81–90 of 839 posts
This is funny because just a few months ago, I was forced at Heathrow to chug -- not allowed to pour out! -- my entire water bottle that I had filled prior to my flight. The security person watched me do it and added, "bathroom's over there".
I have never understood how this was effective against a determined adversary. An arbitrary limit like 100ml is pointless when there is no limit to the number of times you can pass through the checkpoint.
The big thing going from X-ray (2d) to CT (spin an X-ray machine around and take a ton of pictures to recreate a 3d image) did a lot to let security people see inside of a bag, but the hitch is that if you see a blob of gray is that water, shampoo or something else?
The recent advance that is letting this happen is machines who will send multiple wavelengths of X-ray through the material: since different materials absorb light differently, your machine can distinguish between materials, which lets you be more sure that that 2litre is (mostly) water, and then they can discriminate
Famously Steve Jobs had a story about shaving time off of boot-up and equating it to saving lives on the concept of people sitting their waiting for the computer to boot up just lost that much of their lives. [1] I actually do believe there is value in thinking this way and it is one of my biggest arguments against TSA. Everything has a cost, including 'security' and 'safety'. If you look at the very real human toll,…
You also need context to appropriately interpret what you see.
This just adds confusion as to the purpose of all this. The motivation behind the liquid limits is that there are extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids. Average people have never heard of them because they aren’t in popular lore. There has never been an industrial or military use, solids are simpler. Nonetheless, these explosives are easily accessible to a knowledgeable chemist like me. The…
This just adds confusion as to the purpose of all this. The motivation behind the liquid limits is that there are extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids. Average people have never heard of them because they aren’t in popular lore. There has never been an industrial or military use, solids are simpler. Nonetheless, these explosives are easily accessible to a knowledgeable chemist like me. The…
I wonder if the improvements can detect trigger mechanisms better rather than testing the liquid itself.
This just adds confusion as to the purpose of all this. The motivation behind the liquid limits is that there are extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids. Average people have never heard of them because they aren’t in popular lore. There has never been an industrial or military use, solids are simpler. Nonetheless, these explosives are easily accessible to a knowledgeable chemist like me. The…
TSA Chief Out After Agents Fail 95 Percent of Airport Breach Tests
"In one case, an alarm sounded, but even during a pat-down, the screening officer failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to an undercover agent's back. In all, so-called "Red Teams" of Homeland Security agents posing as passengers were able get weapons past TSA agents in 67 out of 70 tests — a 95 percent failure rate, according to agency officials."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think an MRI probably takes longer than the TSA scan so walk-through MRIs wouldn’t be practical.
There are an order of magnitude less MRI scans daily than US flight passengers, however, at 1/30th the frequency. Granted, I imagine an MRI scan still takes longer than 30 airport scans. Interestingly the price of the body scanners and a typical MRI are in the same ballpark, from my experience and what I could glean online.
I have never understood how this was effective against a determined adversary. An arbitrary limit like 100ml is pointless when there is no limit to the number of times you can pass through the checkpoint.
It's also hilarious that the limit is the very metric 100ml, and not some even number of freedom units like 3 or 4 fluid ounces, like Jesus, George Washington, and bald eagles would have wanted.
How many man hours and how much money have we wasted over security theater at airports? Has it been a worthwhile trade off?
No successful terrorist attacks on planes going to/from western countries after 9/11/2001, that's a pretty good record. Maybe we can't prove that the security theater was responsible for that, but still, the only planes that were bombed after 9/11/2001 were inside Russia or going from Egypt to Russia.