
AQAP trying to hide explosives in laptops, official says - Gys
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/21/politics/electronics-ban-devices-explosives-intelligence/index.html
======
Gys
AQAP = Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-
Qaeda_in_the_Arabian_Penins...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-
Qaeda_in_the_Arabian_Peninsula)

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SpinningCode
I'm sure it has nothing to do with this:
[https://theintercept.com/2017/02/09/airline-competition-
trum...](https://theintercept.com/2017/02/09/airline-competition-trump/)

~~~
walterbell
From [http://www.pcmag.com/commentary/352511/airline-
electronics-b...](http://www.pcmag.com/commentary/352511/airline-electronics-
ban-is-protectionism-not-security)

 _"..business travelers assume they'll have access to their laptops on
flights. A tech-free, or even a tech-lite flight isn't much of a flight at all
in 2017. So by targeting our gadgets, the government can take an entire
airline down."_

From [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
cage/wp/2017/03/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
cage/wp/2017/03/21/trump-wont-allow-you-to-use-ipads-or-laptops-on-certain-
airlines-heres-the-underlying-story/?utm_term=.27c5dbb62f88)

 _" These three airlines, as well as the other airlines targeted in the order,
are likely to lose a major amount of business from their most lucrative
customers — people who travel in business class and first class. Business
travelers are disproportionately likely to want to work on the plane — the
reason they are prepared to pay business-class or first-class fares is because
it allows them to work in comfort. These travelers are unlikely to appreciate
having to do all their work on smartphones, or not being able to work at all.
The likely result is that many of them will stop flying on Gulf airlines, and
start traveling on U.S. airlines instead.

As the Financial Times notes, the order doesn’t affect only the airlines’
direct flights to and from the United States — it attacks the “hub” airports
that are at the core of their business models. These airlines not only fly
passengers directly from the Gulf region to the United States — they also fly
passengers from many other destinations, transferring them from one plane to
another in the hubs. This “hub and spoke” approach is a standard economic
model for long-haul airlines, offering them large savings. However, it also
creates big vulnerabilities. If competitors or unfriendly states can undermine
or degrade the hub, they can inflict heavy economic damage."_

~~~
valuearb
It's important to get these booby trapped laptops out of the cabin and into
the hold because uh...

~~~
evgen
Because the useful volume of a laptop is somewhat limited and in the cabin you
can ensure placement against the skin of the aircraft. In the baggage hold it
will have been scanned better and by a process that is less susceptible to
compromise by a single person, it will have been placed in a somewhat random
position inside another container with a fragmentation blanket around it, etc.
Yes, you can certainly bring down an aircraft by putting a bomb in luggage,
but a lot of effort has been put in place to prevent this exact thing.

~~~
Gonzih
> In the baggage hold it will have been scanned better

What information is this statement based on?

~~~
logfromblammo
In some airports, your technology will even be removed from your luggage by a
helpful and diligent TSA or airline employee, and they will take it back to
their own home for a very thorough functional check that may take years to
complete.

[http://blog.tsa.gov/2008/02/tsa-our-officers-public-and-
thef...](http://blog.tsa.gov/2008/02/tsa-our-officers-public-and-theft.html)

CNN, Chicago Tribune, and ABC News ran a few stories about this "extra-special
luggage screening" around 3-5 years ago, which I won't link because of
autoplaying videos and/or slideshows.

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ceejayoz
Let's accept that for a moment, for the sake of argument.

I want an explanation for why AQAP won't just hop on an airline unaffected by
this ban, drive the bomb to a country unaffected by this ban, or put a
timer/altimeter on the laptop bomb that's in the cargo hold.

~~~
TheGirondin
When reading comments like these, I can't help but wonder what the public
response would have been if the government had taken action against a vague
hijacking threat in Aug-Nov of 2001.

~~~
stymaar
Fair point, but most likely it would have been ineffective. sept 11 was led by
highly trained and organized people belonging to a large group. Had the
american government taken actions against hijacking with knifes, and they
would probably switched to a back-up plan (say, putting bombs in laptops for
instance ;).

And that's exactly what the gp is talking about.

