

Lost suitcases, or how to DoS an airport - swombat
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/07/lost_suitcases.html

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ghyrtegbb
Like their plans for a new super sensitive detector that could pick up a
single molecule of explosive in the entire building - not quite though
through.

Happens here all the time, airport gets shutdown for an hour every time a
cleaner leaves a door open. We have a perimeter fence 20miles long surrounded
by trees but they search the airport if somebody leaves a door unlocked.

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ableal
Last year, I bought a DVD of Terry Gilliam's 1985 movie _Brazil_ , prompted by
amusing memories of its original theater screening.

The satirical dystopia has aged badly - now it looks like a documentary.
Halfway through the movie, lacking the stomach for more, I rewound the DVD and
put it back in the box.

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kgrin
Rewound the DVD?

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DarkShikari
You've never seen one of these? <http://www.dvguru.com/2006/10/03/the-dvd-
rewinder/>

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vinutheraj
Yea ... so what's the point of this post, was it for a laugh ?! Should they
have acted differently ? Could they have acted differently ? For a country
that has been witness to such bomb attacks, I think their course of action is
justified.

~~~
omail
It means a terrorist could easily perform a denial of service attack with much
fewer resources.

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dc2k08
Completely. The IRA proved at the peak of their notoriety that all they needed
to do was make a threat of action. They closed Gatwick down for a day in '97
with only a phone call and forced Britain's Grand National horse race to be
postponed with another, causing huge disruption, panic and anger. They got the
attention they wanted but no-one lost a life. It surprises me that we don't
see the tactic copied more often today.

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yread
Well if it was in Israel it would end up like this:
[http://ohadp.blogspot.com/2005/12/they-shot-me-in-
laptop_11....](http://ohadp.blogspot.com/2005/12/they-shot-me-in-
laptop_11.html)

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stevoski
I wonder how much worse the chaos would be if some or all of London's airports
(Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton, Stansted, City) suffered this at once - either
intentionally or through coincidence.

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zackattack
Wow, that's outrageous. I wonder if the same sort of inefficient panic would
occur at a US airport.

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RiderOfGiraffes
> _Wow, that's outrageous. I wonder if the same sort of inefficient panic
> would occur at a US airport._

I expect you don't mean it as such, but that's an incredibly tactless,
insulting and insensitive remark. Not least, there was no panic, and it was
not inefficient. It was an orderly evacuation and shutdown to allow the threat
to be dealt with. European airports and establishments, and UK locations in
particular, have a depressingly long history of having to deal with very real
threats of multiple deaths on a daily basis. Their responses are based on that
experience.

In Europe certainly, people are looking at the responses of the US agencies to
the 9/11 events. Comparatively speaking, the US has effectively no experience
of a domestic terrorist campaign, and most of the reactions to 9/11 are
regarded by the rest of the world as going into headless-chicken mode, not
knowing how to deal with the sorts of things that Spain, Germany, the UK, and
other countries have dealt with for decades. In some cases, for centuries.

It's not surprising that the US authorities have introduced the incredibly
draconian measures that they have, but in my line of work I dealt with
organisations in 8 different countries, and they are all calling the responses
"disproportionate", which is diplomatic speak for a much stronger expression.

I suggest that in the future you consider carefully the different context
before making remarks based on your limited experience.

