OK, fine, so I just won't travel to the USA anymore. I'm sure I don't want my laptop to end like my suitcase (which has been seriously damaged somewhere between the Europe and the USA airports).
There are so many more interesting places in the world. If the USA doesn't want my money, I think that's not my problem.
> DHS said in a statement to The Daily Beast: "No final decisions have been made on expanding the restriction on large electronic devices in aircraft cabins; however, it is under consideration. DHS continues to evaluate the threat environment and will make changes when necessary to keep air travelers safe."
The ban may happen, but at this point we don't know.
No worries. For a few hundred dollars, I'm sure you'll be able to register as a certified patriotic laptop carrier. Everything will go back to normal and the airline will get to collect yet another fee for something we used to get for free.
And we're totally safer from terrorists as a result.
What airline makes you pay for the seatback IFE system? Any low-cost carrier that would do something like that forgoes the system entirely in my experience.
Instead they're just going to lose out on WiFi fees.
Last year, I flew United San Francisco to Seoul on a 747. None of the seats in economy class had a monitor in the seat. But they did have Wi-Fi service for the movies.
Flying is already such a dreadful thing. Even a one hour flight takes 5-7 hours when you count in all the extras. In my experience, a 1 hour flight like London - Brussels, is not much faster than a 7 hour flight like London - New York. Airports are a text book study in what monopoly and fear mongering politicians do.
- On the day of the flight you go from your departure city to the airport somewhere far away in the outskirts. That's easily an hour, in places like New York or London it can be significantly more.
- Depending on whether it's a domestic flight or an intercontinental flight, and depending on the airline, you are asked to show up anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours before the flight.
- In the airport, you sometimes go through four or five or six lines where you are checked; There is a check in, might be baggage drop, there is security, passport check by, check at the the gate, and sometimes even again when entering the airport.
Once you are through security you are forced to spend time in what is basically an overpriced shopping mall but dragging around your coat and carry-on.
If you fly with a budget airline, or if you fly to America, you are often forced to wait in crowded waiting areas at the gate, usually without seating for everyone.
Sometimes you are stuffed in a bus that takes you from the gate to the plane. These busses are literally stuffed like a Japanese metro.
On the plane, you often wait in your chair before takeoff because a connecting flight with passengers has not arrived on time or because the runway is too full.
The flight itself is rarely comfortable, but that's the necessary part of the trip. Most flights could not be much faster than they are, except on long distance flights if supersonic planes were allowed.
At the arrival, you sometimes wait again at the tarmac.
Then you go through passport control again.
You warit for luggage.
And you need transportation from the airport into the destination city.
Upon arrival, you have spent what amounts to a full working day or more, even for short flights, and you are exhausted. If someone could take away all the assaults on passengers that the whole airport experience is packed with, flying would be much better, with or without your laptop.
2+3 hour: checkin line, security line, wait at gate, seating line
4th hour: actually move somewhere through flight
5th hour: passport check, baggage pickup
6th hour: from airport to city
All of the above is true unless you are flying through a small town airport or a pre-80's airport like TXL Berlin, built in 1974 and designed to be duty-free-maze immune
A few weeks ago I had to travel to Berlin from Amsterdam, flight time about 1 hour. I took a 6 hour train instead because I would have internet (roaming is really cheap now in Europe), and all the reasons you mentioned.
The train was even a bit more expensive, but worth every euro.
What do you think could be improved/changed in the future?
I agree that the process is overly tedious to an unnecessary degree. I have read that test have shown that TSA security( or check-in security in general) is more for show (providing sense of security) then actually being effective. In addition to that the statistics even say that risks of airplane failures are far lower then other risks.
Yet there seems to be a trend in banning and restricting more and more from airplane travel. And many people, that I know, think these restrictions are good.
I lived in Singapore for a year. As an Employment pass holder, flying to or from the airport involved scanning my finger-print and my passport, I never had to talk to any immigration or customs officials.
A 20 minute taxi from the center gets you to the airport and I never had to arrive more than an hour before departure. So actually a system that doesn't suck: is possible.
Given that today's airplanes need several km runway to take off and to land, and that people often need to transfer from one plane to another, we are probably not going to have many more airports per city than we already have in a foreseeable future.
But if an airport terminal could just be a series of small waiting rooms, one for each plane, sort of like today's gates but where where you met up directly at the gate with your luggage 30 min before. Then everything from passports to tickets, to body scan and luggage, was checked once, just once, and then you boarded the plane through at least two jet bridges (front and back on a normal plane). End of story. Those who wanted could show up an hour before, and they would get a small rebate and not have to wait in line, and those who wanted could show up 30 min before, and they would pay a little more and wait in line. And the plane should not wait for anyone who's not there 30 min before takeoff.
Could you board a standard narrowbody plane with 150-200 passengers in 30 minutes (if none of them opted for early boarding)? Two jet bridges, each with at least 2 security lines with scans/pad downs of passengers, a couple of luggage dumps with scans of luggage (I imagine it could largely be done automatically). A normal narrowbody plane with 150-200 seats means each line should handle 75-100 passengers in 30 minutes. That's around 3 passengers per minute or 20 sec per passenger. Should be possible. But I think many would opt to meet up shortly before and save a bit of money.
Same in the other end. You would pick up luggage directly at the plane, and have your passport checked immediately as you enter the terminal.
