Will law enforcement gain the power to search laptops at any time by declaring them potential bombs?
US intelligence and law enforcement agencies believe that ISIS and other terrorist organizations have developed innovative ways to plant explosives in electronic devices that FBI testing shows can evade some commonly used airport security screening methods, CNN has learned. Heightening the concern is US intelligence suggesting that terrorists have obtained sophisticated airport security equipment to test how to effectively conceal explosives in laptops and other electronic devices.
The intelligence, gathered in the last several months, played a significant role in the Trump administration's decision to prohibit travelers flying out of 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and Africa from carrying laptops and other large electronic devices aboard planes. The findings may raise questions about whether the ban is broad enough. CNN has learned that, through a series of tests conducted late last year, the FBI determined the laptop bombs would be far more difficult for airport screeners to detect than previous versions terrorist groups have produced. The FBI testing focused on specific models of screening machines that are approved by the Transportation Security Administration and are used in the US and around the world.
Also at USA Today and The Washington Examiner.
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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).
Previous stories:
President Trump Revealed Classified Information to Russia; and Tweets it to the World [Updated]
"Sources" Fear Terrorists will get Past Airport Security with Laptop Bombs
US Bans Tablets and Laptops on Flights From Eight Muslim-Majority Countries
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday April 03 2017, @09:55AM (15 children)
So putting them in the hold, where they can explode, catch fire, and become uncontrollable far easier out of sight. Yeay.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Monday April 03 2017, @10:42AM (14 children)
Be interested to see... how much "safer" is the hold anyway? If someone blows that up, what happens to the airplane? Apart from, what, millions of dollars of expense if it does happen, can't it be just as likely to bring down the plane?
And how many times has that happened compared to in-cabin things?
Surely, if you can smuggle a 1kg bomb into the cabin, you can smuggle a 5kg bomb into the hold, or a bunch of 1kg bombs?
I seriously doubt that they should be focusing on this anyway. As soon as you announce "We'll now check X for bombs", attackers will just change tactics anyway.
The whole "no liquids" thing is just as ludicrous.
And it all comes back to not scanning people / luggage well enough before they get on the plane, NOT what they decide to take.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Monday April 03 2017, @11:29AM (8 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Interesting) by isostatic on Monday April 03 2017, @01:07PM (4 children)
terrorists appear to be universally incompetent.
Or there just aren't that many people willing to blow up planes, or kill people in western countries.
Driving down a sidewalk is about as easy as it gets (1). In the US you can buy a few guns, walk down to a children's playground, or shopping mall, fire a few shots off, and walk out before anyone even sees you (2). You could get a sniper rifle and pick off people filling up at gas stations, you could do that for weeks, months even, across the country, and not get caught (3). You could make a bomb and plant it in a bin, set to go off at 12pm, then another one a couple of minutes later just down the road (4).
1) http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/nice-attack-bastille-day-france-lorry-what-we-know-crowd-terror-isis-a7138036.html [independent.co.uk]
2) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/tunisia/11701043/Tunisia-attack-shooting-Isil-linked-warning-live.html [telegraph.co.uk]
3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._C._sniper_attacks [wikipedia.org]
4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrington_bomb_attacks [wikipedia.org]
Spreading terror isn't hard logistically.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday April 03 2017, @01:32PM (3 children)
Also, plane tickets are expensive.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @01:52PM (2 children)
Also, plane tickets are expensive.
They only have to buy a one-way ticket.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday April 03 2017, @04:42PM (1 child)
Those tend to be more expensive!
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Monday April 03 2017, @06:14PM
...intentionally to discourage terrorists. Oh how I wish I were kidding.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @03:14PM (2 children)
The result: a ban on laptops in the hold
That is false. They have been banned as cargo on passenger flights [theguardian.com] - in other words no shipping a pallet of batteries.
But batteries in checked passenger baggage have never been banned.
Here's the FAA FAQ dated September 16th, 2016 [faa.gov] for confirmation.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday April 03 2017, @04:52PM
That is false. They have been banned as cargo on passenger flights - in other words no shipping a pallet of batteries.
