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Forrest Mimms On Modern Air Travel With a Bag Full of Electronics
Evidently even Forrest Mimms isn't famous enough to fly without hassle when carrying a briefcase full of electronics; he writes at Make about his experiences, both before and after 2001. A relevant slice:
After police were called when I was going through security at the San Antonio International Airport and after major problems going through security in Kona, Hawaii, I finally realized the obvious: Most people who don’t make things have no idea how to evaluate homemade equipment. Some are terrified by exposed wires and circuit boards, maybe because of bomb scenes in movies.
So I gave up. Now my carryon bag is only half stuffed with electronics; the rest is shipped ahead via FedEx.
To be fair, I'm a nerd whose been reading Slashdot since 2000, and I have no idea who Forrest Mimms is either.
"Evidently even Forrest Mimms isn't famous enough to fly without hassle when carrying a briefcase full of electronics"
Who?
I looked him up, and have no idea how anyone who isn't really into his books would know who he is (and probably not even then). He's literally not famous at all.
Yes because it is for private citizens to inconvenience themselves for the sake of a useless government bureaucracy that does a great imitation of invasiveness one would normally only find under tyranny. If you don't declare your sinful lack of conformity in advance, it's your fault - you were dre^Wpacking provocatively.
I'm willing to bet he isn't dark skinned. If he were either black or Muslim then he would have instead gotten an invite to the White house. Different standards for crackers though.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Oh bullshit it's an inconvenience. There've been enough actual bombs that anyone not understanding because they feel themselves 'elite' is trolling for attention or just being pompous. Bag it and notify. Nothing inconvenient about it.
I have traveled numerous times, both domestic and international, carrying all manner of electronic prototypes. Including systems with a 12V lead acid battery, which looks, on the xray, like a dark blob with 2 wires going to it, which has to look as much like a bomb as anything else. Or a backpack with a bunch of boxes, cables, and radios.
I occasionally get a question about "what is it?", and then a "ok, move along". I occasionally (25% of time) have to get it swabbed for the ion-mobility tester.
I have never been "selected for interview" or "taken to another room" or anything remotely like that.
This is over the last 30 years, at least, when I was anywhere from 20s to 50s in age, with a beard and a ponytail.
My two instances of trouble were:
1) I had a roll of electrical tape seized at Heathrow. I wasn't carrying any electronics that time..
2) I had a bundle of AA batteries taped together in checked luggage in China. that's a no-no.
Santa has been doing this for hours tonight without issue.
No, it isn't incumbent on *everyone*. However, it is part of the basic job description of a TSA agent to recognize what is a threat and what is not. If you can't recognize basic electronics, maybe this career isn't for you.
In any case - why would it be against any form of regulations to travel on an airplane with a bomb timer? The timer itself is completely harmless; TSA should be looking for explosive substances, not other random components that could possibly be assocated with a bomb. If you watch TV, it seems that most bombs nowadays are triggered by an attached cell phone; is TSA going to be banning anyone with one of those now?
Bombs are made with chemicals. All the electronics in the world won't blow up a toothpick. The sight of wires should alert you to... the presence of electronics.
Which is to say -- a bag full of wires is likely harmless. Something that looks like a birthday cake could probably take down the building you're in.
Forrest Mimms is the man who wrote the book that got me started in electronics.
What a coincidence! Forrest Mims also wrote a book on electronics. Wonder if they're related?
Oh go wet the bed. It's nothing to do with being elite. I worked in central London through the Troubles, and flew regularly with development kit for work and homebrew stuff as a radio amateur. I know what "enough actual bombs" in a First World nation looks like (thank god I'm not living somewhere with a real war), I was twice seconds from being blown up (as were many Londonners two-three decades ago), and there was never the need for this level of government interference.
As a former security officer with relevant training, the chemicals are the thing to look for more than anything else. You usually need several components to have a bomb that works and detonates when you want to, but chemicals are really the common denominator. Even if you're homebrewing on the plane, you still have to have chemicals whereas the rest of it is potentially optional
Most airports I've flown in and out of don't give a shit about wires, but they get really uptight about batteries and unknown liquids. A wire without a battery is completely benign. You're not going to be triggering a bomb with wires that aren't hooked up to a power source. Wires don't work that way otherwise we'd have all the free electricity we wanted.
