US To Ban Laptops in All Cabins of Flights From Europe (thedailybeast.com)

An anonymous reader shares an article: The Department of Homeland Security will ban laptops in the cabins of all flights from Europe to the United States, European security officials told The Daily Beast. An official announcement is expected Thursday. Initially a ban on laptops and tablets was applied only to U.S.-bound flights from 10 airports in North Africa and the Middle East. The ban was based on U.S. fears that terrorists have found a way to convert laptops into bombs capable of bringing down an airplane. It is unclear if the European ban will also apply to tablets. DHS said in a statement to The Daily Beast: "No final decisions have been made on expanding the restriction on large electronic devices in aircraft cabins; however, it is under consideration. DHS continues to evaluate the threat environment and will make changes when necessary to keep air travelers safe."

Comments

More reasons never to fly

[Austerity Empowers]

There are plenty of reasons not to fly, this is the second best one yet (being beaten by the airline for a ticket you paid good money for is #1, not sure how that will be topped).

Re: More reasons never to fly

[Miamicanes]

Transatlantic cruises have *incredibly* bad internet connectivity. As in, 19.2kbps when it works... and mostly, it doesn't.

Caribbean cruises have fast internet because the Bahamas only has a few TV stations, but the same ~900MHz of UHF spectrum as the US, and cruise ships can have good antennas & high-power radios (unlike cell phones) to communicate with a LTE or WiMax site 40-80 miles away (few caribbean cruise routes are ever more than 100 miles from an island). There's also a huge market for Caribbean-cruise internet service, so the infrastructure got built. In contrast, the North Atlantic has a lot less cruise-ship traffic to pay for it, and sticking LTE towers in a glacier field in Greenland is several orders of magnitude harder than doing it on a caribbean island.

There's satellite too, but for Caribbean cruises, the *really* fast connectivity is terrestrial.

How much longer until...

[mishehu]

We're all made to board nude and chained to our seats and made to row across the ocean? As it is, I'm just waiting for them to announce "credible" evidence that ISIS has converted baby formula into a bomb capable of bringing down an airliner...

Re:How much longer until...

[ilsaloving]

Oh please, don't be so hyperbolic. Intravenous sedatives would work just fine without the additional weight all those chains would require. As an added bonus, the airlines would save a fortune, not needing to cook and carry all those meals and drinks. And they wouldn't have to deal with unruly and ungrateful passengers that demand to sit in the seats they paid for.

All they'd have to do is having the plane crew walk around now and then, poking the passengers with sticks.

God Emperor of Dune

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

"Have you not considered how much easier it is to control a walking population?"

So...

[__aaclcg7560]

Is there actionable intelligence to back up this ban or is this an attempt to whitewash the racist origins of the original anti-Muslim ban by including Europe?

Really?

[Areyoukiddingme]

Is DHS really this easy to manipulate? And are they really this stupid? If a laptop shell packed with explosives is enough to "bring down an airplane" (and with the right explosive, it certainly is)(but it would have to be packed with explosive, in which case what's all that swabbing and x-raying of passengers for if it couldn't detect that modification?), how does having it in the cargo hold help? It still makes a giant hole in the fuselage and down goes the plane.

I guess my real question is, are people stupid enough to be convinced by this security theater? And then I realize P.T. Barnum was right: you can't go broke overestimating people's stupidity.

Re:Really?

[bluefoxlucid]

Congressmen are basically stupid, scared children. They've got a surprising amount of shit to sift through, no bandwidth, and sheer impulse to run on; and they have to weigh in as experts on every issue, regardless of timeline or personal understanding. When national security, Internet crimes, or child pornography come up, they can't even understand what's possible and what's just nutty; they see the maximum threat, and they respond by screaming and flailing.

One day, I want to get myself voted into the House largely so I can respond to any topic that's not central to my interests with blunt detachment and input that's given on the stated condition that my understanding of the topic is limited and my interest is largely in bothering people with questions nobody's thought to ask. For most of it, I can cite firm attention to economics and risk as a primary reason to not take action for trivial things that might be real and scary, but also unlikely to happen with any frequency or to any great severity.

Re:Really?

[mellon]

The theory is that if you press the laptop up against the fuselage in the passenger cabin, you can bust a big enough hole to bring the airplane down; if it's in the hold, there's no opportunity to do that.

Re: Really?

[Matt.Battey]

I think you're right about being scared children and seeing the maximum threat.

But, I think you give them too much credit. The only threat they are scared of is being voted out of office. No one ever got voted out of office for protecting someone's safety, but the first time you pass legislation that protects liberty, and some one gets a skinned knee, well the you're outa there buddy.

