In response to Homeland Security Ponders Laptop Ban On All International Flights: Surefire Way to Stop Bombs on Planes reader Brindu sent a pair of interesting links discussing new bombs that airport scanners cannot detect.
Please consider U.S. Believes ISIS’ Bomb-Making Research Includes New Generation of Explosives.
Amid the bombed-out ruins of Mosul University, U.S. officials say they have uncovered evidence that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was developing a new type of bomb that could pass through an airport scanner undetected.
CBS News joined Iraqi Special Forces in Mosul just days after the hard-fought battle to recapture the University in January. It’s long been believed that Mosul University was the center of the militants’ bomb-making projects, using the school’s equipment and labs.
Now, U.S. officials believe that research includes a new generation of more powerful explosives that could be concealed in a computer.
When ISIS overran Mosul in 2014, they also captured the city’s international airport. And with it, all the modern security scanner and screening equipment necessary to test their new bombs.
Professional Pilots Discussion
The Professional Pilots Rumor Network, PPRuNE Website, has a discussion on undetectable bombs.
Dubaian: What’s to stop ISIS putting this clever new ‘undetectable’ stuff in pretty well anything a PAX might take on board. And it’d be easier than replumbing a laptop.
Peekay4: A working explosive is composed of several elements. These elements can be disguised within a laptop, large tablet, etc. Put them into a box of chocolates or a can of Pringles, they would be very easy to detect.
EDLB: What can they detect in checked luggage but not in a carry-on?
Peekay4: Not going into specifics but part of the reason for requiring them in checked luggage is not only for detection but also isolation (containment).
Lomapaseo: Containment from what? If they go boom as baggage the damage is variable as hell based on location. If they go boom in the cabin the damage is predictable based on seat location and/or overhead storage which is specific by PNR (boarding pass). And then there is the fire hazard from a typical LI cheap battery in passenger luggage. In the overhead or cabin, it’s specific in location and ability to assess and contain.
Infrequentflyer789: If they go boom in the cabin the damage is predictable based on exactly where the attacker decides to set it off, which is nothing to do with a boarding pass. A small boom set by a clever attacker in the right place is going to be as big a threat as a large boom placed randomly, and that’s before we get onto stuff like shaped charges and really clever placement.
Edmundronald: This will make Chromebooks and other net-connected empty-shell computers the tool of choice for biz travelers. Rent one or buy a cheap one as soon as you touch down.
RTD1: Rather, this will result in a massive push towards video conferencing/telepresence in lieu of business travel. I’ve been a management/technology consultant flying weekly for 20 years now, and if this ban were extended to all domestic and international flights, I’d likely either find an alternative to in-person meetings or switch careers if it were not feasible. I haven’t checked a bag (save for gate checking carry-ons on puddle jumpers) in years. I keep my timelines from landing to meeting starts pretty tight, and I count on flying time for working. I’m not unique, such a rule would be devastating for business travel.
Pax Britanica: There is always an element of business travel that is not really necessary but its hard line to draw between beneficial and essential. There are also events like conferences where most of the attendees don’t’ actually attend but meet with peers from other companies and do business just because a lot of people from one industry are in the same place. Ie the conference itself isn’t really ‘necessary’ but it’s a good opportunity to meet clients and suppliers without doing separate trips. Video links are usually fine for inside the company work and some external stuff but many cultures like the physical presence bit.
Mickjoebill: What about camera crews and photographers who carry kilos of lumpy electronic gear onboard? It is trivial to provide enough power to activate a camera to make the battery appear unadulterated when the cells have been repacked with something deadly.Unless every item is sniffed, a laptop ban seems half arsed.
ISIS Knows What We Know About Them
The preceding comment by Mickjoebill gets to the heart of the matter. And that was the point of my satirical suggestion on a Surefire Way to Stop Bombs on Planes.
ISIS knows, that we know, that they had been working on laptops. As a result, ISIS will likely shift to an electronic toy or camera equipment (as I suggested in my post).
FAA Traffic by the Numbers
In 2105, the FAA Traffic by Numbers website shows some interesting air traffic statistics.