Much of the waiting in airports is because airports want passengers to mix up in the shopping mall before check-in and takeoff.
There are airports which have something like this, but generally it's very expensive to maintain so many separate security checkpoints.
In the US, the Kansas City airport was originally designed and built before any type of security checkpoints were present in airports, as a series of horseshoe-shaped terminals. Now, each terminal is internally divided into groups of a few departure gates each, and each one has its own security checkpoint. This is extremely convenient for people coming to the airport -- when I lived there, I could arrive 45 minutes prior to my flight, knowing I would get through security and be at the gate by 30 minutes before departure (which is when boarding begins). On the other hand, there are very few amenities beyond the checkpoints; toilets had to be installed, and there are a few counters selling food, but only one area that I know of has a real restaurant available inside.
And it will almost certainly be torn down and completely rebuilt with a centralized single security checkpoint, because operating it in the current setup is too expensive.
At this point it's not about the current administration, it's about the trend line over 3 administrations. In choosing to do business in the US, I'm introducing a dependency that will last for several years at least.
For my own work I've had a preference for non-US clients for several years now.
The most shocking thing to me personally is that Americans seem to think these developments are new, radical changes to the course of American policies.
I wonder how many of these things would have been possible without all the groundwork laid since 2001 (e.g. the Sept 2001 changes allowing the POTUS to call military strikes without Congress approval, the PATRIOT Act enabling mass surveillance, the ridiculous growth of the TSA security theatre, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, etc etc). I guess it's easier to just blame the status quo on the elected buffoon than to acknowledge the overall trajectory of US politics.
That's been building for 50 years. Lookup the "Project for a New American Century"... and that's from the nineties.
At the backbone of all of this is the military Industrial complex and security complexes that defeat any sane measure to remove their stranglehold over political discourse.
Any of you that follow Bruce Schneier might remember he has these "movie plot" contests, to come up with plausible threats which would incur another bit of security theatre.
TL;DR, take some sodium metal onto a plane, drop it in water. As one of the first comments said, it's not plausible:
> Not plausible. I've seen a half-pound of reagent-quality sodium dropped in a river. The sodium burned violently; the chunk shattered; the expanding gas launched broken bits out of the river, which landed back in the water and kept on burning. Nothing, however, with enough force to make me believe it would cause a full-on explosion.
> Further, sodium oxidizes in air; sodium metal fashioned into any innocuous item and exposed to air (as any innocuous metal item I can think of would be) would have reacted away a great deal of its mass in the air between packing and getting on a plane. There's a reason sodium is normally stored in kerosene or some other liquid it won't react with. Dropping oxidized sodium into water is a far less interesting reaction.
So what happens if the terrorist first flies to canada... Then the US? Or what if they are already in the US? Is there something so special about the bomb that it can't be made anywhere?
I'm just wondering how this does anything but ensure that battery fires will never be put out.
The logical conclusion of all this is that in the foreseeable future laptops will be banned from the cabins of all flights, regardless of origin or destination. :/
(Of course, the decision to ban laptops on flights from Europe has not yet been finalised, so this is all still speculation at this point.)
Even if this is not the current ulterior motive and the reason is really a terror threat, this will eventually happen. It's just all to convenient if a foreign diplomat or businessman is coming to your country to take out the laptop and quickly insert a firmware backdoor.
Why would we expect a country that bugged the German Chancellor or provided malware that was inserted by another five-eyes partner into the telephone system that the EU administration used, not to (ab)use this opportunity?
Once this is in effect, don't travel to the US with a laptop.
Who enforces that ban? It's a bit sad that the European countries will go along with the ban. If they were a bit more confident, they could say "nope". Or give out a directive that every passenger must be sternly reminded that Laptops are banned, and they the (EU) security personel shall turn a blind eye. Europe doesn't have to go along with every crazy idea, it is (at least still) stronger than it thinks.
The US could deny airlines which don't implement the ban entry into US airspace. The US could also forbid them from landing in the US. The US could also raid the planes after landing or arrest anyone carrying a laptop bag that wasn't checked in as luggage. The US could do any of these things and there would be nothing the EU could do about it because they all would happen outside EU jurisdiction.
As a European citizen I'm not sure what you believe the EU could practically do to prevent such a ban as long as it is only about flights into the US or within the US. It's literally none of our business.
They operate under international and super national air safety authority regulations.
EU law doesn't protect your rights to have an item on a flight, while they might not be banned in the EU when flying to the US they'll comply with FAA regulations.
On board internet for example is turned off on flights to china from the EU per Chinese regulations as soon as the flight approaches Chinese airspace.
Uhm that's not how it works. US can enforce a regulation saying that any aircraft entering US airspace cannot have laptops in the cabin and if an airline wants to fly to US they would have to comply with that regulation. FFA can easily impose fees and bans for airlines which don't comply.
Basically US has full control over their own airspace and can control what enters it - just like EU does with their own airspace. US cannot order EU airlines to do something, just like EU cannot order US airlines - but both can enforce restrictions on what enters their own airspaces.
Sure, but the EU or any country can make these terms unenforceable in their airports. Sign a law stating that circumventing such a ban cannot be punished for example.
