
Uncharged phones, laptops to be banned on US-bound flights - ferno
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=11288869
======
yason
Since when has the angle of terrorist attack shifted back to blowing up planes
instead of flying them into strategic targets?

A laptop with a fully charged battery can cause a lot more havoc over the
Atlantic ocean than one with the drained battery. Presumably you could bring
in a couple of extra batteries as well, because it's going to be a long
flight.

If they're worried about someone building a bomb into the insides of a laptop
that you can't turn on, then hasn't that been pretty much the core of airport
security since its inception -- and pretty much a problem solved to all
practical extents since several decades ago?

I mean, that's why they've been scanning all cabin baggage for decades to see
if there are guns inside radios or tanks of interesting liquids inside some
suitable item. They've been looking at the x-rays of laptops for twenty years,
and now they suddenly start worrying about bombs being built into one?

And why aren't they worried about the cargo baggage which also contains
electronic devices that are potentially uncharged? If they can spot bombs in
the electronics in your big baggages without checking if they boot up, then
why can't they do that for your cabin bags?

Unlike water bottles that you can dispose, this is going to be a big problem.
You just don't leave your laptop or phone at some airport: you simply don't
fly.

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, and the sickness spreads to
airports outside US. This means we soon can't fly with uncharged electronics
in Europe either because the same security gates can allow someone to board a
flight the USA.

I'm just wondering who is it that benefits from all this? Where does the money
go, who are the people who can push these endless rules and regulations for
their own gain because there sure as hell isn't a gain for anyone else?

~~~
anigbrowl
_And why aren 't they worried about the cargo baggage which also contains
electronic devices that are potentially uncharged?_

Because you can't swap in a live battery in mid-flight if the device is stuck
in the cargo hold, of course. I'm not sure what's so terrible about this,
since most people will have a charger with them anyway. If their device
happens to be out of battery but they can plug in the charger and demonstrate
its safe operation, there's no problem. Indeed, this doesn't strike me as
anything particularly new, rather an old story being recycled as churnalism.

~~~
adamnemecek
The TSA released a statement about it today

[http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2014/07/06/enhanced-
securi...](http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2014/07/06/enhanced-security-
measures-certain-airports-overseas)

~~~
anigbrowl
A statement so vague that it could be construed to mean anything. Every minute
adjustment of TSA standard procedures is intended to 'enhance' their security
regime.

~~~
panarky
The secrecy is ridiculous. The bombers and bombmakers already know what's
going on. The TSA is just keeping innocent travelers in the dark.

------
gkoberger
Clearly it has nothing to do with the device being charged, but rather
eliminating an excuse as to why the device doesn't have the ability to be
powered on. (Allegedly proving it's a real device, and not a bomb being made
to look like a laptop or phone.)

That being said: [http://xkcd.com/651/](http://xkcd.com/651/)

~~~
rcthompson
Yeah, my first thought upon reading the title was that this was about ensuring
access to the data on any device coming into the country.

------
irons
Despite appearing the New Zealand Herald, the story comes with a byline from
the Daily Mail, which, for a story related to terrorism, reduces its
credibility to zero.

To pick an example from today:
[http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/daily-mail-
journali...](http://tompride.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/daily-mail-journalist-
busted-posing-as-muslim-extremist-to-stir-up-hatred/)

~~~
rm999
And the Daily Mall's only source seems to be "unnamed' TSA officials. And the
article lacks any real detail. Also, they threw this obvious false-hood in
their article: "The Transportation Security Administration will not allow
cellphones or other electronic devices on US-bound planes from now on."

