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Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

bbc.com

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Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#221

Post by fooker »

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…

These liquids show up as slightly different colors in the new CT scan machines and this can finally be reliably detected by software.

This is also why a bunch of airports no longer ask you to take electronics out of your bags.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#222

Post by sgjohnson »

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 there have been foiled attempts.

have there?

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#223

Post by bawolff »

bradleybuda wrote: post #113
chihuahua wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Last I checked, in the US there has not been a single instance of the TSA detecting and preventing a terror attack in its 25 year history. And presumably they wouldn’t be shy about telling us if they had.

I assume they have some deterent value.

You can tell because some of the failed bombings (like the shoe bomber) failed because their plans were stupid to get around security, and if security wasn't there they would probably have used a normal bomb and succeeded

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#224

Post by hdgvhicv »

lmm wrote: post #95
PcChip wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did they force you to do that?

Anything a border official says is implicitly backed with the threat of, at a minimum, detention without trial and without basic humane treatment like access to drinking water. Heathrow has well publicised cases (and is not unusual in this).

I doubt very much immigration told you to drink a water. Hell lost of the time you don’t even talk to them as they’re e-gates and it’s remote.

Security might have done, this is nothing to do with the border farce.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#225

Post by reisse »

chihuahua wrote: post #54
Fervicus wrote: post #35

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.

This is somewhat false? There were four other bombings, two in western countries (specifically EU->US flights). None of these two were successful in terms of "the plane was downed", but bombs were carried on a plane and exploded, and security didn't stop that.

22 December 2001, American Airlines Flight 63 7 May 2002, China Northern Flight 6136 25 December 2009, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 2 February 2016, Daallo Airlines Flight 159

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#226

Post by kleiba »

grepfru_it wrote: post #208
JasonADrury wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I routinely conceal large bottles of liquids on my person while going through airport security. I've probably gone through airport security in various places with a 1.5L bottle of water more than a hundred times now. Haven't been caught once, although of course the US-style scanners could presumably defeat this. Same with hot sauces, perfume and the occasional bottles of wine. I really don't like to travel with a che…

A plastic water bottle isn’t triggering a tsa pre check metal detector. I’m totally doing this next trip

I've never done that yet I've never had any trouble finding water past security or even on a plane?!

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#227

Post by palata »

dingaling wrote: post #199
kstenerud wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> It's about making people feel safe. I don't think that's a common perception of airport security. Few people take reassurance from it, most consider it a burden and hindrance that could stop them getting their flight if they don't perform the correct steps as instructed. The lifting of this restriction is an example, the overwhelming response is "oh thank goodness, now I don't have to pay for overpriced water" and…

I disagree. It is a burden and hindrance, but I'm pretty sure that if you just removed all the checks and let people board like in a bus, there would be complaints.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#228

Post by bawolff »

runarberg wrote: post #110
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No hijacked planes, no terror attacks?

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…

> a) the relative political stability of the post cold war period

Most plane hijackings/bombings were middle east related (e.g. linked to one of Palestinian liberation, al-qaeda, or isis)

Not sure i'd call that a stable region of the world, especially now. Perhaps though the people involved just realized it was an ineffective strategy.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#229

Post by victorbjorklund »

bradleybuda wrote: post #113
chihuahua wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Last I checked, in the US there has not been a single instance of the TSA detecting and preventing a terror attack in its 25 year history. And presumably they wouldn’t be shy about telling us if they had.

I have no idea if it has worked or not but you got to count deterrence too. If you have a lock and alarm in your house it might deter someone from even trying to break in. Of course you could never know if the deterrence worked (only attempts would be noticeable)

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#230

Post by askl »

lostlogin wrote: post #191
edm0nd wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. It's all security theater. 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…

> the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. I thought that was the US military?

I thought that was the US police force?
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