You can also play a negotiation game. Ban something ridiculous in return. Then say "we lift our ban if you lift your ban, and reduce import tariffs on X by 2%". Then the other party says "we'll reduce it by 1%, and you agree to this line in this treaty, and we'll only ban laptops over 1.5 kg"... and you have a deal. That's how bilateral negotiations go. And I think many commenters believe that this laptop ban has at least partially economic motivations.
I wish the EU had more balls and self confidence when it came to such negotiations. This is very tangential, but I think Germany in the EU, the EU in the western world, and the west (North America+Europe) in the rest of the world don't realize how well off they are, and how much power they still have.
A laptop bomb would presumably be fairly small in size and would probably have to be placed directly against some sensitive part of the plane in order to be effective. The cargo hold meanwhile is already reinforced and any bomb would most likely end up in a middle of a lot of baggage that would absorb most of the blast. It would probably force the plane to make an emergency landing but it's unlikely to be catastrophic.
The risk with laptops in the cargo hold isn't the blast force of explosions causing a hull breach, but fires. Now any terrorist who wants to bring down a plane simply needs to rig their laptop batteries to catch on fire, which is much, much easier to do than rigging it to explode.
Batteries contain their own oxidiser and fuel, so the only way of extinguishing a better fire is to remove the heat (fire triangle: fuel, oxidiser, heat).
The best lay-person's method for extinguishing battery fires is flooding with cold water, which will be hard on an airplane at the best of times.
Here's a video of a lithium battery fire in a cargo hold, as you can see it causes an explosion and swiftly a fire that burns the entire compartment. If you imagine every checked in bag containing a laptop, you'd get a similar effect if you rig one to catch fire.
Note that the video claims it's 5000 Li+ batteries. It's hard to tell from the video, but it looks like it was ~4 boxes filled with only the batteries. Even a large pile of laptops (no bags) would have a hard time making the explosion[1] in the video. If you separated each battery+laptop into separate bags, the density of Li is so low a single battery burning/exploding may not even reach the other batteries.
[1] obviously a fire is still possible, even with a single battery
Yes I guess it would only contain a few hundred laptops if they force all into the hold. I imagine a fire is quite possible though from a rigged laptop (or just an accident) and impossible to put out, unlike a fire in the cabin.
This was answered and discussed at length in the article
>The battery bombs would need to be manually triggered, a source explained, which is why the electronics ban is only for the aircraft cabin not checked luggage.
Obviously stuff in the cabin are much easier to access and manually manipulate than stuff in the cargo hold. Im also very disappointed at the slew of other answers and their up-voters who clearly did not read the article.
A bomb that size would be very unlikely to take down a plane (remember, blowing a hole in the fuselage doesn't cause people to fly out, despite what the movies show), so it seems the most likely use for it would be to try and blow open the door to the cockpit so they can take over the plane.
Regardless, though, it's incredibly stupid for the US to even consider this ban. The chances of success are extremely small compared to the headaches this will cause.
A bomb hidden in the cargo hold is effective if the intent is to simply blow up the plane by timer/remote/altitude. But if the goal is to hijack the plane, then a bomb in hand could be a more convincing negotiation tool.
I know you're joking but it seems like it is possible that Richard Reid the shoe bomber could have inserted the explosives inside a plastic bag and then put that inside himself (either swallow it or in the rectum) and then remove the explosive in the airplane bathroom and ignited it. Not sure why they have not done this already.
In Gibson's Count Zero, Turner was almost killed by a "Slamhound", an exploding dog trained to find him. I vaguely recall that the dog's liver was replaced by explosive.
There already exist commercial transmission (not backscatter!) full-body x-ray security scanners. They are used in prisons now, but there's no reason they can't be used in airports.
Given that flights are one of the leading sources of CO2 pollution, maybe this would finally be something where terrorists made a service to humankind.
(I am not being against technology, I just believe that modern humans can live perfectly well with flying much, much less.)
I'm not knowledgable about this subject but do you have any sources for that?
After some quick Googling the best numbers I could find state that air travel is responsible for somewhere between 2%-4% of all human induced CO2 emissions and somewhere around 12%-15% of the emissions from transport sources.
Those percentages have outsized impact because you are emitting them very high.
So while they contribute to 4% of emissions, they may as well contribute to 8% of global warming. We don't reduce emissions just because. We want to stop the climate change.
We should just optimize the planes. I do hope that in 10 years batteries will be good enough for electric fan engines.
The problem with electric aircraft is a bit like a mini Tsiolkovsky rocket equation. In a conventional aircraft fuel is burnt off as it flies causing it to lighten and become more fuel efficient as it travels. With battery aircraft this doesn’t happen so you need more batteries upfront to travel the distance.
Honestly, I suspect this might be a convenient way to be able to spend more time breaking into the laptops of travelers without the travelers noticing.
What, is it so much better if a bomb goes off while in checked in luggage? What about fires? Stupidest thing ever. We do have security checks, oh wait, they are just for show and to annoy everyone.
"Oh no! It's dangerous, terrorists might do that! Let's make a rule that has no positive effect!"
Arriving in the US and being asked to give up all your keys and passwords is nothing new. "It's because we need to check for illegal content".
Cause that makes sense, if someone had something to hide nothing would stop them from downloading it over the thing called the Internet... /s
Americans are damn stupid, and other countries are doing similar stupid things.