Correct, sending your laptop/ipad/camera in checked baggage is fine. However loose li-ion batteries have been banned in the hold for quite some time.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Tuesday April 04 2017, @01:31PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @03:20PM (1 child)
Be interested to see... how much "safer" is the hold anyway?
It is safer in that it the terrorist can't guarantee that the bomb will be positioned next to the hull.
In the passenger cabin they can get a window seat or take it to the bathroom and put it right up on the hull.
A battery sized bomb's explosion is pretty localized.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Monday April 03 2017, @07:00PM
Two more things about that:
- Your small bomb won't do any structural damage if it's tightly packed in a metal container between giant suitcases of various density materials, which is more likely to happen than not.
- Your bomb won't make it to the hold in a working state anyway, as the baggage handlers are obviously specifically trained to disable or trigger explosives. Feel free to try to decrypt their secret-society-grade techniques, which optimize angular impact, spin stresses, and counter-brace shockwaves. How they dare disarm bombs daily with no safety equipment nor public recognition is a rare example of true heroics and patriotic selflessness.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 03 2017, @07:10PM
I remember years ago being required to power on a laptop in order to bring it aboard.
Or course, now you could have a something like a Raspberry Pi Zero W (£9.60) built into the screen and room for several pounds of your favorite demolition tools in the body packaged in disk drive cases (to fool the Xray) and none of the high-school dropouts at the TSA counters will be any the wiser.
Just about (but not quite) all the damage such a device could cause has already been caused (allegedly) by some terrorist wannabe in some internet cafe somewhere posting "chatter". The world is inconvenienced by a rumor. The inconvenience will last years, kill laptop sales, and everybody moves to paper thin tablets.
Who wins from that scenario? Follow the Money.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday April 04 2017, @05:13AM
If you were Canadian, you'd be aware of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_182 [wikipedia.org], largest airplane terror attack originating in N. America prior to 9/11, at least if you consider a plane departing Canada and blown up by Sikh nationalists to be a N. American terror attack.
And of course, with the shortage of laptops in 1985, they used a Sanyo tuner instead. It was in the cargo hold.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:32AM
Hold vs. Cabin is not quite so simple.
Stuff in the hold is placed in a random location, probably with much blast absorbing material around it, and often containerised. In the decades since Lockerbie and other incidents the design of containerised baggage systems has very likely changed to include some degree of blast resistance - lifetime of luggage containers is likely much less than aircraft and certifying new designs will be orders of magnitude less expensive.
The issue of multiple Li-on batteries being in hold rather than cabin can be mitigated by packing those devices in special containers - and I have seen reports that at least one airline is doing exactly that as part of the new procedures. NB: if you don't believe we can engineer a container to cope with a multiple Li-on cell fire then don't ever get on a 787, because that is exactly what the "fix" for that aircraft's melting-down battery syndrome is.
In contrast, explosive (or incendiary material) in the cabin can be placed precisely where it can do most damage, therefore much much less is needed. There are inevitably vulnerable areas accessible by passengers, even if it were possible to design these out _now_, most aircraft flying today are several decades old in design and will be for years to come.
Also, even if the damage capability is the same, I would suggest that if your aim is "terror", a survivable hole in the hold fuselage and loss of a few suitcases, followed by slow decompression and rubber jungle in the cabin is a lot less "terror" than a survivable hole in that cabin fuselage, loss of a couple of passengers, and much faster decompression in the cabin.
As to scanning well enough - the ban apparently arises precisely because certain airports are not _capable_ of scanning people / luggage well enough to defeat this threat. Or it is a deliberate targeting of certain middle eastern airlines business revenue, take your pick...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by qzm on Monday April 03 2017, @09:56AM (1 child)
TSA havnt had much 'We are saving your lives! fear the rampant terrorists!' media lately.
So they thought they better stir the pot a bit, and what better way that something that
really gets in peoples faces.
