Slashdot Mirror
MacBook Air Confuses Airport Security
Ant writes "MacNN reports that the thin design of Apple's MacBook Air is causing some confusion for the technically ignorant, according to one blogger who says that the ultra-portable caused him to miss his flight. When going through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport security checkpoint, blogger Michael Nygard was held up as security staff gathered around his MacBook Air, trying to make sense of the slender laptop/notebook. One of the less technically knowledgeable staff points out the lack of standard features as cause for alarm..."
I bet during training they are told to look for things that may be designed to "look like" common things, and a laptop without ports would probably gain the notice of less tech savvy screeners.
I am sure those uber tiny laptops get as much attention as well.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Anyone who's ever tried to bring a less-than-common piece of electronics through airport security has probably had them happen to this. I've had TSA agents inquire about my TI-89 on two separate occasions. Is this story really news? or just cleverly embedded marketing?
He should've gotten to the airport earlier. It sounds like he was operating on razor-thin margins, and got bit. Tough. Deal with it.
Just more viral advertising by Apple Corp.
Not to get off topic, but you really can't assume any sort of symmetric distribution with something like "tech savviness". More likely there are a whole lot more folks below the mean than above it (long tail on the high end).
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Everyone else should read the original blog post, and note that his flight was taking off AS he was talking to customs. Meaning he showed up at or after boarding time. Airlines suggest showing up 1 to 1.5 hours before takeoff, not at the last minute. Furthermore, I call bullshit on this story. I've recently traveled internationally and went through 8 major airports (plus 'random selection' secondary inspection in Philadelphia) throughout the world, with a laptop, Nintendo DS, two Ipod Mini's, and a case of DVD's all stuffed into my laptop bag, while returning from an Islamic nation and nobody asked me to show them anything.
Umm.. they're given a bunch of rules that they have to follow. It's not like they are bomb experts. If they were they would be working a higher paid job. This doesn't mean they are idiots. It doesn't even mean they are ignorant, unless you want to compare them to said bomb experts, in which case every one of us who isn't a bomb expert is ignorant.
One of the rules happens to be: separate laptops from other electronic devices. So what makes it a laptop and what makes it a "dvd player"? The keyboard? You can't see the keyboard until you open it.
Another rule happens to be: don't open electronic devices unless a secondary inspection is warranted.
And there's a bunch of other rules to decided if a secondary inspection is warranted.
They're just trying to do their job. It's a joke what the experts tell them but they are the experts so if you want to blame anyone, blame them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
What kind of world of hurt would the person in TFA have had to go through if the battery was flat, or the laptop was defective?
Since the purpose of the TSA isn't to stop terrorism but to act as a social placebo, would you really want to waste hundreds of thousands of intelligent and educated man-hours on it?
It really boils down to the technically ignorant doing work that requires at some point a certain minimum level of technical competence. Kind of like a PHB making computer and networking decisions. I have not flown commercial in many years. The more stories I hear from my friends who still fly, the more I will take the train. There may be a case where I will fly again some day, but not if a viable alternative is available. I used to like to fly. I liked zipping into different cities, doing my job and popping back. It was exciting. Now, it would just be painful. Not my cup of tea.
BTW, if you fly on private craft, my experience so far has been a decided lack of idiots to deal with. Kind of makes the cost and time to get a pilots license that much more attractive.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
It's not even Alanis ironic.
The whole story is part of a viral marketing campaign intended to establish the Air as different, iconic.
Behind me, I hear the younger agent, perhaps not realizing that even the TSA must obey TSA rules, repeating himself."It's a MacBook Air."
It's 1984 all over again..."I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
This seems very reasonable. No ports, no disc drive, completely metallic instead of plastic. I could see how it would set of some warning bells that there might be more to this guy's laptop than he claims. Taken in this light it actually raises my views of the TSA and certainly makes it seem like they're actually looking out for potential safety threats.
Either way, had he been there a little earlier he could have had plenty of time to explain his new gadget and boarded the plane. TSA (and common sense) - 1, jackass blogger - 0.
Given that the summary contains something to the effect that "The MacBook has so few standard features that TSA guys think that it doesn't count as a laptop" I wouldn't call it marketing. At least, not the positive kind anyway.
I hate printers.
"It really boils down to the technically ignorant doing work that requires at some point a certain minimum level of technical competence. Kind of like a PHB making computer and networking decisions."
I don't think you are being fair.
Protecting travelers from new attack vectors in real time based on an x-ray and basic visual inspection is not a job that can be performed reliably with any standard skill set. What the TSA actually appears to be aiming for is people who can identify a gun/knife/conventionally designed incendiary device, so that nobody has to stand in front of the cameras after an incident and explain how we missed the conventional threat during screening.