I do wonder how many laptop bombs have endangered planes so far - vs. actual Li-ion battery fires.
Force laptops in the holds and watch planes crash when the inevitable battery fire happens. This policy will likely kill more people than the terrorist menace it is meant to protect against.
And that doesn't even consider the loss of business, because people simply won't fly without a laptop (or put it in the hold - considering how checked baggage is routinely treated). Not everyone is traveling for leisure and for business people a laptop is essential.
When a battery fire sends a plane down they will blame terrorists or something, not their policy. Have you seen anyone blame policy on the Brussels airport attack?
I don't agree that a laptop on a flight is "essential" for business people. While I always notice very few people using laptops on business class flights, after all the point of flying business class is so that you can get some rest to arrive fresh to work, one area where you do see laptop use is in business class lounges. Unfortunately this ban will affect that as you cant check-in hold luggage after departing the lounge.
That said I think people are blowing this way out of proportion, the point of your business trip should not be to do work on your laptop during the flight.. Surely you are making the trip to do something important and relevant on the other side. If your company wants you in a meeting on Monday morning on the other side of the Atlantic then I am sorry but not being able to use your laptop on a flight has nothing to do with the business justification for your trip. God forbid you actually get a break from working 24/7 on your flight. Why are people complaining about this..
I think you are missing the point. It isn't that business travelers need their laptops during the flight, but that most don't check any luggage at all. When I was flying for business, I only traveled with hand luggage. No need to deal with the hassle of checking a bag, when all my clothes for the next few days can fit into a carry on bag.
The problem isn't being deprived of the use of the laptop in flight, it's that you're separated from the laptop, which increases the chance it will be damaged / stolen (especially given that bags can only be locked with TSA approved locks).
> Laptops and tablets denied access to the cabin and added to checked baggage means that devices with a history of lithium-ion battery fires could set off a deadly conflagration in a cargo hold — where no one can put out the fires.
Very funny.
We get the message "Europe is a terrorist breeding soil".
We have been scanning laptops separately for years... I am surprised that the scanners have not a common database of laptop scans to detect all the differences. So all the original laptops (no part modified) would get a clearance.
Yes! Next up, as a pedestrian, I am twice as likely to die unintentionally from a railway crossing than terrorism. Let's ban trains. We need a catchy slogan to sell it, so let's ban planes, trains, and automobiles!
That anyone still carries a laptop to the US suprises me, considering any client data you have on it they already have the right to demand an unencrypted copy of.
The right they have is to deny you entry if you refuse to hand over passwords for your devices. If you are US citizen I think they cannot deny you entry but can take your devices for a period of days.
Considering your laptop was already going to be searched and probably have all your data copied, I'm not sure this ban is terribly harmful anymore. You're probably better off leaving the laptop at home (or securely locked, encrypted, etc in checked luggage) anyway.
It is not harmful - until the battery in one of those laptops fails and sets the plane on fire. With nobody to catch and extinguish it in the hold (the common halon suppression systems are ineffective against battery fires).
It will probably kill more people than those terrorist laptop bombs it is supposed to protect from.
If you told me you were "Californian", I would give you a really weird stare, think for a moment, and then reply with "Oh, American?", while wondering if you thought California was a country.
And even then, very few will know the cultural difference between, say, California and Tennessee or Alabama. Just like an American might think of China as one thing with one culture, we generally view USA as one thing with one culture.
> And even then, very few will know the cultural difference between, say, California and Tennessee or Alabama.
As an Australian, I will say I think most Australians understand there are cultural differences between California and Tennessee or Alabama, and could probably even identify what some of the differences are (even if incompletely and overly simplistically). Australians would probably struggle to explain the cultural differences between Tennessee and Alabama, but then I imagine many Americans would struggle to explain that too. I expect that this very basic understanding of US cultural geography is common in some other countries also (such as New Zealand or Canada or the UK or Ireland).
> Just like an American might think of China as one thing with one culture, we generally view USA as one thing with one culture.
I would think that most educated Americans would understand that the culture in Beijing or Shanghai is quite different from that in Tibet or Xinjiang.
Understanding that there are differences is one thing, knowing what they are is a whole other. Unless you know anything about those areas, you're still going to simply think "China". I'm not saying they'll refuse the idea of differences.
Maybe this is a cultural thing, with Australians generally having better geographical understanding than Scandinavians? Up here in Scandinavia, China and USA are both just large countries. People of course know that the American states are different (they might even remember a few of the names), but unless they've been there or specifically studied the subject somehow, then they're not going to know how they differ. They might recognize Alabama due to Forest Gump or other movies, but won't necessarily understand a joke about cousins. They might associate Texas with a funny accent and cowboy movies. They'll know that Las Vegas is famous for casinos, but don't ask what state it's in.
I happen to have a personal connection to China, but I can also guarantee you that most people will just give you a blank stare if you mention Xinjiang, guessing its location based on it sounding Chinese by their broken definition of what Chinese sounds like. They will have heard of Tibet, but won't know the dynamics between Tibet and mainland, or even Hong Kong and mainland.
And, just for fun: The only thing I know about California off the top of my head would be that a few sorta successful IT companies have their headquarters there, and as a fellow developer, I assume that there at least has to be some sensible people there as a result. I also happen to know that they were primarily anti-Trump, but I would have to look it up to figure out what things California is famous for. To me, despite having been there, thorough knowledge of USA is simply not relevant information, so I only know about it if someone tells me or if I happen to look it up.