Great, now that you clued them in, yet
I completely agree...because I've done exactly what you suggest! I was flying to give a public outreach talk on physics and took some demos with me which included a microwave transmitter and receiver plus other electronics. At check-in I told the person behind the counter that my checked bag contained equipment which might look a bit strange since it was for physics demos for a talk I was giving. She told me that she didn't think it would be a problem but told me I could take it direct to a scanner they had in the check-in hall itself for checked bags. I took it there, explained again, the guy scanned it and said it looked fine and off it went on the conveyor belt.
I did the same on the flight back with the same result. No problems whatsoever and some curiosity as to what the demo was. I expect that if you explain that you have scientific equipment in your bag, why you have that equipment and that it might look a bit strange to the X-ray in advance you'll not have any problems. If you want to use actually a scientific device on the plane then the best thing to do is ask permission beforehand and not just state that you are going to use it to some random check-in person who probably has no technical background whatsoever. If this guy put even the tiniest amount of thought into getting his gear through security and getting permission to use it on a plane then I expect he would not have half the problems he claims to.
Sorry, no. Once the TSA imposed itself on everyone and claimed the purpose was safety, they accepted the responsibility for knowing what is and is not safe. If they're not up to it, they should go home.
Actually, you look for bottles of water and shampoo. Real bombs, guns, and knives are OK and are missed more than 98% of the time according to studies done *by the TSA*.
The Star Simpson case cited in TFA is a nice illustration of the tyrannical nature of these agencies. Not the fact that a TSA guy got spooked by her electronic ornament, and not even the fact that she was subsequently arrested at gunpoint in the ensuing confusion; those are just regrettable but understandable mistakes. But the fact that this whole messy incident ever made it to court illustrates that. And even when they dropped the "hoax device" charge against her, they still could not bring themselves to let her go scot free and admit their mistake in blowing this thing out of proportion, and forced her into an f-ing plea bargain on a charge of "disorderly conduct" which is something that'll stick nicely to anyone, especially when already having been arrested in chains. And to add insult to injury, they made her issue a public apology.
I've seen the same disgusting proceedings in my own country: if an agency makes a mistake against an individual, whether it is a wrongful arrrest, an incorrectly denied zoning permit, or a bloody traffic fine: if they know they can make you back down instead of having to admit their own mistake, by making your life a living legal hell at the taxpayers' expense with zero risk or inconvenience to themselves, they will. And the sad thing is: even if these cases and the sickening behaviour of the officials driving them become publicly known, nothing ever happens to these officials or to those ultimately responsible.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
as well as others things. carry only today's needs.
Making people take off their shoes and get rid of their liquids is useless government bureaucracy. Getting suspicious of electronic devices that really do look suspicious is not Of all the bad things the TSA does, you had to pick on the one thing that they actually should be doing.
If they're going to be stopping people with bombs at all, they necessarily have to do it based on whether they appear to have a bomb, even if they also catch some innocent people who happen to have bomb-like equipment. It's not as if they have a tricorder to point at someone and get a reading that says "bomb"--all they can see is that the guy has weird electronics. They have to stop him and get someone to examine the electronics to figure out if it's really a bomb, and even then, he could very well be trying to create a bomb scare.
Yep, I took a LittleBits Synth Kit with me on a flight earlier this year, got pulled off for extra screening and had to explain the thing to them.
I was flying from LA to New Orleans to VFX supervise Big Momma's House 2 (ok, not the best film ever.) Among the things I brought with me was a pelican case of LEDs and batteries, we used to put tracking marks on walls and other things. I'll admit that seeing it go through the x-ray machine, it looked a little iffy.
The TSA agent then took the case, and extended his arms as far as he could, closed one eye, before slowly opening the box and peeking inside. Which, of course, I found insulting. No respect.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Have you ever actually tried that?
The phone call might help a little bit, but they're still going to want to look at it all... you could be lying after all. And checking it doesn't help at all. Pro tip:bombs in checked bags still go boom
Fuck the Patriot act
What's kind of strange is that up until the early 1970s there wasn't *any* security for air travel. At all. Some of the shuttle flights didn't even require you to buy a ticket in advance, they sold them on the plane.
