
Why The TSA Fears Thirteen-Inch Laptops, But Not Eleven-Inch Ones - ukdm
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120404/17021118376/size-matters-why-tsa-fears-thirteen-inch-laptops-not-eleven-inch-ones.shtml
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jonnathanson
I'm not the best person in the world to write about TSA experiences, given
that I have a prosthetic, and so the TSA's general assumption is that I'm a
futuristic cyborg capable of firing bolts of directed energy from it.

That said, I've actually had different iPad experiences based on the
particular iPad case I used at the time. n = oh, about 4, so take this with a
grain of salt. But when I used a generic, black leather case, I had no
problems leaving it in the bag. After awhile I became a bit more stylish, and
I bought a case resembling an old-school composition notepad (by Portenzo,
makers of awesome iPad cases). That flashy little number got my bag searched
on a consistent basis, until I developed the good sense to just take it out of
the bag and put it in a separate bin. Seems that the case is just clever and
novel enough to set off the "This guy is up to something" alarm with TSA
agents.

All of which makes me think that they're looking for anomalies. If something
becomes standard enough, they gradually start to let it slip into the
background. If they've never seen something before, they'll on it like flies
on a dungheap. To me, this seems like a frighteningly simplistic security
stance -- but what do I know?

~~~
yajoe
Yes, they seem to look for "fingerprints." Your second cover may have
interfered with the fingerprint just enough.

I overheard one TSA agent mentoring another on the x-ray machine just a couple
days after the iPad 2 was available. The first TSA agent got confused looking
at the new iPad2, and the second agent explained how many batteries each had.
I overheard something like "iPad 1 had 2 batteries and the iPad 2 had 3, and
the batteries should be in these spots." Did you know there were multiple
batteries a few days after shipping?

I was impressed. My expectations were low to begin with, but the second TSA
agent had legitimate technical knowledge.

Edit: I'm not supporting TSA or saying this is the _right_ approach. This
anecdote seemed to support your supposition for how they screened items. I
still was impressed an x-ray tech knew the insides of an iPad 2 better than
even engadget. Thank you for making your point, though :)

~~~
jonnathanson
That seems impressive, I agree, and I'm all for giving credit where it's due.
But the problem with looking only for "fingerprints" is that you're inherently
narrowing your search spectrum. By doing so, you're actually making the job
_easier_ for terrorists -- whose goal, roughly speaking, is to move to
wherever the spotlight isn't shining.

Bruce Schneier does a much better job explaining this phenomenon than I can
ever hope to. But essentially, there's a good argument to be made that
_totally random_ searches are superior to fingerprint searches. Terrorists
operate on probabilistic scenario analysis. They will only attempt a plot if
they're close to 100% sure that they can pull it off, because a failure
embarrasses them in the eyes of their sympathizers and would-be financial
benefactors. It makes them look like amateurs, and nobody wants to fund an
amateurish organization. So even doing something like randomly screening every
Nth passenger (where N changes daily) inherently reduces the odds of success
by a fixed daily percentage. Terrorists are more scared of dice rolls than
they are of fingerprint searches.

I'm no security expert, and for all I know, some combination of random
searches and fingerprint searches is the optimal portfolio. I can, at least,
understand the logic there, and it makes some sense. But focusing solely on
fingerprints creates loopholes everywhere else. And it seems that the TSA has
become more and more laser-focused on fingerprints in recent years.

~~~
mark_integerdsv
Not long ago some Israeli security hard cases explained how they handle this
issue at Ben Gurion. You can probably still find it online somewhere,
basically their monitors are highly trained in profiling and they use
psychology and hyper profiling to spot potential threats.

I want to say it works like a bomb but...

~~~
jonnathanson
I've heard bits and pieces about the Israeli methodology, and I've also heard
critiques of its potential for application in the US (mostly, centering on the
idea that our population is too big, too diverse, and too spread out to
accommodate the training and consistency of the Israeli program).

Whatever the case, one thing _does_ seem fairly clear: that the Israeli
investment in people, rather than machines, seems to be paying a good
dividend. And I'm tempted to say that we'd be better off staffing airports
with better people and slightly older / less intrusive machines, rather than
cutting-edge machines and bottom-of-the-barrel staff.