I think you are correct that most (Americans at least) don't know any cultural differences between Chinese cities unless they have a personal tie to knowing them, such as business or relationships.
And yet I was still taken aback when you described how little you know about California. I had assumed being on a site like ycombinator, which is arguably the most famous startup incubator, based in sillicon valley, the most famous startup hub, that you would know many globally dominant companies (uber, google, apple, facebook, netflix, twitter, intel, adobe, etc, etc) are headquartered/founded there, not just a few sorta successful IT companies.
I would have thought most educated Australians understand the difference between "red states" and "blue states", and would identify California as a "blue state" and Alabama and Tennessee as "red states". (The "red state"/"blue state" terminology only dates to the 2000 election, but the reality it refers to is older than the label.) California is on average politically much more left-leaning than Alabama/Tennessee, and on average significantly less religious. And the difference between a West Coast accent and a Southern accent. Obviously that kind of mental model of the US is simplifying a lot of things, but it does accurately identify some real differences in US culture.
I am university-educated, and so are most of my family and friends, so I'd imagine less educated people may on average have a simpler mental model of the US. If you watch Australian TV news, there is frequest coverage of US national politics (regular but shallow on the commercial networks, serious and in-depth on public broadcasting), so I don't think it is uncommon for Australians to acquire this sort of basic understanding of the US. Even people who don't watch the TV news or read the newspaper are likely to watch a lot of US TV shows and movies, and so tend to acquire a basic (if simplistic and distorted) understanding of US culture through that.
Maybe there is less coverage of the US in the Scandinavian media? Australia is probably more influenced by the US than the global average, although I thought US media exports were popular in most countries on earth, and US politics arguably gets more international coverage than the politics of any other country.
> They will have heard of Tibet, but won't know the dynamics between Tibet and mainland, or even Hong Kong and mainland.
I would have thought most educated people would know at least a little bit about the dynamics between Tibet and the Chinese government. Again, I don't know what is in the news in Scandinavia, but there have for years been frequent stories in Australian media about the conflict between the Dalai Lama and Beijing–every time the Dalai Lama visits Australia (he's been here several times), Beijing complains about his visit, and the possibility that he might meet Australian politicans, and the controversy is reported in the media. Sympathy for the cause of Tibetan independence is common (although certainly not universal) in Australia, and I thought that was true of the US as well. Even people whose media consumption is much more low-brow than mine would probably remember Richard Gere's outspoken support for it.
The conflict between Beijing and the Uighurs in Xinjiang gets global media coverage too, so I'd expect a lot of people have at least heard of it, although it hasn't impacted the popular consciousness to anywhere near the same degree as the Tibet issue has. In 2009, Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer visited Australia, and the Chinese government got very upset over the whole thing, and that led to extensive coverage in the Australian media. (She's come back again since, but subsequent visits didn't receive the same attention; most people probably couldn't remember her name, I myself had forgotten it, but I remembered the furore.)
I can remember Australian media coverage of the Hong Kong democracy movement from pre-handover times to today. The umbrella protest movement of 2014 received extensive media coverage in Australia.
Possibly China gets less news coverage in the US or Scandinavia than Australia, so it may well be true that the average American or Scandinavian knows less about China than the average Australian does.
My family and friends are all university educated as well; a combination of teachers, physicists and an artist (holding multiple degrees, that damn oddball). I am myself not university educated. Started working early instead, which paid off in my case. All of "us" have visited the US at least once. I am excluding the older generation from the mix, but they would generally know even less about the US.
That information should give you an idea of what kind of person I am observing when I make the claims about the knowledge of a "normal" Scandinavian. I am of course not claiming that no Scandinavian knows more than this.
From the US, we have media coverage of the presidential elections, but apart from the commentator track while votes are being counted, they only really talk about the candidates, never the country itself. Other than that, we have the usual bloopers reel that is US politics, but "Trump does XYZ" doesn't tell you much about the internal dynamics of the country either. On the Chinese side, I don't actually recall seeing that much in local media, but we would hear if something drastic happened... I guess. Now that I think about it, I don't even think local media had coverage of the huge protests in Hong Kong when mainland started changing the rules, but I may be wrong.
Between Brexit, Syrian emigrants, internal Scandinavian dynamics, and the rest of the Europe, we have plenty of politics to satisfy our relatively small thirst for political drama.
As for its popularity, US is basically laughing stock these days, although progressively moving into the "oh god, they're pulling us down with them, aren't they? fuck" area. There's a small number of people that think the grass is greener on the other side, but they're the minority by far.
As for China, people know Tibet, and they know the Dalai Lama, but they won't know that China is effectively terrorising Tibet. They certainly won't know anything about its special status as an autonomous region in China, and I seriously doubt that they know anything about Xinjiang. My spouse is Chinese, and I'm therefore far from an outsider and kept relatively well updated on current news from Shanghai and HKSAR, and even I know nothing about Xinjiang.
It's not all blank, though. Some may remember what happened in Tiananmen Square, even if they only remember the tank.
