Old Methods Used to Detect Liquid Explosives

Bain writes "According to Wired News, the UK fear of terrorists using liquid explosives could be dramatically reduced by the use of some very old tech. Recent events have seen passengers forced to pack only the barest of essentials into clear plastic bags and the restriction on all liquids force even mothers with young children to have to test bottled milk to prove that it isn't a dangerous liquid." From the article: "For a machine to detect explosives in liquid or solid form, it bombards an object with energy -- such as radio waves or neutrons -- and in seconds measures the reaction, a response that differs depending on the material's chemical properties. Software in the machine is programmed to alert screeners if it detects chemical signatures known to match those of dangerous materials. A key question, though, is whether this kind of detection system can realistically block terrorists from bringing seemingly innocuous liquids past security and combining them later to deadly effect."

Comments

It's not just explosives

[Riding Spinners]

Let's review some notably successful attacks and see if we can learn something...

• In the destruction of the WTC, they used airline tickets and box cutters to commandeer commercial airlines and crash them into buildings having significant economic and human impact.
• In the London tube bombings they repeated a tactic already proven in Spain, to use relatively small amounts of common explosives to wreck mass transit facilities.
• In other parts of the world (including a prior attempt on the WTC) they have used car and truck bombs made of kerosene and fertilizer to achieve frighteningly effective results.

There is an awful lot of effort being expended protecting us from complex high-tech attacks, when the demonstrated pattern has been for Al Qaeda to use relatively low-tech methods and strike at targets that are easy to hit and achieve significant headlines. If we should learn anything from this, it is that Al Qaeda spends its terrorist money well, getting maximum effect for a minimum of resource.

What we need is more thought and less hasty action, so that we too, might be capable of effective action in return. Pointless blustering actions like this, intended to reassure the public and sustain existing administrations' terms in office, do more to aide and abet the enemy than to frustrate them. We need reason and logic as our allies, instead of keeping them locked in the basement.