Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

schneier.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 130 posts

Re: Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

#111

Post by unclefishbits »

bogomipz wrote: post #69
tuna-piano wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's true. Turns out blue shirts can be worn by just about anybody. Here's a story from last summer about the private security at Kansas City Airport: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article79795177.html

Oh interesting. I am curious is the experience of the privatized screening any better? Or is the amount of humiliation, infantilizing and browbeating of regular honest people about the same as the non-privatized TSA? There was big uproar about privatizing the TSA about a year ago when the time spent in lines was growing even more excessive. That narrative about privatizing seemed to go dark. Is the Kansas City Airpor…

Portland are TSA. SF is subcontracted. In my experience on the west coast, the real TSA blow the pants off the subcontracted ones. Portland is AAAAAaaamazing

Re: Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

#112

Post by [deleted] »

pfooti wrote: post #44
philipkglass wrote: post #21

My guess, already voiced by "Ron" on Schneier's blog: they're looking for nitrocellulose. Nitrated paper is not obviously different in appearance from ordinary paper. Sheets of nitrocellulose have negligible vapor pressure and little dust so they could be missed by other means like the "puffer" detectors. If they're putting these materials through a separate machine my guess would be another detector based on optical…

They're not putting them through a different detector, though. They take out the books and all papers the passenger has, put them in one of the normal trays, and run the trays through the xray. My wife traveled out of Kansas City last weekend and was subject to this. She's a teacher, and traveled with grading, so they took out tests, her books, everything that was paper. The line agent said they were worried about pa…

[deleted]

Re: Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

#113

Post by jmcdiesel »

sandworm101 wrote: post #101
fvold wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In place of"? It's trivial to cause a lithium-ion battery battery to explode if you know how. Don't tell TSA, though, or you're going to have a very boring flight.

Burn yes. Pop yes, but not the sort of explosion necessary to damage an aircraft. That guy on youtube making "grenades" from batteries ... they are more firecracker than weapon. You could do more damage with a bottle of vodka and a match.

Anyone who's flown RC aircraft in the past decade knows all too well about this..

Spectacular light show, a good burn... yeah. Thats about it though... It wouldn't be worth a terrorists time... it would just be a light show and a smoke show, could start a fire, which would be bad, but honestly fires get suppressed pretty quick on modern airliners as long as they aren't started in the cargo area and ember for a while... in the end, any attack carried out with a LiPo/LiIon would just be an inconvenience...

Re: Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

#114

Post by jmcdiesel »

rosalinekarr wrote: post #23

There seem to be a lot of people theorizing that it could be something about the paper itself that they're looking for, i.e. flash paper, paper circuits or physical one-time encryption pads, but what if it's not about the paper at all? Maybe, the TSA is simply trying to discourage passengers from traveling with or using paper, thereby encouraging people to store their information digitally on phones and laptops where…

It's not nearly so complex and conspiracy based...

They simply have found issue with dense objects (like books, stacks of paper) hinder the xray imaging they use in the scanners... thats all. Nothing special here...

Im sure over some bad-guy communication network it was mentioned to attempt to get contraband on a plane by masking its location in luggage under some seriously thick books or something...

Re: Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

#115

Post by 100ideas »

philipkglass wrote: post #45
pfooti wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not putting them through a different detector, though. They take out the books and all papers the passenger has, put them in one of the normal trays, and run the trays through the xray. My wife traveled out of Kansas City last weekend and was subject to this. She's a teacher, and traveled with grading, so they took out tests, her books, everything that was paper. The line agent said they were worried about pa…

Trying to de-clutter the images by separating paper would fit the observed procedure too. It seems a little odd that it would start only now. Maybe screener testing recently showed better performance when paper is separated out.

Stacks of paper may have densities similar enough to certain restricted liquids and polymers that distinguishing one from the other via x-ray is difficult.

i.e. plastic explosive sheets sharing space in a file folder, or bound with surrounding paper into what looks like a legitimate book.