As a closing shower thought: Maybe some of the reason that we see US as one thing comes from how we're used to much more drastic cultural differences? If I drive for an hour, I'm not simply crossing a state border, but I'm in an entirely different country with entirely different culture and language, and depending on the direction I drove in, it doesn't even have to be in EU. This is much more drastic than the differences between American states. Consider the differences between Italy and Poland, vs. Texas and Alabama (similar distance). While not necessarily an explanation, this might be part of why the US seems like one blob to us.
Total anecdote, but I'm from Tennessee and went to Auburn University (AL), so I guess I'm exactly that, but when I travel abroad (Europe, Middle East, Ukraine) I always tell people "I'm from Memphis, TN" and, almost invariably, the response is "oooohh! Elvis!" It's a fun conversation starter, providing a humanizing connection beyond 'America'.
It's actually quite relevant - You can be absolutely sure that people know the connection between Elvis and Memphis, but they're just names to most people, and unless Memphis is full of Elvis replicas (well, it probably is), they'll know nothing about the city or the state from that bite of information.
Just a note on wording - I think saying "I'm Californian"
sounds weird even to someone from the US. Saying "I'm from California" or "I'm from Los Angeles" is more common / expected.
Before jumping to conclusions we should acknowledge perhaps that US intelligence is hearing increased "chatter" or intel thus the reason for this policy.
Terrorists are not dumb, if laptops are banned from flights from Europe whey will use other flights, like domestic flights or flights coming from Canada.
Yeah i guess they are. Ever since the existing dumb as fuck laptop ban people have been commenting on how stupid it is. Maybe you should filter your chatter a little better? Or even can the mass surveillance programs that lead to such stupid decisions..
A lot of comments very critical on the ban. America has intel - and good intel from a raid - that shows that ISIS has the capability and intent to hide a bomb inside laptop batteries to blow up passenger planes containing lots of people. Don’t the American people have the right to take steps to protect themselves from this?
This is a simple requirement that laptops be checked baggage and not carry on. That hardly seems draconian or extreme by any measure. I realize that this will inconvenience some people but against the very real and imminent threat of an actual discovered terrorist plans to use a laptop to blow up a plane, this seems like a very reasonable and rational step.
If certain people don’t want to visit or do business with America for that reason . . . I don’t think it’s such a terrible loss to lose dealing with people who are so self centered that they would demand that Americans risk the very real threat of deadly terrorist attacks rather than suffer the minor inconvenience of being required to check their laptops during flights.
As an American who frequently travels to Europe for business and pleasure, it's more than the inconvenience. Luggage handlers frequently lose or damage luggage--not rarely, but frequently. Most of my bags are pretty beat up. Just watch them load baggage onto a plane sometime, then tell me you feel comfortable leaving $4000 in equipment in a baggage hold.
Furthermore, there are many, many instances of lithium batteries unintentionally catching fire mid-flight. While the device is in the cabin, passengers can douse the flames. Now imagine a device in a cargo hold...over the Atlantic...with dozens of other flammable batteries...catching fire...where no one can get to it and there's no place to land...
Most importantly, this fear of being killed by a terrorist is getting ridiculous. We give up everything just on the off chance somebody might try to disable a plane. But we still get into cars, walk down streets, attend movies and plays, go out in public, go to work--all activities people are killed on almost a daily basis. As a Colorado resident, we've had schools shot up, movie theaters, even the building down the street from where I work had an "active shooting" situation recently. If we treated the risk of death honestly, we'd spend all our time on planes and none of our time out in the world.
> people who are so self centered that they would demand that Americans risk the very real threat of deadly terrorist attacks (...)
Europeans being self-centered? It's us not wanting to hand our computers to USA agencies, known to clone your harddrive and/or implant other crap on it. Agencies who can hold you indefinitely and are affiliated with other 3 letter agencies who do worse. ( See https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/05/photos-of-an-nsa... )
Do you think it would be fair to treat Americans going on vacation to any European country like this? Just let me clone your phone and laptop friend, it's for your own safety /s
I dont think that Europeans are self centered, I think the people complaining about being required to check in their laptops to prevent likely terrorist attacks are being self centered in doing so.
The government cant clone or access your information just because you put it in storage rather than carry on.
I will complain because we have zero evidence of credible threat, and a huge amount of evidence of incompetence on the part of the agencies tasked with securing air travel. I will complain because the world is full of people who confuse "we did something" with "we did the right thing". I will complain because people seem to turn off their critical-thinking faculties when it comes to travel and security. I will complain because there is a long history of "temporary" restrictions which become permanent and serve only to enrich suppliers of screening equipment. I will complain for many reasons.
Most of all, I will complain because the world is a dangerous place and I know this, and I know that 100% "safety" is impossible, and even if it were the price would be far higher than I am willing to pay.
> I think the people complaining about being required to check in their laptops to prevent likely terrorist attacks are being self centered in doing so.
Since the current administration has a credibility problem, people just think it's ridiculous security theater. Incredible claims require incredible evidence.
>the very real threat of deadly terrorist attacks
Are you trolling? The following is a list of "threats" more real than terrorism: (Note that money would be better spent on teaching the Heimlech maneuver by several orders of magnitude)
Heart Disease
Cancer
Lung Disease
Stroke
Alzheimers
Diabetes
Flu
Kidney Disease
Suicide
Car accident
Falling
Assault by gun
Choking on food
You'd save infinitely more lives since spending on any of these since there will most likely be 0 deaths from airline related terrorism.