------
ck2
_our officers are trained to look for anomalies to help keep air travel safe_

Number of times air travel kept safe by TSA: zero.

Please show me the list of incidents they have saved anyone from. It would be
a huge public relations bonus so that list must be somewhere right? I mean you
cannot take hundreds of millions of dollars and criminally hassle that many
people without results - or can you?

~~~
hobin
I think most of us agree that the TSA is very ineffective at what it tries to
achieve. That being said, saying they've had zero success is a little unfair,
because this would be very hard to measure. After all, in the case of
'success', nothing happens - had they not been successful, something _might_
have happened. We can't even compare the number of things that happened before
and after a change was made by the TSA, because that presumes that there are
always an equal number of people trying to make things happen.

~~~
ck2
Oh come on, if they stopped an actual weapon they would certainly do a full
press release about it. In all the years with all the money spent, there is
NOTHING?

What you are saying is they are awesome at stopping invisible pink elephants,
they just cannot show them to us because they are invisible.

Every place in the USA has city, county, state and federal police with
incredible laws that let they do almost anything they want, yet there is still
crime. Somehow the TSA magically has no crime to show for their presence.

~~~
DanBC
> _if they stopped an actual weapon they would certainly do a full press
> release about it._

They stop about 20 to 30 handguns each week. I don't know how many guns they
don't stop.

Some of those are loaded. TSA doesn't care about handguns in checked in
baggage, they even advise people how to travel with guns. They do care about
handguns in carry on bags.

~~~
ck2
Hmm, where are the auctions for all these weapons?

I mean since they are seizing thousands of nailclippers each month across the
country and then auctioning them, they must be seizing the handguns too.

~~~
nl
Where the TSA sells seized goods by state:
[http://www.eyeflare.com/article/where-buy-goods-
confiscated-...](http://www.eyeflare.com/article/where-buy-goods-confiscated-
tsa/)

This articles says they don't sell the handguns (perhaps that varies by
state?): [http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46934445/ns/local_news-
lancaster...](http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46934445/ns/local_news-
lancaster_pa/t/tsa-auctions-items-confiscated-airports/#.T4BFfIMgdtI)

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jeroen
This adds hardly anything to the original, which is here:

[http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/travel/the-mystery-
of-t...](http://travel.nytimes.com/2012/04/08/travel/the-mystery-of-the-
flying-laptop.html?pagewanted=all)

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officemonkey
These rules would mean something if they bothered to train their screeners.
Just this week I got conflicting direction about iPads, and that was at
Chicago O'Hare and Detroit Metro, two busy airports.

It seems that nobody worries about phones and kindles, and anything that is
laptop-sized has to come out. The iPad seems to be the point where the
confusion starts.

Considering how popular the iPad is, it would be nice if there was a
consistent, definitive answer.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Yes. I've got a so-called "TSA-friendly" laptop bag that supposedly allows the
computer to go through the machine without taking it out. It turned out to be
a 50-50 proposition as to whether it went through with no problem or whether I
got yelled at for not the computer out, so I started just taking it out.
Irritating.

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xal
The TSA also fears a 300ml container of liquid but not 3 100ml containers and
an empty 300ml one. What's new?

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bluedevil2k
I traveled to Romania and Turkey last week, and airports in both countries
required me to remove my iPad from my backpack after I had put it through the
X-Ray machine and put it through separately (I also had a laptop that I had
already removed). Of course, my iPhone was in my backpack and they didn't ask
me to remove that. So maybe international screen sizes vary from the US?

The "metric system of security theater"?

~~~
miahi
I don't think there are specific written rules for many countries. One
hyperactive Romanian border officer requested me (in a threatening tone) to
remove all the "large electronic equipment" from my backpack - even my SLR
camera and all the lenses. This never happened in ~10 other countries where I
traveled with the same backpack and contents.

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officialchicken
I travel with an 11" Air and iPad in a backpack very frequently. The article
does explain some confusion I've encountered when dealing with the tray
stackers association, but I wouldn't limit to them since I've encountered the
same confusion abroad.