Re: Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

#116

Post by sandworm101 »

jmcdiesel wrote: post #113
sandworm101 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Burn yes. Pop yes, but not the sort of explosion necessary to damage an aircraft. That guy on youtube making "grenades" from batteries ... they are more firecracker than weapon. You could do more damage with a bottle of vodka and a match.

Anyone who's flown RC aircraft in the past decade knows all too well about this.. Spectacular light show, a good burn... yeah. Thats about it though... It wouldn't be worth a terrorists time... it would just be a light show and a smoke show, could start a fire, which would be bad, but honestly fires get suppressed pretty quick on modern airliners as long as they aren't started in the cargo area and ember for a while.…

The scenario that keeps some pilots up at night is unsecured human cargo in a panic. A medium fire won't ignite the plane but it will fill the cabin with fumes. Those drop-down oxygen masks are useless in such scenarios. Get enough people to panic, to run fore or aft, and one could create a crush event or even destabilize the aircraft.

Re: Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

#117

Post by chrismeller »

wwwigham wrote: post #87

Given that I've had this happen to me at a checkpoint (in Seattle) and had it explained to me, I think I have a reasonable potential answer: Stacked paper produces false positives in the scanning machines which can be flagged as suspicious substances. By separating the paper into a separate bin, it can be more quickly inspected by human eyes and the flag cleared, allowing the security line to be cleared more quickly.

Perhaps a bit cynical, but that is exactly the reason I would expect from the TSA.

It's not that they're enhancing their screening of anything in particular, they're just helping you get through more quickly... sureeeee.

Re: Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

#118

Post by Iv »

pfooti wrote: post #44
philipkglass wrote: post #21

My guess, already voiced by "Ron" on Schneier's blog: they're looking for nitrocellulose. Nitrated paper is not obviously different in appearance from ordinary paper. Sheets of nitrocellulose have negligible vapor pressure and little dust so they could be missed by other means like the "puffer" detectors. If they're putting these materials through a separate machine my guess would be another detector based on optical…

They're not putting them through a different detector, though. They take out the books and all papers the passenger has, put them in one of the normal trays, and run the trays through the xray. My wife traveled out of Kansas City last weekend and was subject to this. She's a teacher, and traveled with grading, so they took out tests, her books, everything that was paper. The line agent said they were worried about pa…

They say it is a test program. Maybe they are not testing if it is effective but rather how much it slows down the screening?

Re: Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

#119

Post by jmcdiesel »

sandworm101 wrote: post #116
jmcdiesel wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who's flown RC aircraft in the past decade knows all too well about this.. Spectacular light show, a good burn... yeah. Thats about it though... It wouldn't be worth a terrorists time... it would just be a light show and a smoke show, could start a fire, which would be bad, but honestly fires get suppressed pretty quick on modern airliners as long as they aren't started in the cargo area and ember for a while.…

The scenario that keeps some pilots up at night is unsecured human cargo in a panic. A medium fire won't ignite the plane but it will fill the cabin with fumes. Those drop-down oxygen masks are useless in such scenarios. Get enough people to panic, to run fore or aft, and one could create a crush event or even destabilize the aircraft.

From storeis though, panicked passengers in flight tend to stay calm... there is a sense of helplessness and acceptance that takes over pretty quick when you realize there isnt anything you can do

Re: Why Is the TSA Scanning Paper?

#120

Post by tjalfi »

swiley wrote: post #8
emiliobumachar wrote: post #3

Okay, tin foil hat time. Maybe they have new machines that can see the print through the paper, and actually scan and store the contents of all these papers in a timely fashion?

There was an MIT reasearcher a while ago (it may have been posted here) using THz wave radar to do this. I think it's the same band (ish) the body scanners use.

Were you thinking of Terahertz time-gated spectral imaging for content extraction through layered structures[0]?

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12665

Post reply on HN