Even the personal liberty screamers in Congress never get any bills passed to ensure privacy and liberty. To much chagrin, it takes an action by a judge appointed for life (personal survival always trumps the greater good).

Re:Really?

[Gr8Apes]

The theory is that if you press the laptop up against the fuselage in the passenger cabin, you can bust a big enough hole to bring the airplane down; if it's in the hold, there's no opportunity to do that.

So you're stating that all that scanning, "nude" photographing and feeling up crap that makes you arrive at the airport 2 hours early is completely ineffective?

Re:Really?

[rahvin112]

It doesn't need to be full, it just needs enough explosives that if pressed against the hull and detonated that it would rip a hole in the fuselage. The information I saw said that they had figured out how to cut a chunk of the battery out and fill it full of some explosive that's been shaped into a shaped charge, set one of the keys or switchs to detonate it.

The laptop would turn on a function like normal and would explode with enough force to breach the fuselage if pressed against the wall before being detonated. This arrangement was viewed to be virtually undetectable without disassembling the laptop. Experts that had reviewed the plans they recovered believed this was not only possible but that the groups in question were actively building these bombs. The crucial weakness is that the bomb wouldn't be strong enough to breach the fuselage if it wasn't pressed against the wall, so all you need to do is ban laptops from the passenger compartment to make the bomb worthless.

Re:Really?

[Vadim Makarov]

Could you please include a reference to a public source of this information?

Re:Really?

[wvmarle]

A sadder part of this security theatre: a few weeks ago when boarding a flight from Taiwan my father had to hand in the scissors of his first aid kit, which happened to be in his hand luggage. Short (about 5 cm blades) with round tips. Apparently a dangerous weapon.

It was sad to see how many much more dangerous weapons were sold after security.

First I noticed make-up kits, with glass mirrors. Makes for nice sharp shards.

Second chopsticks. Combined with a piece of sandpaper like those paper nail buffing boards it can make for a nice piercing weapon.

Then I realised they also sell big glass bottles, usually with some alcoholic substances in it. Break the bottom off of them, and they become pretty nasty weapons - popular in bar fights as well.

And finally we got nice metal cutlery on the flights. Even those knives (and the pointy forks!) looked more dangerous to me than those scissors. Or a bottle of water, for that matter.

I'm sure there are a lot more of these "innocent" items for sale, that can be turned into weapons in the blink of an eye. I just haven't thought about it really, I just looked around a bit while wondering why he had to hand in those scissors. A dedicated criminal would for sure be able to find many other options.

So why again aren't we allowed to bring small scissors? Security theatre optima forma!

Re:Could be more sinister

[qbast]

It is not uncommon for TSA agents to help themselves to valuables from checked luggage.

Re:Sigh. As a US academic this is terrible

[Hizonner]

Move the conferences. The US is no longer a viable venue.

Completely untenable

[kschendel]

If this is true, I'm horrified that the airlines would put up with having all those lithium batteries in uncontrolled luggage in the cargo hold. If it were my airline I'd refuse the fly the routes. I certainly won't get on a plane full of cargo hold batteries. I'm equally horrified that any business would put up with the loss of time and potential loss of assets due to theft, never mind the potential loss of employees if a cargo fire brings down a plane.

This will be a huge boon to Canadian air travel. If this astounding idiocy is enacted, my Europe travel will all be going through Toronto, assuming that it occurs at all.

Actually, many business travelers will like this

[Solandri]

Back in the day, flying was one of the few times the traveling businessman got to him(her)self. No computer to work on, no phone calls to make or receive. Then came laptops making it possible to do work on the plane, then in-flight phone calls, and now wireless Internet on flights.

Banning laptops would mean that the business traveler once again legitimately can't get any work done while flying, and has a good reason not to be reachable for the 8-10 hours of the flight (no computer = no real reason to pay for in-flight wifi). Nothing to do but take some time off work, kick back, relax, and catch a movie or two.

Re:Sigh. As a US academic this is terrible

[Zocalo]

Unfortunately that doesn't really help. The problem then becomes one of how conference attendees from the US bring their laptops with them to overseas venues as, for better or worse, the US currently has a lot of people that are in demand at or need to attend global academic/industry/scientific conferences. The most likely outcome of this is that interaction between US delegates and those of other nations will decline - both through US delegates being unwilling to travel overseas or overseas delegates being unwilling to travel to the US. That, in turn, has a fairly obvious eventual net result that an increasingly isolated US will eventually start to lose out on the benefits that interaction brings.