Can we _please_ remove this from the frontpage of HN until we have another
source? I know a bunch of people are going to take the headline as fact
without researching the source.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2682478/Airports-
fac...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2682478/Airports-facing-chaos-
US-declares-wont-allow-uncharged-cellphones-laptops-flights-bound-
America.html)

~~~
lclarkmichalek
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-
canada-28185149](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-28185149)

[http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-restricts-uncharged-
electronic-d...](http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-restricts-uncharged-electronic-
devices-us-bound-flights-over-bomb-fears-1455543)

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/06/tsa-
cellphones-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/06/tsa-cellphones-
explosives-security-flights-us-bound)

[http://news.sky.com/story/1296197/us-restricts-electronic-
de...](http://news.sky.com/story/1296197/us-restricts-electronic-devices-on-
planes)

[http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2014/07/06/enhanced-
securi...](http://www.tsa.gov/press/releases/2014/07/06/enhanced-security-
measures-certain-airports-overseas)

[http://www.dhs.gov/news/2014/07/02/statement-secretary-
johns...](http://www.dhs.gov/news/2014/07/02/statement-secretary-johnson)

------
x1798DE
From what I remember, Firewire used to have direct hardware access to the RAM.
Does the iOS lightning charger have something similar?

I may be paranoid, but I could imagine the TSA offering little charging
stations so you can get enough juice to turn the phone on, and from there it's
a short leap to imagine that the other side of that "charger" is going to be
something that sucks down as much information as they can from the phone.

~~~
DrJokepu
While I don't doubt for a moment that the US Government has the technology to
do this, I do doubt that the TSA, which is basically the government agency
equivalent of the shortbus is allowed to have access to it.

~~~
x1798DE
It's not particularly difficult technology to pull off. The actual TSA agents
are clearly dumb as rocks, but if you give them a machine that just sucks up
data and sends it off to some central repository, they'll have no problem
plugging it in.

From my understanding, they already can make sort of "notes" on your file -
including books you have in your luggage, that sort of thing. It's not that
crazy to imagine that they'd distribute some simple juice-jacking equipment if
people are very frequently wanting to plug in.

------
mstolpm
I always assumed the x-ray machines would show operators if a phone or
notebook seems to be tampered/modified. If looking at a boot screen makes the
process more secure, we should really be concerned by the airport security in
general.

~~~
WatchDog
A lithium ion battery pack and a lump of C4 probably don't look too much
different under an xray.

------
Mvandenbergh
My guess is that they have intelligence that someone is working very hard to
do something that I've long worried someone would do, which is to make
explosives look like the cells in Li-on batteries on x-rays.

If you look at an x-ray of a laptop or tablet, it's obvious where the
batteries are, they're regular shaped objects much denser than the circuitry
in the rest of the device.

If you mixed explosives with something to make them denser to x-rays (so that
they look like lithium masses) and shaped them to look right, you would avoid
the only really effective screening tool available. If you can do that, then
sealing them and cleaning off residues to keep from setting off explosive
vapour detectors would be trivial.

This way, they can verify that at least some of the batteries in the device
are real. It still wouldn't prevent someone replacing some of the cells with
explosive and wiring the rest to give the right voltage but less capacity but
doing that would require custom battery controllers which is another step up
in sophistication. Every step up in sophistication is an opportunity to
intercept terror networks.

~~~
NoMoreNicksLeft
> My guess is that they have intelligence that someone is working very hard to
> do something that I've long worried someone would do, which is to make
> explosives look like the cells in Li-on batteries on x-rays.

That's a Hollywood movie plot.

If you wanted to mask it on X-rays, put it in a Play-Doh canister. It's not
that damned hard to fake things out.

The terrorists, so much as they exist, aren't doing these things. Laziness?
Uncleverness? I don't know why. But protecting us from imaginary threats by
making our lives miserable is disgusting and intolerable.

> This way, they can verify that at least some of the batteries in the device
> are real.

If they can do that, what prevents them from putting a small battery in that
will power it for a minute to get it past the check point?

Again, it's fucking stupid to try to protect the airlines from Hollywood movie
plots. First, they never seem to happen, and second the misery the protection
causes outweighs any possible benefits.

More people died in bathtubs that year than on September 11th. If they wanted
to save lives, we'd have a war on bathtubs, not a war on terrorism.

