In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," [U.S. Homeland Security Secretary John] Kelly said the United States planned to "raise the bar" on airline security, including tightening screening of carry-on items.
"That's the thing that they are obsessed with, the terrorists, the idea of knocking down an airplane in flight, particularly if it's a U.S. carrier, particularly if it's full of U.S. people."
In March, the government imposed restrictions on large electronic devices in aircraft cabins on flights from 10 airports, including the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Turkey.
Kelly said the move would be part of a broader airline security effort to combat what he called "a real sophisticated threat." He said no decision had been made as to the timing of any ban.
"We are still following the intelligence," he said, "and are in the process of defining this, but we're going to raise the bar generally speaking for aviation much higher than it is now."
Airlines are concerned that a broad ban on laptops may erode customer demand. But none wants an incident aboard one of its airplanes.
Fox News has a transcript of the interview (archived copy).
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday May 30 2017, @12:51AM
And even longer before that we had no issue when the metal detectors wouldn't even go off for anything smaller than a hunting knife and IDs weren't checked at all. Boarding pass = plane ride.
And with all the madness we have now, it's been the passengers that have headed off any real trouble after the paranoid security theater missed completely.
The theater has mostly managed to threaten harmless college students and cause little girls to yell bad touch! and cry.