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Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

bbc.com

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Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#171

Post by WalterBright »

closewith wrote: post #164
chipsrafferty wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also you can fill up a water bottle after security. Wouldn't it be fairly easy to make a pen or similar innocuous item out of sodium, and drop it in a bottle of water to make an explosion? My point is that security can never be strict enough to catch someone who's truly motivated and funded, without making it impossible to admit people at a reasonable pace, and the current rules don't really help with that except…

> My point is that security can never be strict enough to catch someone who's truly motivated and funded, without making it impossible to admit people at a reasonable pace, and the current rules don't really help with that except for cutting down on the riff raff terrorists. This is the classic HN developer arrogance and oversimplification, but let's accept this as true for argument's sake. It turns out that "riff ra…

And nobody's going to fall for that "open the cockpit door or I kill the flight attendant" again.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#172

Post by wtcactus »

25 years to do this.

I had the luck of traveling by plane quite a bit before 2001 and I can tell you it was much more pleasurable. Now, the issues now-a-days are not only due to the security circus, it's true. But it does play a major role.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#173

Post by bdavbdav »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #80
wbl wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Won't asking people to take a swig solve a bunch of those issues?

This was done! It created terrible publicity incidents like the TSA forcing women to drink their own breast milk to prove it was safe. And not all liquids subject to this are things a person should swig even if they aren’t explosives. The extremely negative PR rightly stopped this practice.

Is that practice not really common? I’ve seen that done as a matter of course on lots of international airports with baby food / liquid and no one seems to get too fussed about it.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#174

Post by decimalenough »

chipsrafferty wrote: post #124
ascorbic wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might make sense if there weren't shops selling large bottles right after security. Ones full of highly flammable liquids, even.

Like what? Alcohol isn't flammable unless it's over 63%, and you aren't allowed to bring duty free alcohol on the plane.

Duty-free purchases are all hand carried into the aircraft, and "tamper-proof" bags are nothing of the sort.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#175

Post by closewith »

kstenerud wrote: post #148
jandrewrogers wrote: post #71

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…

It's about making people feel safe. We're not rational beings, so what do you do about an irrational fear? You invent a magical thing that protects from that irrational fear. You're orders of magnitude more likely to die in a road accident, but people don't fear that. They fear terrorist attacks far more. You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many…

> You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many of which can't be protected against due to the laws of physics and practicality - short of forcing everyone to travel naked and strapped in like cattle, with no luggage. And even then, what about the extremist who works for the airline?

This is said as an axiom, but we have protected against the motivated terrorist, as shown by the safety record.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#176

Post by School-Cotton »

guerrilla wrote: post #72
nilamo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your link: > In late 2025, the Mint halted the production of pennies for circulation, largely due to cost.

Ah damn, that was buried. They ought to change the rest to past tense then.

Well, they still exist and you can still pay for things with them (though a lot of businesses won’t give you them in change, and just round up to the nearest $0.05).

I guess it’ll be a few years before they’re out of circulation entirely.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#177

Post by justsomehnguy »

mcmoor wrote: post #127
runarberg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don‘t think that is true at all. There have been numerous hijacked planes since 9/11 including two in the USA just this decade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings Plane hijacking has been on its way out anyway after the turmoil of the 1970s. And that has probably more to do with a) the relative political stability of the post cold war period, and b) a general sense that airplane hijacking isn…

There has been way less terrorism in general too. I'm always curious whether the war on terrorism is that effective, or there's major socioeconomic factor that matters most (or there's just less lead in the air).

It's not "less terrorism".

Back in the day you needed to get onto TV and into newspaper headlines to get any attentions besides your neighbours. Today you can do that with a Facebook page and send your ideas worldwide.

And that works the back way too: instead of the news of bombing in some remote country you can't even find on the map you can get a funny cat videos to fill in.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#178

Post by closewith »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #155
hackingonempty wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The motivation behind the liquid limits is that there are extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids. The limits were instituted after discovering a plot to smuggle acetone and hydrogen peroxide (and ice presumably) on board to make acetone peroxide in the lavatory. TATP is not a liquid and it is not stable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_pl...

This illustrates a point though. TATP you could synthesize on a plane is entirely inadequate to bring down a plane. It also requires a bit more than acetone and hydrogen peroxide. Pan Am 103 required around half a kilo of RDX and TATP is very, very far from RDX. The idea of synthesizing a proper high-explosive in an airplane lavatory is generally comical. The chemistry isn’t too complex but you won’t be doing it in a…

> TATP you could synthesize on a plane is entirely inadequate to bring down a plane

Even a small fire can down a plane, especially when distant from diversion airports.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#179

Post by 4gotunameagain »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #71

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…

> Everyone, including the bad guys, knows all of this.

Then satisfy our curiosity and provide more details as to which are the liquid explosives and which common ones are not detected ? ;)

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#180

Post by 7e »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #71

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…

It's obvious. The harder you make it to down or hijack a plane, the fewer downed planes you will see. It didn't have to be perfect to prevent and deter. Some security is better than no security. If you had no security at all you would see planes go down all the time.

And it wouldn't surprise me if some of the detection technology were classified.

It would not be "great" if governments were more open about their detection capabilities; that would cause more terrorism attempts and is one of the stupidest things one could do here.

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