~~~
anigbrowl
_Again, it 's fucking stupid to try to protect the airlines from Hollywood
movie plots. First, they never seem to happen_

I was in Europe on September 11, 2001. I turned on the TV after a busy day and
at first thought it was showing a disaster movie, until I changed the channel
and found the same thing.

 _More people died in bathtubs that year than on September 11th. If they
wanted to save lives, we 'd have a war on bathtubs, not a war on terrorism._

This is not correct. 1/10th as many people died in bathtubs, although a
similar number died in all drowning accidents (some of which are the result of
heart attacks or other incapacity suffered while in the water, making the
exact cause of death hard to establish):
[http://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm](http://danger.mongabay.com/injury_death.htm)
Of course, we don't have to look far to find things that are more deadly than
terrorism in the aggregate - motor vehicle accidents, for example, do kill a
lot more people than terrorism does.

But what your argument fails to address is that accidental deaths are highly
distributed and largely uncorrelated while terrorist activity is concentrated
and systematic. The qualitative differences are huge, just as there's a huge
difference between being hit by a pound of sand (not painful unless some of it
gets in your eyes or you inhale it) and being hit by a rock of the same weight
(painful and with much greater potential to be fatal). As well as the
immediate economic and personal losses, catastrophic events also tend to set
big changes in motion. It's highly questionable, for example, whether we would
have invaded Iraq absent 9-11 and it's equally unlikely that we would have
invaded Afghanistan.

Of course that doesn't mean we should organize everything around the very low
probability of terrorist attack or any other concentrated risk factor, but to
ignore the multiplier effects of concentration is also facile.

~~~
mikeash
It annoys me to no end when people bring up the extreme overreaction to
terrorism as justification for paying extra attention to terrorism.

You're mixing up cause and effect here. Invading Iraq/Afghanistan is not a
reason to put a lot of effort into counterterrorism. It's a reason _not_ to.

The US is like a country that's allergic to bee stings. The immune system is
constantly finding new ways to fight bee stings harder and faster than before.
And when we point out that the vast majority of the damage done by bee stings
is actually done by the immune system's reaction, the counterargument is that
we suffered a lot of damage in the last bee sting, so we need to react.

Imagine a "keep calm and carry on" reaction to 9/11 instead of the panic
attack we actually had.

Yes, the differences are huge. And we should work to make them not be huge,
instead of using the huge differences to justify making huge differences.

~~~
anigbrowl
Too bad. I am equally inclined to roll my eyes when people make false
equivalences between terrorism and things like weather or dispersed accidents.
I don't see terrorism as a massive existential threat, but the idea that it
will go away if ignored is just as foolish as over-reaction.

 _Imagine a "keep calm and carry on" reaction to 9/11 instead of the panic
attack we actually had._

There is no country on earth that would respond to an attack of that scale
with equanimity. You seem to forget that 'keep calm and carry on' was thought
up as part of morale-boosting publicity campaign to be deployed as a response
to the outbreak of war in 1939, although the plan was not put into practice.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On)

Please try looking at actual historical examples instead of imaginary ones.

~~~
mikeash
I'm not saying it would go away if ignored. I'm just saying that trying to
decrease our reaction to it would be for the best. It's going to happen
whether or not we want it. All we can realistically do is try to limit the
damage, 99.9% of which we inflict on ourselves.

I don't understand why you think I "forget" anything or that my example is
"imaginary". I am _proposing_ a response and using a well known phrase to
illustrate it.

~~~
anigbrowl
Sorry I missed this yesterday.

I disagree that 'it's going to happen whether or not we want it.' In the
abstract yes, but again you're back to saying counterterrorism is pointless. I
also disagree that 99.9 of the damage is self-inflicted although a high
percentage is. US reaction to terrorism is actually mild by comparison to most
countries. The UK is festooned with video cameras and terrorist suspects are
subject to different detention conditions from regular criminals. In Spain you
can expect to undergo security checks when taking a train. Perhaps you could
furnish some examples of countries that have a more _laissez-faire_ approach
to terrorism for comparison.