Unconventional threats cannot reliably be prevented through the methods the TSA is currently employing, but no one wants to admit this and pierce the illusion of security that these measures provide the average traveler.
Instead of relating TSA grunts to PHBs making decisions they are not qualified to make you could keep it simple and call it what it is: Politicians fronting like they have solutions, and average citizens (TSA workers) set up to take the blame when those flimsy solutions fail.
See.... "private craft" is all well and good, but unless you can afford a Gulfstream or some other such ridiculousness, you're stuck in a Cessna 172 doing about 140knots. After paying for the aviation fuel and spending and hour dicking around getting it out of the hangar, checklists, etc, then worrying about where to put it when you arrive... and what to drive...
Your break-even distance is almost 8 hours... in other words... if you aren't expecting to have to drive 8 hours, use your car or take a bus.
If you're going further than 8 hours by car, it's going to be like 5+ hours by Cessna and just suck up the 45 minutes to get through security (and the $500 in fuel) and take Southwest Airlines for $99.
I've only ever heard of about 3 situations where it was actually ECONOMICAL (both time and money) to take a private plane, unless you're god-awful rich and can afford a pilot to handle the checklists before you arrive.
SI
That sort of thing is not their fault.
;).
The whole thing is actually more of a "show" nowadays, put on to make people feel safe and that the government is doing something. I mean banning liquids= joke.
After 9/11, the odds of such an incident being repeated went down a lot. In fact one of the planes didn't hit the target because of the passengers (who learnt what was happening), so that proves my point.
Now:
1) Cockpit doors are reinforced
2) The "unwritten rules of hijacking" have been invalidated- so more than a few passengers might think it is worth losing their lives to take down hijackers (esp if they think the hijackers are going to kill them all anyway). More importantly, serious hijackers know that (the crazy ones are a different matter).
3) The bomb scanning stuff has already been around for years, so the small stuff is invalidated by 2).
So, if terrorists now wanted to use planes to kill lots of people, they'll use private aircraft like you suggest
AFAIK private planes don't have as stringent luggage requirements as long as you know the pilot (or are the pilot). Those stars don't appear to have problems putting illicit drugs and stuff on their planes.
Hey give them a break. You try working full-time for $20k/year, lifting heavy bags all day and dealing with smug assholes that think they are better than you.
Frankly, I am surprized one of those guys/gals doesn't pull a gun and go postal.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
It's no more of a threat than any other computer - if fact the smaller size means it's less of a threat than if someone turned a regular laptop into a bomb. Why not just ask him to turn it on right away and be done with it? I've had to turn on my computer going through security, I can't see why this deserves some special kind of review.
It's entirely fair! The airport "security" is just silly "security theatre" and does nothing to improve safety. At the risk of a holiday in Cuba: it's trivially easy to knock an airliner out of the sky with ordinary, innocuous materials. No amount of "security" checks can prevent this!
"The airport "security" is just silly "security theatre" and does nothing to improve safety."
I think you need to re-read my post. My entire point was that the current security schemes will only work against obvious conventional threats, nothing more.
And yet we have built this egregiously cumbersome security mechanism... which will most likely fail against the first unconventional threat that comes its way.
And who will be blamed for that failure? Surely not the architects of the system, because they will clearly point to all the measures they have taken, and the immense budgets they have alloted to secure flights. Therefore it must be the TSA grunts who failed to perform their appointed duties...
Maybe I needed to state my point more concisely in the original post. The system will fail and the point of failure will not be identified correctly.
If we are not in agreement please let me know.
It looks quite obvious that its no threat with just a quick glance.
I cant imagine any gun shaped objects inside it either (hell do they make a gun that thin?).
They dont need to know what it is - they only need to know that its not a thread.
Asking him to turn it on would suffice.
I'm not completely in disagreement with you, but this means that the TSA needs to be kept up to date with all bleeding edge devices worldwide. MP3 players from Japan can look quite different than the bog standard iPod. I've seen mobiles in Europe that I never saw back in the States. If they are only looking for things that they saw on their last trip to Best Buy, that's going to be a problem.
Well, thanks to the Internet, I'm now bored with sex.
After 9/11, the odds of such an incident being repeated went down a lot. In fact one of the planes didn't hit the target because of the passengers (who learnt what was happening), so that proves my point.
Hell, before 9/11 the odds were slim to none. If security was so piss-poor before, then why had there only been maybe half a dozen or so (I don't have a list in front of me at the moment) incidents of, say, bombs being used to blow us U.S. originated airliners? And hardly any incidents of hijackers actually taking control of a plane and crashing it? For that matter, why have there never been mass suicide bombings in our malls or other public places a la what happens in some other corners of the world? In theory, it should be stupidly easy to walk into the Mall of America at lunchtime and blow yourself up, taking a few dozens shoppers with you.
