and complex plots.
disclaimer: I AM a consultant, so travel way too much!
the shoe dance (as was explained to me for the zillionth time through security) is because *some* shoes have metal inserts…. rather than segregate (which is sooo un-american) they just ask everyone to contribute to the terminal air quality. (that last phrase makes even more sense if you parse it incorrectly!)
I was just saying that’s why go through the whole shoe dance.
Not that it does any good.
Yeah, but he covered that in the “can’t be strapped to a leg” part.
The shoe bomb could have been strapped to a leg easily. The reason they check shoes now is because they aren’t checking for ways terrorists COULD attack, but instead are checking for ways they have already TRIED to attack. Silliness.
Not that checking for ways they could attack is any better, possibly is worse – because the list of “coulds” is infinite.
Of course the current fearmongering isn’t going to make anyone safer or make anyone feel safer. Anyone who attempts to claim that it will should not be taken seriously, any more than a flat Earther or YEC. Fearmongering has one purpose, to create fear. Ironically, that’s the exact same goal as terrorism itself…)
I guess what I meant by “feel safer” was really more like “feel less safe but be pleased at what our heroic government is doing to try to keep me safe, oh boy I’ll vote for them again!”
Don’t worry, some news reporter will be more than happy…
Yeah, Kagehi, I know… I was being mildly facetious, but in a way this does remind of that nim-nim in the Bush administration who publically wondered, a couple of years ago, why terrorists didn’t just poison the food supply. Heh. Hmmm.
I’m not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist or an alarmist, but the blatant manipulation of the terror alert system during the 2004 campaign was so transparent as to barely merit argument. “The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion.” The slow creep towards fascism worries me. Which is lowest: the percentage of voters who have heard of Michael Ledeen, the percentage of voters who know that the USA was unquestionably founded as a secular nation, or the percentage of voters who know the status of Jennifer Aniston’s love life?
Am I off-topic yet? :-)
On my recent flight from Brussels to Chicago, I had my camera in my pocket (that was there for most of the entire “Euro-Trip” I took part in), and I was forced to purchase a bag to put my camera in to check it rather than carry it onboard, since my other luggage was already checked. The camera is one of those tiny business card sized ones. How could that tiny camera possibly be a threat?
I’m not looking forward to the security screenings after someone figures out just how much C-4 they could shove up their ass.