As for 'keep calm and carry on' I urge you to look into the historical
provenance of the phrase. For one thing it was dreamt up as a campaign to
reassure a population facing total war, and for another it was shelved at the
time (despite some 2 million posters have been printed) because officials
realized it was patronizing and unresponsive to public concerns.

~~~
mikeash
Counterterrorism in general is not pointless. Counterterrorism in the form of
ultra-specific TSA directives is pointless.

Terrorists are in short supply, while methods of attack are essentially
unlimited. Effective counterterrorism will attack what's in short supply. In
other words, it needs to look for _terrorists_ , not attempt to stop every
single conceivable method of attack. The former can be useful, the latter is
fruitless.

How many countries have carried out something as catastrophically stupid as
the 2003 invasion of Iraq in response to a terrorist attack? If you want a
country that took a milder approach to terrorism, given that, I'd say "all of
them". Yeah, we didn't _completely_ trample over everybody's civil liberties,
we just killed a ton of people, put the government in deep debt, and wrecked
the economy.

Also, did you really use "terrorist suspects are subject to different
detention conditions from regular criminals" as an example of how the UK
reacted worse than the US? Have you not heard of Guantanamo Bay? How many
people did the UK hold indefinitely without trial because they were too
dangerous to be released but could not be convicted of a crime? (To be clear,
this isn't completely rhetorical. I wouldn't be surprised if the answer is not
zero. But I also don't think it's in the hundreds.)

I don't know why you persist in thinking that I'm somehow unaware of the
origins of "keep calm and carry on". Again, I'm merely using it to illustrate
an approach, not saying we should replicate the conditions under which that
phrase was conceived.

~~~
anigbrowl
_Terrorists are in short supply, while methods of attack are essentially
unlimited. Effective counterterrorism will attack what 's in short supply. In
other words, it needs to look for terrorists, not attempt to stop every single
conceivable method of attack._

As you are surely aware, we don't have a reliable method for distinguishing
terrorists from everyone else, notwithstanding the best efforts of
intelligence agencies engaged in various sorts of spying. Targeting particular
attack vectors is of course less than ideal, but if one receives a credible
tip along the lines of 'agent X will attempt to transport a 'battery bomb'
onto a US bound flight this month' then you can't blame security services for
trying to leverage that information. There may even be a second-order purpose
for announcing it publicly, eg to instill paranoia among potential terrorists
about the leakiness of their OpSec or suchlike. So no, I don't think that such
specific directives are necessarily pointless.

 _How many countries have carried out something as catastrophically stupid as
the 2003 invasion of Iraq in response to a terrorist attack? If you want a
country that took a milder approach to terrorism, given that, I 'd say "all of
them"._

I might point out that the UK, and a lot of other countries joined in the
invasion of Iraq. As for Guantanamo bay, I don't think that's an appropriate
comparison. Most people held there were either captured in Afghanistan and a
few kidnapped and subjected to 'extraordinary rendition', of them in the
context of a hot war. I'm talking about people arrested on suspicion of
terrorism, ie neither the Tsarnev guy in Boston nor any of the various would-
be terrorists nabbed by the FBI over recent years have been sent to Guantanamo
(despite calls for that some ultraconservatives). In terms of judicial
process, they're subject to the same regime as any other person detained on
suspicion of criminal activity.

In fact, the UK government _di_ d imprison a group of men indefinitely and
without charge post 9-11 (although the law in question was overturned a few
years later because it was in conflict with EU human rights law):
[http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-
rights/counteri...](http://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/human-
rights/countering-terrorism/detention-without-charge) Britain is about make
some legal history with its first secret trial
([http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/06/12/core_of_uk_terr...](http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/06/12/core_of_uk_terror_trial_can_be_held_in_secret_court.html)).
Looking farther back, for several decades Britain dealt with its terrorism
problem in Northern Ireland by removing the right to a jury trial for many
offenses
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplock_courts](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplock_courts))
and for a number of years by internment
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Demetrius](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Demetrius)
\- note that almost 2000 people were held prisoner without trial, quite a few
more than Guantanamo Bay ever held).