The iPad has been examined several times (in particular, the first couple of
weeks after release), whereas the laptop has only been inspected going into a
State Department building.

"Please boot the laptop so that I can see that it works normally," was a bit
of a problem because it booted so fast off of the SSD. I had to restart 3
times to convince them that it was normal. The first two times, the guard
thought I had just done a sleep/wake cycle.

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SteveC
"The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are
impossible to obey" - Christopher Hitchens

~~~
Karunamon
Aside from a few well-publicized cases of TSA shenaniganery which could easily
be chalked up to incompetence, the rules are not difficult to understand, or
follow for that matter.

The rules are stupid, arbitrary, pointless, and irritating, but hard to
follow? No.

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read_wharf
The headline claims to explain _why_ the TSA "fears" 13 in laptops, but does
not do that.

~~~
sophacles
Yeah they do, there is a part approx. 3/4 of the way down, where they say
something to the effect of (supposedly as a result of TSA interviewing):

You have to give people the impression that you are doing something, and with
rules, essentially the reason is security theatre.

~~~
read_wharf
No, that sort of says something about why they differentiate, but it doesn't
say anything at all about why they fear.

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jack-r-abbit
Some years before 9/11 I was doing a fair amount of international travel for
work. On one return trip from Germany I was bringing back a small, 12" replica
crossbow. I had it in my checked luggage but still made the point to declare
it was there to avoid the hassle of an untimely search later. They took my bag
to a spot off to the side to open it up. They glanced at the crossbow for
about 5 sec. However, they were much more interested in the alarm clock I also
had. (With as much travel as I did to Europe, I had purchased one there that
had the correct electrical plug) They spent a good 15 minutes scanning and
weighing it to determine that it was just a standard alarm clock. But I don't
even want to think about what that same bag I had back then would do to
security today.

Also, the rules are not followed with any sort of consistency. I've forgotten
to take that Ziploc baggie of liquids out of my carry-on so many times and not
been questioned about it that I hardly even _try_ to remember any more.

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Wilya
I've always assumed that the laptop rule was because it blocked X-rays, and so
you could hide something under it. In that case, the size is irrelevant. It's
just to prevent having to check manually too much.

Besides, rules just change depending on the airport/country, simple as that.
I've had situations where I've been asked to take out "all electronic devices"
(phones, tablets, ipods, I had like ten of those). In other cases, I passed
with the laptop still inside (or even a bottle of water in my jacket ! I'm
definitely a terrorist).

I wonder why people care about this, though. Can't you just accept that you
will spend five or ten minutes taking out your laptop ?

I find the interdiction of liquid/razors _much_ more annoying, because it
actually costs me money. The inconvenience of empty your bag is pretty
harmless.

~~~
simonh
Any complex equipment could have stuff hidden inside it, e.g replace the
battery with a brick of explosive. That's why the Israelis commonly ask you to
switch computers on in front of them. Putting them in a separate box makes
sure there aren't two items superimposed on top of each other in the scanner
image, so it's easier to inspect.

If you've never been through Ben Gurion or any Israeli checkpoints, it's a
real experience. They are very thorough, sometimes requiring items be
disassembled as far as is possible without tools. I don't find it annoying
though, it's for everyone's safety and they are very professional. I
understand that the main purpose of the checks is to allow them to observe
your behaviour and reactions. They know that even with all their check stuff
can get through, so they put a strong emphasis on psychological profiling.
Honestly, that makes me less upset about the checks themselves. If I have
confidence these people really do know what they are doing, and it is
effective, then I will put up with the procedure even if it's mainly a ruse.
The problem with the TSA is the public isn't confident that the procedures are
effective, so if thats the case who wants to put up with the process?

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jasonkolb
One can only imagine what kind of inane ridiculousness we'll be put through as
they race to keep security theater entertaining and fresh.

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lcusack
I have an 11'' laptop that I never take out. 80% of the time I'm okay. 20% of
the time they make me take it out and when I tell them that according to their
own rules I do not have to, they ignore me.

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ktizo
And repraps really upset them...

[http://blog.reprap.org/2008/07/tsa-really-wreck-reprap-
child...](http://blog.reprap.org/2008/07/tsa-really-wreck-reprap-child.html)