~~~
finid
_sept 11 was led by highly trained and organized people_

You wrote that as fact, but is it? Those "highly trained" guys could barely
fly a small plane, but where able to fly huge airlines at top speed.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
They didn't even train to land the planes - they weren't going to have to know
that. They knew precisely enough to cause damage and no more. So trained, but
not 'highly'. More like, went through the tutorial until they could take off
and steer a little.

~~~
stymaar
Yes, and for terrorists that's what I call «highly trained». Remember, last
year a terror attack failed in France because the guy just accidentally shot
_himself_ in the leg !

Most terror attack in western countries where commited by lone wolves or tiny
groups. 9/11 was incredibly well-thougth in comparison.

~~~
finid
One interesting aspect of 9/11 is we never did get to see a shot or video of
the hijackers as they boarded the flights. Or were cameras not installed at
the gates back then?

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BugsJustFindMe
Airlines and economic politics and terrorism threats aside, letting laptop
batteries in airplane cabins at all has to be just the craziest hypocritical
lapse in air travel safety ever.

The very idea that your personal incendiary device is totes A-OK because it
also plays movies seems completely bonkers. It's like a million hyperlocalized
somebody-else's-problem fields wrap around portable electronics that we all
just collectively ignore.

Hell, continue to forget the explosive capacity of these commonplace
electronic grenades for a moment. The chemical fumes produced by lithium
battery fires are absolutely terrifying.

You can quickly vent the storage compartment and nobody even has to know. In
the absolute worst case you can dump the luggage and cover losses with
insurance. You just can't do the same to the passenger compartment.

I want the rules to be fair, and I want the rules to make sense, but damned if
I don't find myself more and more wishing it were a complete ban.

~~~
JamesLeonis
As with any ban, I question if the response is proportional to the threat. Yes
we have all these chemical devices with us (hell you're flying on a burning
tank of jet fuel, make no mistake), but the actual number of exploding
electronics is so low we don't bother thinking about it. Even the Note 7,
which was outright banned on flights, had only a couple hundred incidents, in
a market that transports millions of phones a day (not to mention other
electronics) routinely for _years_.

In fact, let's compare apples-to-apples how likely you are to die from some of
these things in a given year [1]:

* Air accident (any cause): 1 in 767,303 * Traffic accident: 1 in 8,938 * Fall from ladder: 1 in 752,688

In fact, I'm having a hard time finding statistics that indicate passenger
consumer electronics are a threat at all. Nearly all plane crashes are some
form of human error from the flight crew and mechanical failure. Even the Note
7 didn't bring down planes, despite actually exploding on them several times.
Even that ban isn't about the lethality, but the inconvenience and delays
suffered because they _must_ check for worse problems.

So to reiterate my point: What is the threat you are trying to solve?

EDIT: Formatting

[1]: [http://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/mortality-
risk](http://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/mortality-risk)

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everybodyknows
The hardware workaround seems obvious enough:

1\. Negotiate a "standard laptop" voltage, connector, and max current. Parties
at the table: Boeing, Airbus and Lenovo, HP, ...

2\. Redesign laptop packaging to function well with main battery detached.

3\. Refit airliner interiors to supply "standard laptop" power to each seat.

#3 could take a while -- retrofitting a few pricey front-cabin seats during
the interim looks like a profit opportunity for someone.

~~~
ghshephard
Many long haul flights of Tier 1 carriers already have AC power at the seats,
so #1 and #3 have already been taken care of.

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mkaziz
No one's talking about that fact that the US trusts Abu Dhabi to have a
customs port there[0], but not enough to let a passenger travelling via Abu
Dhabi to put a laptop in their carryon ...

0\. [http://www.etihad.com/en-us/before-you-fly/us-
preclearance/](http://www.etihad.com/en-us/before-you-fly/us-preclearance/)

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ouid
Didn't Samsung already do this with their phones?

------
obstinate
Is this true or a fig leaf. Hard to know for sure, but the fact that the
restrictions do not apply to passengers on American airlines certainly doesn't
decrease my skepticism.

~~~
mikeash
The ban applies to all flights from the cities in question. If it doesn't
apply to American airlines, it's only because no American airlines have direct
flights from those cities.

Edit: this is only half right. Part of the ban is for specific cities, and
part is for specific airlines:
[http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/todayinthesky/2017/03/21/what-
fliers-need-know-airline-laptop-ban/99447660/)