Now, I wouldn't expect you to know all this - I grew up over there so it's
easy for me to cite examples. But instead of rudely asking me if I've ever
heard of Guantanamo Bay, perhaps you might acknowledge the _possibility_ that
I know what I'm talking about. I could dredge up a variety of examples from
other countries in various stages of socioeconomic development, but since the
UK shares a language and a common legal heritage with the US it seemed like
the most obvious point of comparison. I stand by my argument that the US
response to terrorism, while of questionable effectiveness, is not nearly as
unusual as you seem to think. Indeed, in comparison with prior actions of the
US it's fairly mild, sad to say; consider the Japanese internment of WW2, or
historical punitive campaigns that would be regarded as genocidal war crimes
today, such as the Phillipine-American war of 1899-1902, or for that matter
the Vietnam war. Historical awfulness is no justification for bad governance
today, but nor are today's problems as bad as you suggest.

------
stcredzero
How about taking out the guts of a 17" Dell XPS laptop and connecting its
screen to the insides of a Sony Vaio ultrabook or a Macbook Air? That would
give you over a quart of volume in which to pack contraband.

~~~
adamnemecek
Or a raspberry pi type computer. You'd have plenty of space.

I hope this comment didn't put me on some watch list.

~~~
btown
No, this isn't Linux Journal, so you're fine.

------
bogrollben
Tomorrow's headlines: Passengers forced to crap in a bag to prove they aren't
hiding explosives.

------
fit2rule
If everyone on the plane has their working cell phone on, then thats more data
that can be collected during the flight .. over international waters .. from
all of the targets of most interest (those moving between countries).

Honestly I won't even be mad if this were the case.

------
izacus
Well, good thing that after long days of traveling we never arrive at the
airport with any of our electronic devices empty -_-

Also... does anyone know how many people were caught trying to smuggle
explosives on a plain until now?

~~~
rdtsc
> does anyone know how many people were caught trying to smuggle explosives on
> a plain until now?

I believe exactly 0 caught by TSA. Given their job performance they should
have all been fired by now and the department closed.

FBI and even regular passengers have in 10 years or so caught and stopped some
terrorists. TSA hasn't claimed a single person they stopped red-handed with a
bomb.

All they did was waste years and years of productive time, abused, molested
people, stole goods expensive and cheap alike and so on.

It is a self-perpetuating cancer (not unlike any other large organization)
that now that it has been created will come up with further excuses to stay in
business.

At least FBI is smart enough once a while to find some feeble minded brain-
washable idiot and entrap him (groom him) to make him buy chemicals for
explosives and then claim "oh look we have prevented deh terrorism!" and throw
the idiot in prison for life.

TSA isn't even competent to do those false flag like activities. It is a pure
cancer spreading and consuming resources.

------
shmerl
This is getting increasingly stupid.

~~~
coldcode
I've always called the TSA Terminally Stupid Administration. Yet they continue
to amaze.

------
watwut
It is supposed to be easier to put a bomb inside Phones and Samsung Galaxy
then into any other kind of box? Is here anyone skilled in bomb making willing
to explain?

~~~
x1798DE
Not that it matters (since none of these "security" measures pass anything
even close to a cost-benefit analysis anyway), but you could imagine that
phones or laptops would make particularly good bomb hiding places for a
certain kind of bomb, because they're already packed with electronics, so it
would be easy enough to replace the battery with plastic explosives and hide a
detonator among the rest of the electronics there.

Of course, as people have pointed out, you could rig the battery itself to
explode, or if you just need to turn the thing on, you could replace 95% of
the battery with explosives and just leave enough power to turn it on and off.
Like I said, it doesn't make any _real_ sense, but there's a superficial
argument for doing it this way.

------
crishoj
Rationale being? – Validate the integrity of the device from looking at the
screen? – Obtain an electronic record of the device entering the country?

