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Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

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Re: Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

#451

Post by mgbmtl »

cat199 wrote: post #395
mgbmtl wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from Canada, that guy was being a total dick, very aggressive, mansplaining the agent, which isn't surprising that it would trigger the customs agent. He would have had the same response from an agent at the border in Canada. Ex: "what shops are you planning to go to". It's fine to answer "I don't know yet". They're just testing behaviour. If you start being defensive or aggressive, pretend to know their j…

> "I completely got away with it" No, because you didn't do anything wrong. Border crossing is not a crime, last I checked, despite the best efforts of some to make it feel that way.

Agreed, I was being bitter/sarcastic. I meant to say that they incorrectly profiled the other person who was stopped.

Re: Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

#452

Post by saganus »

DrJokepu wrote: post #436
saganus wrote: post #430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is definitely very scary and I didn't mean to say that I would try to outsmart them because as you say, they do this for a living and I'm not a professional liar/spy. However I think my case still applies in the sense that I would expect a lot of people to also buy a burner phone for a vacation trip just as a way to avoid loss in the event of a robbery, instead of as a way to try to outsmart border agents, so I…

They actually release these numbers: https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/documents/CBP_DHS_20... Out of the 375 million passengers processed in FY 2014, 34 million was referred to secondary inspection and about 223,000 was found inadmissible. Keep in mind that these numbers also include US citizens who cannot be found inadmissible, but could be referred to secondary inspection for other reasons.

Interesting!

So ~10% get secondary inspection, and of those ~0.65% where found inadmissible (non-citizen as you point out).

Not sure how to feel about it. On the one hand 10% sounds like "not so bad" in that it's actually a minority getting secondary inspections.

On the other hand... if I'm waiting for border agents to let me through and 1 in 10 will get secondary inspections, which by the looks of it would include access to your accounts and such, it sounds like a terribly high percentage.

Re: Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

#453

Post by RobinDublin »

enraged_camel wrote: post #357
et-al wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an anecdote, I've flown United and Turkish across the Atlantic and it's a world of difference. In 2016 , the United airplane I was in still did not have a seatback screen and they expected all 200+ passengers to connect to the wifi to try to get in-flight entertainment. Of course no one got on. So all of us were left craning our necks trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was on the CRT in the aisle. Meanwhile, Tu…

Yep. Turkish Airlines is the 7th best airline in the world, and the best in Europe, according to Skytrax: http://www.airlinequality.com/news/2016-world-airline-awards...

In last 2 years Turkish Airlines had 3 serious accidents. In 2015 they have seriously damaged their plane twice during landing in Kathmandu and Istanbul. In 2017 they lost plane that they have been operating which killed all 4 crew members and at least 34 people on the ground when it crashed in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.[1]

Also their primary hub Istanbul Ataturk Airport (IST) was attacked in 2016, which left 45 people killed and more than 230 people injured.[2]

I am not sure what criteria they use to issue this award, but they do not look safe enough to me to be on the 7th best position in the world.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines#Incidents_and... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Atat%C3%BCrk_Airport_atta...

Re: Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

#454

Post by mgbmtl »

emanreus wrote: post #423
mgbmtl wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone from Canada, that guy was being a total dick, very aggressive, mansplaining the agent, which isn't surprising that it would trigger the customs agent. He would have had the same response from an agent at the border in Canada. Ex: "what shops are you planning to go to". It's fine to answer "I don't know yet". They're just testing behaviour. If you start being defensive or aggressive, pretend to know their j…

On second thought, the cynic in me is saying you're just laying the groundwork for your next encounter with customs agents in case you have to hand over your online accounts :)

I rarely defend customs agents. I'm sure they could flag me just by looking at my public twitter posts, which use my real name. I have already decided to avoid the US anyway.