It boils down to this: 9/11 was an anomaly. It was so far out of the norm that it had never been done before, and is not likely to be replicated anytime soon. The risk is always there, but it is infinitesimally small in relation to the number of flights and passengers annually. You can be 99.9% safe and, in the process, majorly disrupt and complicate airline travel, negatively affect the economy by costing businesses and their travelers added expense and delays, plus expend billions of taxpayer dollars on added security. Or, you can use the same common sense precautions that had always been used, and still be, say, 99.5% safe. The difference is not worth the expense. Of course, if you happen to have a loved one killed in such an incident, you will say that ANY improvement in security is worth ANY additional effort and expense, but when it comes to the big picture, common sense must trump emotionalism or we will all be held hostage to fear.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
I also find it amusing that they don't think the Macbook is a "device". Man, these morons have even less brains than I had anticipated.
Wonderful Airport Insecurity. Gotta make you wonder.
I just wonder how much longer must we deal with the TSA? I mean, for the actual "threat" of "terrorism", they are overkill to the max. And are completely useless. All a would-be terrorist would have to do is pick a really busy time to come into the airport, stand in the TSA security line, and blow himself sky-high before he got to the checkpoint. Many would die instantly.
The fact that this has not happened since 9-11 tells me the "terrorism threat" is largely nonexistent.
Some level of caution should be exercised, for sure, but not these insane levels. The actual TSA process would make more people vunerable to the scenario I described above because more people would be concentrated in a small area for greater effect AS WELL AS showing egg on face of the US Insecurity measures.
Meanwhile, 41,000 people die each year on our highways, and no one seems concerned about that. When I drive everyday, I am fully aware of this and watch every car around me like a hawk. Everyday I see nutty drivers dancing with death on the highways, and have seen quite a few nasty accidents as well. Improving road safety would cost far less than the TSA and actually save real lives. And improving road safety is easy -- it begins with educating the idiot drivers or get them off the road altogether.
But then, I expect way too much of my government. Bad me!
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
It does not nullify the threat, it simply makes it less obvious. These guys see thousands of computers going through there x-ray machine every day, and regardless of the make or model, they all look more or less alike. And then suddenly one comes by that not only misses some 'key components' both visually (ports) as though the x-ray machine (HDD). Heck, the thing doesn't even have a VGA output (yes, it has that mini-DVI thing), but the issue here is not "what are the tech specs of the Mac Book Air ?", the issue is "Why does this so-called computer look so different ?"
What most people here seem to miss is that these guys are not looking for computers, they are looking (amongst other things) for "stuff disguised as computers".
Man I am disappointed in the moderation going on here, common sense obviously has left the building =(
PS: As for the parallel port, maybe I should have said "serial" port and yes, my Latitude D830 has one and no, I haven't found a use for it (yet).
If there is one thing to be learned on slashdot, it has to be sarcasm.
And the real problem is that the airlines fear a total bypass of all of the commercial air travel foolishness. They don't want to be subsidized by general aviation -- they want it to go away. The last thing they want is competition from charter and corporate aircraft flying out of smaller airports, exempt from TSA bu11shit. Honda and Toyota are threatening to start building small jets, which will drive down the price of every small aircraft in the sky.
In a classic example of short-term thinking, the airlines are going to protect themselves in the short run by lobbying for user fees, only to be scratching their heads later when their source of new pilots is gone. If Congress was anything less than totally corrupt, they would force the airlines to set aside huge reserves in escrow for training. After all, the proposed user fees will turn most private aircraft into scrap aluminum and the airlines will then have to train new pilots from scratch.
And this time, there will be no H1-B labor to assist. GA has already been pretty much taxed to death in Europe, and the third world is not exactly a hotbed of aviation activity. Pilots are one of the few US exports that we have not yet screwed up. A disproportionate percentage of pilots on foreign airlines are American. Most people do not realize that English is the ONLY language spoken from air traffic control towers worldwide.
If they were really clever, the Congressmen from aircraft producing states would arrange for the user fees bill to be linked to some kind of carbon tax nonsense that would hold the auto industry hostage at the same time.
Like many mac laptops the air gets so hot that not only can you use it as a computer, but it doubles as a cooking implement. And in case of an emergency you can always use the battery as a firestarter. It's really three tools in one!
Nothing like the smell of baked trout on your mac toy.
just out of interest, based on the above - if you were aiming for a flight that departed the runway at 12 noon, what time would you leave your house.. 11am?
Don't bother. I like my Mac too, but I've long since given up wasting my time explaining why to haters. People who want to hate Macs will, and I can't imagine why you or I should care if other people are moving over. Save it for people that are asking for recommendations for a new machine and will actually listen to what you have to say.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?