Theatre should be emotive! People must feel how hard it is to protect them, so they dont
get all complacent and cut budgets!
Because, you know, who would have ever thought of putting explosives in a laptop, until now, unheard of!
Its damn lucky terrorists are retarded morons who cannot think of the obvious, really.
(Score: 3, Funny) by bob_super on Monday April 03 2017, @07:08PM
Terrorists are actually financing Razer and Alienware, because those darn super-slim Dell and Apple laptops are a pain to stuff enough explosives in...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @09:57AM (14 children)
US intelligence and law enforcement agencies believe that ISIS and other terrorist organizations have developed innovative ways to plant explosives in electronic devices that FBI testing shows can evade some commonly used airport security screening methods, CNN has learned.
Yah, it's called "laptop battery" :)
Maybe it's just that one of the higher-ups stumbled upon xkcd 651 [xkcd.com].
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @10:26AM (1 child)
The TSA definitely knows about that cartoon. [tsa.gov]
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 03 2017, @07:18PM
When you show us a bottle of liquid, we can’t tell if it’s a sports drink or liquid explosives without doing a time consuming test on it. We’re developing the proper technology to allow us to expedite the screening of all liquids, but in the meantime, to screen everybody’s various types of liquids over 3.4 oz. would cause gridlock at the checkpoints.
Riiiight.
TSA: Sir, step behind that metal wall and drop your water bottle on the floor from shoulder height. Next...
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/04/02/central-park-blast-nearly-9-months-later-explosion-in-nyc-remains-mystery.html [foxnews.com]
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by zocalo on Monday April 03 2017, @11:08AM (11 children)
So, the new policy basically expects passengers at these 10 airports (with more to follow, no doubt), many of whom are clearly incapable of following even the simple instructions about liquids that have been in place for more than a decade now, to remove any LiIon batteries from their devices, put the batteries in their carry on, and check the actual device. Never mind that a terrorist with a bunch of supposedly legitimate LiIon batteries (laptop + spare, cameras + spares), in their carry-on couldn't, perhaps, turn those into a bomb in the cabin, or that not every device, tablets especially, even allows you to remove the LiIon battery, so you either have to break one rule or the other to travel with it. Yeah, that's going to cause a whole load of confusion, and what does confusion lead to? Mistakes. Which is not what you really want from your security theatre, is it?
Surely a better approach would have been to just require a more invasive test of the devices? Power on to desktop and a mandatory swab with that explosive residue kit they have, perhaps? Sure, that leads to some more delays (arguably less than dealing with confused passengers, but whatever), which you could then get around that in the same way that supermarkets do; have a few equivalents of the "five items or less" line for those that don't have and prohibited items, and a few "I'm a geek" aisles for those that are travelling with a bunch of electronics. I'd be quite happy to trade an extra hour in a security queue to be able to keep my expensive gear with me, as opposed to the available options for the current approaches, which is to either not fly to the impacted destinations at all or fly a longer route to bypass the problem (and, no, I'm not checking over $10k of gear, no way, no how.)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Monday April 03 2017, @11:57AM (5 children)
I don't know about being dumber: it is a question of balancing risks.
You may have missed this news report: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/02/11/africa/somalia-plane-bomb/index.html [cnn.com]
The laptop used to carry the explosive device in that report went through X-ray screening. The explosion was not 'simply' a triggered thermal runaway of Li-ion batteries, as explosive residue was detected.
I have seen other reports of the method by which the explosive was concealed in the laptop, such that it could have a reasonable change of evading airport X-ray screening. I'm not going to go into detail here, but one of the effects of this is to make people review the screening procedures available at various airports. One of the outcomes is that, for certain airports, extra measures are necessary.
The engineering/technical sophistication required to carry this type of concealment out is quite high - more than the typical level associated with terrorism. This is concerning.