Even after the first few hijackings, the airlines were stridently opposed to security screening, thinking it would turn off customers and make the airport experience a nightmare. They would have rather just paid the fucking ransoms and moved on.
I can remember in the late 1970s we used to ride our bikes to MSP and walk the gates. I'm sure we must have had to have gone through metal detectors, but they clearly didn't give a shit about a couple of 13 year old boys walking to the gates.
It's kind of hard to fathom why air security got so extreme relative to how lax it had been and how much the airlines resisted increasing it, even when their planes were pretty regularly getting hijacked.
(For great background, read "The Skies Belong to Us" -- a great review of both skyjackings generally and the Western Flight 701 hijacking to Algeria in particular).
Forrest,
My first exposures to electronics was with your yellow-covered project journal that used to sell at radio shack back in the early 80's. I learned a lot from screwing around with the various ideas. It stuck with me through the years as I continued to become a sucessful RF engineer. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. I'm sure it helped a lot of people get started.
His own fault? When I moved I had my gaming computer as checked baggage, in the original box. Ground crew first incorrectly labelled as a "radio" while I was pulled out of the gate waiting room. After eventually being cleared for departure, on arrival it was held up in customs for another 3 weeks. I finally had it returned with the graphics card removed from it's socket (with force, the retention clip was broken off) and bent legs which I can only guess happened due to poor handling.
Gaming computers apparently also classify as "terrorist weaponry". The irony is that somehow I had zero problems going through security with 15 3.5" hard drives.
The problem has mostly to do with very poor training of both ground crew and security staff, the majority knowing nothing of electronics but required to check them anyway.
Electronics do not blow anything up, you need some sort of explosive material. No amount of circuit boards and wires looks like a bomb.
On an airplane, why would you need a timer??
Always keep your bombs under 100ml.
Because the Third Act needs a Ticking Clock.
Unfamous enough that even the submitter didn't know how to spell his name. "Mims", not "Mimms". Kinda undermines your point.
Why is this news?
Damn straight, how DARES he make anything himself? Doing anything yourself, that's so Un-American, can't he buy some crap made in China like every normal person?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And the sad thing about it is that the 9/11 hijackers were people who'd entered the country legally and would have been have been detected had the 1970's level air security laws actually been enforced.
Instead of correcting that, however, we got new laws and new restrictions on travel and association with those who travel and a much more intrusive screening process that notoriously doesn't catch people with ill intent, so thank goodness for alert passengers!
To be fair, if it's battery powered it can easily become a bomb. But they don't confiscate all the cell phones.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I know it's anecdotal, but I have never had an issue carrying custom made hardware through checked or carry on. RF brass boards, PCBs, test equipment, etc. I've had baggage scanners wipe EPROM's, and TSA dump an $80k VNA out of it's Pelican case, and another TSA who said those micro-hook probes looked "painful", but never a security hassle. Go figure.
Gaming computers apparently also classify as "terrorist weaponry".
No. They were probably just wondering what you were doing out of your parents' basement.
Have gnu, will travel.
Traveled from Austin to Breckenridge for the holidays but decided against taking my Raspberry Pi I got for Christmas and other assorted cables and hardware for this very reason.
He likely earned about 28 million dollars by selling 7.5 million books. That's not a bad gig.
My 1983 senior project case had to be opened for TSA of the time after the X-Ray showed wires and PC boards. They were hesitant to let me take it onboard until I pointed out there was nothing in there big enough to be an explosive part of a bomb. The light bulb lit above his head and he now knew to look for a timer AND explosive! I got an A on the project to boot.
Battery packs are considered electronics but increasingly they are very unstable packages of chemical energy. If you combine just one or two laptop batteries easy to get on board, short them out or puncture them could blow a nice hole in an aircrafts hull.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
He's not the first to discover the uses of the commercial shipping companies like Fedex, etc. At least since the mid 90s, people have been doing just that. Part of it was in response to all the airport security that was being developed using poorly-paid, and thus unqualified examiners. The other part was the airlines' growing limits on "excess" baggage, plus their tendency to fly your luggage to some place remote from where they were flying you. People reported that handing it over to the package-shipping people to deliver to your destination did an end run around the airlines' lost luggage issue and the government's incompetent security theater. And the cost was often less than what the airlines would charge for the excess luggage. Others read those reports, tried it, found that it worked, and switched to the same process. And on arrival, they had just the one carry-on bag, didn't have to deal with the airlines' slow luggage-delivery schemes, and could just grab a ride to wherever they were headed, where their luggage, equipment, etc. would be waiting for them.