So, people are concluding that this is theater designed to deflect away from the firing of Comey, which was executed in the dumbest manner possible.
> The government cant clone or access your information just because you put it in storage rather than carry on.
Of course they can. Someone can go in the hold before takeoff and have their way.
You make it sound like Donald Trump himself dug up the terrorist plans and issued the order. In all likelihood he wasn't even aware of it until after it was issued, it's not the president's duty to oversee stuff like this. This order was issued by the DHS, the head of which is John Kelly who is hardly a Trump lapdog.
If the position of the users of this forum is that everything to US government does for the next four years is wrong just because Trump holds the executive seat - then we need to have a 4 year politics ban because this is going to be unbearable. This has nothing to do with Trump and the fact that he is even being brought up in this discussion is crazy.
Please stop making this a Trump issue. It has nothing to do with him. As I stated, the threat from terrorism is so tiny as to be not worth mentioning under our current security status. The order itself is ridiculous beyond belief. You can still have phones, tablets or any number of other electronic devices than run on lithium ion batteries made into explosives. You wouldn't need much blast force in a confined space like an airplane cabin since the explosive pressure increases because of reflection. Simple solution to this ban, carry on two iPads.
The main point is I'm more worried dying on my daily walk around the block than this "threat" as the TSA has never stopped a would-be terrorist from boarding a plane.
I think the core of the issue here is that at some point, the nuisance outweighs the risk. How long will this ban be in place? Until the terrorists forget how to make laptop bombs? In the meantime, how many hours of productive work is being lost?
To put it another way, let's say the US got intelligence that terrorists now are able to make bombs out of, say, shoes. Should everyone be forced to remove their shoes before boarding? A silly and contrived example, to be sure, but it is meant to illustrate a point: Where do we draw the line between safety and inconvenience?
Uh, didn't we have the mandatory shoe removal for a while already after the shoe bomber? Shoe removal is still commonly demanded if the metal detector gets triggered and many places have special shoe scanning devices too.
And we still have the liquid ban, thanks to one plot that wasn't even realistic to start with.
So sadly "safety" and security theater where you get to show to your electorate that you are "doing something about it" will always win over inconvenience and common sense.
Its not just ability to make bombs out of laptops, but also discovered plans to do so. If in our silly senario it came out that we did a raid on a terrorist hideout and found plans to hide bombs inside shoes to bomb planes, and that shoes are more suitable than other items to making these bombs and that terrorists had been perfecting shoe bombs - then yes it might be prudent to ask people to remove shoes during flights. You are right - its a balancing act between risk and precaution, in this case I dont think its unreasonable to ask people to check in laptops when we find terrorist plans to blow up planes with laptop bombs
> America has intel - and good intel from a raid - that shows that ISIS has the capability and intent to hide a bomb inside laptop batteries to blow up passenger planes
So your argument is that when the US says they raided an ISIS compound in Yemen and discovered plans to hide bombs inside laptops to blow up planes - this does not qualify as good enough intel to act on? You seem to be using snark as a substitute for defending your proposition through thoughtful analysis and argumentation.
Whether consciously or as satire, your writing imitated Donald Trump's speech style for a second. I believe that's what the other poster was pointing out.
America has intel, the best intel, that shows that..
Whether someone sounds like Donald to you is not relevant to the facts at hand . . . like the fact that they raided an ISIS camp and found plans and a video which was widely disseminated. Which was mentioned in the article. What or who I sound like when I point that out, whether that be Donald or Kim Ill Sung or Jack the Ripper or whomever is not relevant
> has historically been full of shit and completely made up from time to time. Therefore there is no reason to believe it now.
Then why do you believe them about the terrorists being the bad guys, or even existing at all. Why not set up a nice rendezvous with ISIS and maybe talk about what you have in common.
Why believe the government about anything ever. Why do you think they are telling the truth about vaccinations or the benefit of public schools or anything if you have deemed them to be constant liars.
So you see no distinction between saying "the US has a track record of creating security theatre and using dubious excuses based on worthless and even fabricated intel" and literally joining ISIS?
Either you seriously believe the US government apparatus is the only source of information other than literally ISIS or you're being unhelpfully hyperbolic.
1. Discovering a terrorist plot to hide bombs inside carry on laptop batteries - and then not taking any precautions at all and allowing laptops on planes as normal: A prudent and smart thing to do.
2. Discovering a terrorist plot to hide bombs inside carry on laptop batteries - and then taking purdent, minimal precuations by asking people to deal with the minor inconvenience of checking their laptops during flights: OH DEAR GOD THIS IS SOOO STUPID IT MAKES ME CRINGE AGGG
While I agree that the prior comment was condescending and not very helpful, I think the key arguments (already put forward elsewhere in this discussion) against the "they have good intel" argument still stand and so far have not been plausibly refuted:
a) I would assume the U.S. would share such intelligence at least with their allies. So why has no other country except the U.K. implemented similar measures? Do they all willingly risk their citizens lives?
b) Why only flights from certain countries (until now Middle East, starting now apparently also Europe)? Don't you think a plane bomber from the Middle East would just put their bomb-infused laptop into the cargo hold, fly to the U.S. and then take it out there and into carry-on on a domestic flight?