~~~
ghkbrew
> Validate the integrity of the device from looking at the screen?

Essentially, yeah. If you can't turn it on, it could be an IED disguised as a
cellphone. (Or so the TSA seems to think)

Of course it's all just pointless security theater. I keep waiting for the
general public to realize that these sorts of measures are useless wastes of
money and demand they stop. I fear I'll have a long wait.

(Edit: TSA not NTSB)

~~~
amatix
Or if you're even a wee bit sophisticated, get a smaller battery pack that'll
last for 15 minutes and pack your explosives into the remaining 90% of battery
space? How does the TSA not think of these blindingly obvious things?

~~~
mikeash
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends
upon his not understanding it!"

Nobody is going to put themselves out of a job by saying, "Ubiquitous security
screening doesn't work, as every countermeasure we come up with has obvious
counter-countermeasures. Thus, we should shrink this agency by a factor of
five and refocus our efforts in other areas."

But they can't just ignore threats either, because that gets you hauled in
front of Congress the next time something happens. Thus, they ride a line of
carrying out countermeasures that don't really help, but which are enough so
that they can go to Congress and say that they did everything they could.

------
Mandatum
Wouldn't this be in relation to scanning/reading data on the devices rather
than explosives? Having to charge a phone or laptop would increase time taken
for processing as you'll need to charge the item momentarily whilst you
interface with it.. I highly doubt they open up phones/laptops to connect
directly to the HDD..

------
turar
Now _someone_ just needs to setup autonomous charging stations next to
security checkpoints and rake in the dough.

------
mootothemax
This makes me wonder: what if terrorists start attacking the
screening/security areas themselves?

They've already succeeded in making air travel vastly more painful than it has
any real right to be.

I can only imagine the chaos if an extra, pre-security-area screening is
introduced.

~~~
anigbrowl
They might do so someday, but it has been explained time and again why this is
not a very effective strategy: it will hit a relatively small number of
people, it will be in an enclosed area so media access and thus graphic
coverage will be limited, and airports are uniquely well-provisioned with
emergency services because of the non-negligible risk of plane crashes, which
will limit the impact. So the 'return on risk' for the terrorist is relatively
low - it would scare people and put them off flying for a bit, but it wouldn't
be an epic disaster.

Realistically it would be hard to kill more than 25-50 people, and the media
coverage would consist of footage of ambulances, sober-faced people in
uniform, and crying friends and relatives. Look at the history of conflicts
where bombings were common, like Northern Ireland, and you notice that crowds
don't necessarily mean mass casualties. The most deadly bomb set off during
the Irish troubles was at an outdoor market in a town called Omagh, and killed
29 people - but that was a car bomb. Also, in a terrestrial bombing there are
also tales of heroism as people help each other, emergency services turn up to
help, and so on, which dilutes the sense of horror and helplessness. You could
see that with the Boston bombing last year, which was ultimately more
effective in drawing people together than it was in terrorizing them.

A plane blowing or otherwise falling out of the sky is a much bigger deal,
because it will almost certainly mean the death of everyone on board, plus it
has the potential to cause considerable destruction on the ground. Even
excluding terrorism, there was high awareness of the Air France plane that
crashed in the Atlantic and of course the Malaysian Airlines plane that
mysteriously vanished earlier this year. In a terrestrial bombing, you might
be unlucky and die, but you might also be lucky and suffer only superficial
injuries, or be able to make it to safety, or whatever. In an aerial disaster
you and everyone else are basically helpless because if the initial disaster
doesn't kill you the fall will. Situations involving helplessness and
inevitability are a great deal more frightening to people in general, more so
when multiplied by a large number of people.

~~~
mikeash
I don't quite buy it. The Boston bombs were extremely amateur and small, and
yet they managed to shut down the entire city for a day. A big rolling
suitcase full of powerful explosives and shrapnel set off in a security line
at peak time in a large airport would be way worse. And if that's not enough,
do it again, and again. One security line bombing a month until the end of
time would be fairly easy and would cause complete chaos.