The airlines should just say the hell with it, convert the bottom of the plane to a second deck of seats, and subcontract the luggage delivery with the folks who know how to do it right. Lots of the frequent-traveller crowd does it that way already.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
You goddamn retard, it's only "suspicious" to the untrained. It is inexcusable for the TSA to not know what the fuck they are doing. You can have a dumpster full of electronics and it will not blow anything up. Electronics are not a bomb.
For the last 4 years, ever since selling my software start-up, I have had incredibly easy international flights and always have a wonderful seat. Now, if I could just do something about the fuel costs and the luxury tax on my private jet.
I don't suppose who ever modded my post off-topic would care to explain the reasoning because I really don't see how this is the least bit off-topic.
You're an idiot. The fact that the TSA is housed with incompetent morons doesn't make it any less true that chemicals are the thing to look for more than any other component.
Knives aren't an issue, when I started flying as a kid it was still perfectly legal to carry a knife on board. Provided that the blade was within limits.
Getting rid of liquids is a completely reasonable thing to do. The problem with the policy is that it doesn't go far enough. We don't live in an age where the screeners can quickly determine what the liquid is before acting so the only sensible thing is to bar all liquids from being brought into the passenger cabin by passengers.
The most sensible policy I saw was in China where my friend had to take a quick swig out of her water bottle before being allowed to bring it into the museum. I'm guessing they were watching her reaction to see if she was concerned about drinking it.
It's idiots like you that have no fucking clue about IEDs or other ordinance that think it's an outrageous abuse of power to be restricted on liquids.
Not safe enough. All liquids must be banned. Let's dehydrate all passengers on boarding and rehydrate them at destination.
Before a holiday flight (I think Germany to Switzerland), I was put aside behind X-ray screening for some extra checks and questions. The reason was, that I was carrying -among other things- a point'n'shoot digital camera and an extra battery (smallish 1500mAh) for my smartphone in my bag. The extra battery and the camera's image sensor happened to overlap in the first X-ray screening pass, triggering some false positive detection.
In my opinion a toolbox on board of an airplane is more dangerous than a gun.
But it is incumbent on people whose professional job is apparently to scream "it's a bomb, it's a bomb! Everybody, we all need to freak out and assault this person, now!!" to have some idea about when to freak out and throw all their reason out the window, vs not freak out.
You don't call TSA ahead of time about your items, do you? And yet they are every bit as bomb-like as this guy's sensors. Electronics aren't bombs. They just aren't. I don't care how many religious pamphlets you have read all your life saying that wires=bomb; that doesn't make it true.
Another way of looking at this, is if these people are this incredibly unqualified to screen, then false positives aren't the only thing that can go wrong. Your community isn't just occasionally burning innocent people to death, but you also probably still have witches that your bumbling witchfinders are failing to catch. What are we getting in exchange for paying them?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Good thinking. But re-read your post and you'll see that you have also inadvertently identified the thing that your bombing conspirators have in common, which makes them so easy to identify.
So now we really know what to do: stop letting people onto planes.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Sheeeeeit. You want to get a bomb on a plane? Just fly out of Maccarran after DefCon is over. I stay until the end; by the time I fly the out (with all my exposed-wire-paraphenalia) TSA's collective mind is more completely blown than usual. They don't even look twice.
There's always some lovely stories at the talks about attendees' experiences at their origin airports, though. I can't imagine what those guys must think.
And, to all you naysayers: Forrest M. Mims is indeed the man, and quite famous. Just because "kids today" aren't forced to learn analog basics before doing hardware hacking stuff and *you* haven't heard of him doesn't mean squat. (See also: Steve Ciarcia).
And there is not even one security guard who is not.