However, Canada can be just as bad. Bottom line: know the law, be polite/calm, travel light, be honest but keep answers at a minimum. Unfortunately, since I travel often for business, that means I've spent way too much time at social events exchanging about travel tips, rather than actual productive conversation. It's also silly that we're adding barriers instead of removing them. What a waste :(

Re: Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

#455

Post by KirinDave »

bzbarsky wrote: post #383
GuiA wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. And also people not having devices on their person means they can't quickly text friends/family if they get detained/mistreated/etc. It seems like we're getting closer and closer to being in a situation where people who can should avoid going to the US at all, and make their reasoning known. Ie, refuse to give talks, attend conferences, etc. in the US.

Cell phones are excluded from the ban, according to this article. That makes it highly unlikely that prevention of ability to text is the goal. I know very few people who text on their tablet, laptop, or camera.

Cell phones are most likely excluded because they're so obnoxiously hard to compromise compared to laptops. Cell phones, you need per-hardware exploits and the vendors patch aggressively.

When was the last time your laptop's USB controllers had a firmware upgrade for security hardening?

Re: Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

#456

Post by snovv_crash »

colordrops wrote: post #433
snovv_crash wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also used in diamond mines. In fact, that's what the LODOX (low dosage x-ray) system was first invented for.

To find diamonds or to scan workers for smuggled diamonds?

Scanning the workers. A full body scan is low enough dosage that it is safe to be scanned every ~3 days (IIRC), so 30% of workers would be randomly selected for a whole body scan each day when they leave the mines.

Since then it has been repurposed for extreme cases like unconscious car crash victims in order to determine the extent of injuries. Or so I learned in a medical imaging elective.

The technology behind it is really cool! By using temporal separation for the different parts of the image they reduce scattering blur, allowing them to use a much lower dose to get the same image quality.

Re: Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

#457

Post by astrodust »

GuiA wrote: post #425
samirillian wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's the thing about leaving Japan: it's always way more dangerous than staying in Japan. US homicide rate is like 10x higher. I'd bet your "upstanding" friends have layers of reservations about visiting.

Japanese crime rates are underreported, and in reality most likely very similar to northern European countries in term of safety (and many other things, such as birth rate, another oft repeated misconception). Popular culture likes to portray Japan as a weird outlier country- but that's only if you compare it to the US. If you include the aforementioned European countries in the comparison, the US is the weird countr…

Certain crimes are under-reported, but on the whole even accounting for that crime rates are significantly lower for the sorts of petty crime that impact most people.

Re: Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

#458

Post by komali2 »

kens wrote: post #69
komali2 wrote: post #34

I believe the UK tried this once and I remember reading that thefts were skyrocketing as a result. I'm struggling to find a source though, so this is just my poor memory and hearsay right now.

The article itself mentions thefts after the UK did this in 2006.

Oh neat, true. I still wish I could find a source on it :/

Re: Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

#459

Post by dang »

wildmusings wrote: post #362
ocschwar wrote: post #131

What utter bullshit. If they allow phones at all, then the threat cannot be an issue of a passenger sending a command out of one of these. The threat has to be the device itself. Now, a standard issue iPad is no threat, so we're talking about a customized device made to look like on. Except, if terrorists are going to the trouble to do this, they can just as easily put whatever bad thing they want to put into the cas…

That's some strong criticism, especially since you're not even considering that someone already successfully detonated a laptop bomb on a plane. From the CNN article on this new policy: > The official said the move is partly based on intelligence that they believe indicates Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is close to being able to hide explosives with little or no metal content in electronic devices in order to tar…

Would you please not repeat the same thing over and over? This is excessive.

Re: Most Electronics Being Banned on Certain US-Bound Flights

#460

Post by karthikb »

jonesdc wrote: post #352
et-al wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an anecdote, I've flown United and Turkish across the Atlantic and it's a world of difference. In 2016 , the United airplane I was in still did not have a seatback screen and they expected all 200+ passengers to connect to the wifi to try to get in-flight entertainment. Of course no one got on. So all of us were left craning our necks trying to catch a glimpse of whatever was on the CRT in the aisle. Meanwhile, Tu…

I flew United frequently before 2016 to Africa, Europe, and Asia and all the flights had full size screens in economy and economy plus. The handheld streaming is common for domestic flights.

747s are all streaming.
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