The counterargument to b) is that the countries on the ban list have lower carry-on security measures in place than the countries not on the list. I personally would doubt this, especially given the variety of countries not affected by the ban, but I don't have hard data on that.
They have shared the intel with their allies and with the general public. If you guys want to get ahead to conspiracy theroies saying that is is fabricated then you need to explain why other stuff like the moon landing and vaccinations and global warming is not fabricated. You cant have it both ways where all the stuff you like is all true and all the stuff you dont is some kind of conspiracy
>Why only flights from certain countries (until now Middle East, starting now apparently also Europe)? Don't you think a plane bomber from the Middle East would just put their bomb-infused laptop into the cargo hold, fly to the U.S. and then take it out there and into carry-on on a domestic flight?
Because its not designed to be a perfect barrier against all conceivable terrorist attacks - such a system would be burdensome and crazy, that why we take precautions based on the risk posed by the targets.
Im sorry but the mere fact that you dont think the ban is implemented in a very effective way is not in itself evidence of conspiracy or fraud on the part of the government.
Just to set the record straight: I never once in my comment talked about "evidence of conspiracy or fraud on the part of the government". You are putting words into my mouth here.
All I am saying is that in my opinion the intel isn't that strong, because otherwise a) other countries would have acted on it as well and b) you would implement the ban in such a way that it isn't trivial to circumvent.
This has nothing to do with conspiracy or fraud. Faced with the same evidence, different people can come to different conclusions and cost/benefit trade-offs, and apparently the U.S. government (for whatever reasons) has come to a different conclusion than most of the rest of the world. Is this a sign of a conspiracy? No. Does this mean these new U.S. policies are per se reasonable and a good idea? Also no.
But thats exactly what you are saying when you say that they made up a terror threat and lied about the contents of information in the raid to justify policies. That is the definition of fraud and conspiracy
I also never said that "they made up a terror threat and lied about the contents of information in the raid".
There are thousands of pieces of intelligence being gathered every day from various sources about potential new terror plots. They aren't black or white and most of the time very hard to interpret. In the end, it will always come down to interpretation of the actual factual evidence at hand. What is "strong" evidence for one person can be "pretty weak" for someone else. Even if everyone agrees about the actual pieces of evidence you can arrive at very different conclusions about what is actually going on. And even if you were to arrive at the same conclusion on what is going on, you can still have very different opinions on what the best course of action in this situation is.
Nothing of this is "making up a terror threat", "lying", "fraud" or "conspiracy".
We had this before with the "binary bombs" and the "shoe bombs", each of which turns into a permanent ban. We already have explosives sensors at airport security queues.
Every time the subject is discussed every thread suggests a whole new bunch of obvious ways to smuggle things onto planes, or otherwise commit acts of sabotage. Not to mention that the terrorists seem to have adapted to the simple, hard to stop plan of driving trucks into crowds.
We are talking about things to do on a plane seat.
The last (and only) time I did a long distance flight, I did 3 things: I watched movies (using plane hardware), I slept (badly), and I used my laptop (I played and worked a bit).
Without my laptop, I could only watch movies or sleep. With a paper notebook, I could do some work, but not much. I could also talk with my neighbours if they feel like it.
Also, I have reserved a flight this summer to see the eclipse. There's no way I'll let my laptop in the cargo hold, for 2 obvious reasons (theft and accidental destruction). So, no laptop for the entire trip. I'll guess I'll have to make do with my palmtop. Not great.
And this is a leisure trip. For a business trip, I would need a computer with my personal settings, that I'm used to: custom keyboard layout, unusual window manager, a GNU/Linux OS… Borrowing a computer can easily be a major hassle.
>intel is just bullshit just to implant those measures
If you are going to assume without evidence and offhand that everything the American government says is bullshit, you might as well go ahead and join the terrorists because you seem to believe that we support and work for an evil, manipulative and deceptive regime.
I am going to believe what the US government says about the raids until there is evidence to the contrary. I believe things on evidence and not because I hate or have an ax to grind with certain countries.
>Or do you think that terrorists are naive and won't use other airlines and origin airports?
Maybe they are just applying greater precautions to areas deemed high risk for attacks, like they have always done - did you consider that. I am not angry because the precautions cannot perfectly protect us from attack, because that would be as unreasonable and irrational as being angry that they are taking any precautions
Step 2: OK, it doesn't look that risky. Still, you never know.
Step 3: I know, that new security check/ban/whatever has non-trivial costs. But we can't do nothing, can we?
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It's a matter of assigning blame. If whoever calls the shots change nothing, and something happens, his head will fall for ignoring that new threat (even if he didn't and made an actual cost/benefit analysis).
Similarly, taking someone off a watch list is very hard. Also see how we are sliding towards a total surveillance state, ostensibly to stop terrorism and child abuse, but actually to stop particular forms of copyright infringement.
> America has intel - and good intel from a raid - that shows that ISIS has the capability and intent to hide a bomb inside laptop batteries to blow up passenger planes containing lots of people.
Citation needed on that one.
Also... Adding a timer to a laptop battery bomb so that it goes off in the storage department is... probably very easy?
It is just as likely that ISIS are putting out a huge campaign of misinformation in the hope that given enough bad intel the good intel doesn't get acted upon.
There have been murmurs of bombs being surgically placed inside people; but I don't hear any increase in security in response to that very real threat.