The real reason this doesn't happen is that there are almost no terrorists in
the US in the first place. There is _plenty_ of opportunity, whether it's
airport security lines, sporting events, or simply using one of the sixteen
thousand trivial ways to get contraband past the TSA. The _only_ reason planes
aren't constantly falling out of the sky and our airports aren't all smoking
craters is that essentially nobody is truly willing to carry out such attacks
in the first place.

~~~
anigbrowl
Your arguments are not really responsive.

 _A big rolling suitcase full of powerful explosives and shrapnel set off in a
security line at peak time in a large airport would be way worse._

I gave you an example of a car bomb that killed only 30 people even though it
was set off in a crowded market. Have you ever seen a car bomb go off? I have,
it's huge. What's your basis for assuming that a suitcase bomb is going to be
so much more devastating?

Certainly there is plenty of opportunity, but you're making a chicken-and-egg
argument by saying there's very little terrorism, therefore security is a
waste of time. I'm saying that that the payoff for the risk involved is not
enough for most people.

 _And if that 's not enough, do it again, and again. One security line bombing
a month until the end of time would be fairly easy and would cause complete
chaos._

I mentioned the northern Irish terrorist problem because I'm from Ireland and
later lived in London. One bombing a month does not cause complete chaos, it
just pisses people off and creates more public support for stiffer security
measures, more intrusive surveillance and so on.

I suggest you step back from your assumptions of what would happen and look at
available documentation of what actually _does_ happen in countries with long-
running insurgencies or terrorist problems, from the UK to Sri Lanka to
Colombia, cases of actual disasters (whether engineered or accidental) at
airports and public transit hubs.

~~~
mikeash
The suitcase bomb was compared to the ridiculous pressure cooker bombs used in
Boston, not car bombs. I did not state that they'd be worse than a big car
bomb. I did not make any such comparison.

You misunderstand my argument. I'm not saying that there's very little
terrorism, therefore security is a waste of time. I'm saying that many of our
security measures are a waste of time _because they don 't stop terrorism_,
and I say this because they're trivial to bypass. That terrorism is so rare in
this country is not because of agencies like TSA, but because there are
approximately no terrorists to be stopped in the first place.

In places where there are a lot of terrorists, they carry out bombings pretty
regularly. Regardless of whether you think it's effective, _they_ clearly do.
Yet they don't do it in the US. And it's not because TSA is stopping them, nor
is anybody else set up to stop those sorts of attacks that regularly happen in
places like Iraq. The only reasonable conclusion is that they don't happen
because nobody here wants to carry them out.

------
splike
I don't understand, what has the phone being charged got to do with anything?

~~~
wging
If your device is charged you can prove it actually works; if it's not, you
can say "Well, it works, but it happens not to be charged--that's why it isn't
doing anything."

Presumably the idea is that techniques used to convert a laptop or phone into
a bomb would render the device inoperable. It certainly seems like a harder
task to make a bomb that is also a phone, rather than a bomb that used to be a
phone.

~~~
stcredzero
It would be much easier with a laptop.

------
wardb
I feel so safe now everybody sitting in my plane have charged iPhone's &
Galaxy's.

Always expected that people who 'loaned' my iOS lightning charger where
terrorist.

------
jokoon
well just plug its charger and turn it on...

~~~
narcissus
I hope that is going to be acceptable: my laptop is way too old for my battery
to hold a charge, and I really only use it when I'm on the road. I'd hate to
have to buy a new one simply to get it on the plane :(

~~~
jhgg
If your laptop's too old to hold a charge, is there really a reason to bring
it on the plane with you? Just check it in and hope they don't wreck it.

~~~
xtrumanx
> ...is there really a reason to bring it on the plane with you? Just check it
> in and hope they don't wreck it.

That's exactly the reason why I bring stuff in with me. If they're valuable or
fragile, I would never check it in.

------
twobits
I really really need to see your private data. ..Fascist state par excellence.
..Unfortunately, it exports its "democracy" all around.