That moment when you step out of your geeky/nerdy bubble and realise everybody else might as well be a (hopefully) trained monkey. "Oh, wow, you do stuff with computers, huh? I wish I were as smart as you, but I'm not, and won't even fucking try to be. I like just converting oxygen into CO2 all day."
Battery packs are considered electronics but increasingly they are very unstable packages of chemical energy. If you combine just one or two laptop batteries easy to get on board, short them out or puncture them could blow a nice hole in an aircrafts hull.
And then you get another bit of paper and fold up a replacement plane.
Fuckwit.
We know they infect stuff you send on the mail and that they mess with checked up luggage. The ONLY "safe" way to take electronics around, in or out the US is to keep it ALL in your carry on, and if you lose visual contact with it while they are passing the x-ray, you just dump or sell it without ever connecting it again to your personal stuff. They even let you take overweight carry on if you explain it is very expensive.
Actually they do have a 'tricorder to point at someone and get a reading that says "bomb"' only they don't call it a tricorder they call it an explosive residue detector. I don't care how much electronics you're carrying if it doesn't set off the explosive residue detector then it should go.
And even when they dropped the "hoax device" charge against her, they still could not bring themselves to let her go scot free and admit their mistake in blowing this thing out of proportion, and forced her into an f-ing plea bargain on a charge of "disorderly conduct" which is something that'll stick nicely to anyone, especially when already having been arrested in chains. And to add insult to injury, they made her issue a public apology.
This sort of illegal and criminal conduct by government officials has long been all-too-common in the USA. All the police and the lawyers swear oaths to uphold the US Bill of Rights, but many of them have no interest in acting as those oaths require (in the case of the lawyers), or don't understand what those oaths require (in the case of the police). The lessons of Nuremberg have not sunk in. The idea that one must use common sense and rationality when applying the law -- because the final say on the law is in the hands of the people (courtesy of the 9th Amendment and its unspecified "rights retained by the people", and the 10th Amendment with its "rights reserved to the people) -- should be in the forefront of every police officer's thinking, but it isn't.
It's no different today then it was in 1955 when Rosa Parks was illegally arrested as a result of the Jim Crow laws, a set of illegal laws that existed in violation of the US Bill of Rights. Just as with Star Simpson, the government lawyers compounded the initial criminal conduct on the part of the police by screwing around with the case for months afterward.
As the Bill of Rights is the highest law in the land, it supersedes the police power of the states, including the authority that extends to matters such as disorderly conduct laws, immunity on the part of the police, immunity on the part of prosecutors, or a right to pardon to the same with respect to violations of the Bill of Rights. No rational person can deny that: it is a matter of simple logic, and a necessary consequence of the right to ethical practice of law. Hence, it was criminal kidnapping, not an arrest, when Rosa Parks was taken away in handcuffs for being a black woman on the "wrong" seat in that bus, and it was also criminal kidnapping when Star Simpson was taken away in handcuffs. But just as no police officer or prosecutor that enforced the Jim Crow laws ever did time for those crimes, so too it is unlikely that anything will happen to the government officials criminally involved in the Star Simpson case.
It can't be denied that Star Simpson was pretty clueless, but stupidity on the part of the airport staff, the police and the prosecutors involved, plus the judge, was also a big factor in those events, and it can not be denied that the police and the lawyers had the legal responsibility to use their brains even if other people hadn't.
For a example where the screw-up was totally on the side of the government, look the arrest of John & Martha King. They were (and are) flight school instructors. Their crime: they were flying a plane with the wrong number on it. The pair, flying a plane they had leased, were arrested at gunpoint because the FAA had re-issued the identification number of a different plane stolen 8 years previously, and that number was on the King's plane! Fortunately, in this particular case, things were cleared up quickly, but it shouldn't have ever gotten to the point of drawing guns.
The US legal profession has a huge ethical conflict of interest with respect to the 9th and 10th Amendments, and this, as much as anything, is the reason these kinds of things happen in a supposedly "free" country. The lawyers have an interest is creating artificial complexity in the system to drive the demand for their professional services, and this creates all kinds of confusing and contradictory laws that make it hard for everybody involved to understand the legal limits on the conduct of government officials.