Hiding explosives such that they pass 'swab' tests is possible, as the toner cartridge plot showed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_planes_bomb_plot [wikipedia.org]
I would not be surprised if the long-term end result of this will be enhanced scrutiny of all electrical/electronic devices on all flights. That enhanced scrutiny may not be apparent to members of the general public.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by zocalo on Monday April 03 2017, @12:15PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Monday April 03 2017, @12:55PM
If 300g of plastic explosive can take down a plane, do you really think that knee-jerks to device types used is in any way security rather than theatre?
It's not at all unimaginable that 300g of something can be put in just about anything whatsoever. Even the jacket you wear through security.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday April 03 2017, @02:55PM
I have never believed the printer bomb story.
The UK authorities couldn't find the bombs when they searched the packages? It doesn't pass the sniff test.
I think that the whole thing was something like a false flag operation. The explosives were only "discovered" after further involvement from the US.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 03 2017, @04:45PM
There's one report of a laptop bomb in Namibia, in 2010 too,"Namibia parcel 'bomb' a laptop [news24.com]".
So now we are here with new cumbersome security rules for the feel-safe-procedure. Better start some scanning that will check the molecular structure or at least 3D-density of baggage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @04:58PM
Or perhaps we'll find a federal judge to overrule Trump's laptop ban.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @01:34PM (3 children)
Trying to figure out how to do that with my sealed tablet, phone, and laptop.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday April 03 2017, @03:52PM (2 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @07:05PM (1 child)
No, there are smoke detectors.
Personally, I'd be far more concerned with sticky-fingered screeners and baggage handlers.
(Score: 2) by zocalo on Monday April 03 2017, @10:15PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 03 2017, @07:23PM
Power on to desktop and a mandatory swab with that explosive residue kit they have, perhaps?
I remember being required to power on to the desktop 20 years ago. Now that can be done with a credit card sized computer, leaving the rest of the laptop free for other purposes.
Explosive residue swabs are notoriously false positive prone. They are mostly for show, and only detect certain types of explosives. The dogs nose is more sensitive.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @02:04PM (2 children)
This is just a way for authorities to grab someone's laptop and search / copy the contents. They don't want another Snowden and its convenient for catching corporate thieves.
Repeat after me: unconstitutional buulllshiiit, brought to you by the real terrorists.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @03:22PM (1 child)
This is just a way for authorities to grab someone's laptop and search / copy the contents
They can already do that in customs.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Monday April 03 2017, @04:27PM
Customs can only grab your devices when you come into the country (yes I know and am momentarily ignoring the "100 mile from border" thing). This latest BS is to let the TSA seize stuff when it is leaving the country, or even just heading over to the next state for vacation.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @02:07PM (2 children)
We should dress up some terrorists as TSA agents, with the idiots in power, that may actually lead to TSA's removal faster than anything else ...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by isostatic on Monday April 03 2017, @04:50PM
The TSA causes fear and terror across a large swathe of the world, far more than ISIS could ever hope to do so.
(Score: 2) by fishybell on Monday April 03 2017, @06:19PM
Dress up the terrorists as the TSA.
Dress up the TSA as terrorists (to test the TSA's abilities to find terrorists).
TSA now dressed as TSA. All TSA agents are now marked as terrorists.
If you avoid infinite recursion, it just might work!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 03 2017, @04:22PM (2 children)
From now on before you enter an airplane, you have to hug and pet this [ytimg.com] little guy. Following that you can have a laptop, water, and even keep your shoes on during processing! Thanks Wilbur!
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday April 03 2017, @04:46PM
Interesting, like a tribble?
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Monday April 03 2017, @05:34PM
Such a measure would anger the pro-Israel lobby [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday April 03 2017, @07:33PM
During his nomination speech Thursday, Trump also called the Transportation Security Administration a "total disaster" and vowed to "fix TSA."
(July 22, 2016) [prnewswire.com]
9 months later the latest "Theatrical Release" hits the street.
Most charitable conclusion is they waited to start the script until after the election.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday April 04 2017, @12:40AM
Everybody wins. Except the tax payers: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2238-10312013000200014 [scielo.br]
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