- There were 8,727,691 commercial flights in 2015.
- There are 7,000 planes in the sky at any given time.
- There are 23,911 flights a day
Convenience vs Safety
Does it make sense to ban all laptops on all flights as they are discussing now?
Banning laptops alone is insufficient. It is impossible to eliminate all airplane risk without banning all flights.
Reader Maxx offered this pertinent thought:
At some point to unravel a knot, you have to start pulling on the other end of the string. Technology chasing technology only goes so far. For all the time spent harassing a new mom about baby formula, we could be using those hours to interview a 20-year-old “quiet” male with no real friends and an extensive Facebook trail to a Pakistani ISP. When are people going to wake up and realize politically correct bull&h!t is FATAL. This is costing our economy enormously.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
in 2105…
If memory serves, the Russian passenger jet that went down in Egypt not long ago was brought down by a bomb disguised as a can of soda. Ban in-flight refreshments?
Ban Muslims.
Ban wrldtrst.
Typical liberal retort. Ban yourself.
Profiling….it works!
I agree. We should ban WRLDTRST……..
…..as soon as it becomes obvious that he is responsible for countless deaths and immeasurable barbarianism and savagery around the world nearly every single day….. YES, ban that S.O.B.!!!
Pardon my ignorance, who are you referring to?
If a bomb could be made small enough and powerful enough to fit in a laptop while doing significant damage, then why not sew a similar bomb into a person? Is this feasible?
If you are going to suicide anyway….
Because it would be detectable. Like the example in the story of a can of Pringles.
Hmm, the bomb threats may have the unintended consequence of reducing air travel by a lot, which will in turn reduce world oil consumption by a lot. Something good may come out of this after all.
Aah, but air travel on whatever whim is a basic human right.
Maxi-Mini: YES! It IS a basic human right! And therefore no one should be denied it.
The govmint should be providing all of this we want or need. Just like Medical care, and Housing, and Groceries, (let’s add a car, too) oh, AND a job that pays alot!
Those are ALL basic Human Rights and we should get them….free.
At some point to unravel a knot, you have to start pulling on the other end of the string. Technology chasing technology only goes so far. For all the time spent harassing a new mom about baby formula, we could be using those hours to interview a 20 year old “quiet” male with no real friends and an extensive Facebook trail to a Pakistani ISP. When are people going to wake up and realize politically correct bull&h!t is FATAL. This is costing our economy enormously.
Well Stated
I think Maxx is largely correct. Our current politically correct security protocols are all about making it look like we are doing something and little about actual security. If we were serious, we would implement protocols like Israel.
Comes down to who you want to offend and how vocal their defenders.
Less controversial to offend a mom or grandmother.
It’s time for the silent majority to get VOCAL.
Force the eye onto the minority in which those of I’ll intent reside.
The problem is that terrorism is mostly domestic. Second generation Muslims with western citizenship. The obstacle to the solution is also domestic: liberalism. The example you would probably like to follow is Japan.
Man, you said it, Maxx 2thousand. My son was about a year old and I had to travel on a plane with him. Hands down, the utter worst travel I ever had with him, and it was all because of the formula I had to take. I’ve never flown again since then (that’s been about 9 years now). It’s ridiculous the hoops ya gotta jump through, all in the name of attempting to save on the travel time, which you don’t when you consider the wait times for everything. And I doubt the security measures are really all they tout them to be either.
I’ll make the extra effort to plan, map out a route, and travel via car, train, or stick close to home, thank you very much.
blowback happens
@vooch Blowback is nonsense.
Another option would be to withdraw all troops & equipment and spies out of the Middle East……
But I guess that would hurt profits of defense companies.
You have the thread of the answer in your hands. Ban all international flights.
isis is trained by the cia and mossad, why not ask them to stop training Amerikas enemy. Then again Amerikas so-called govt. of the free wouldn’t have an excuse to take away our rights and the merchants of death to make more $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
It’s like selling more arms to saudis, more arms to Ukraine, to afrika…bottom line stop selling arms…
Stop the wars….lets try prosperity through peace.
How Uncle Sam Seeded Global Jihad & Cultivates It to This Day
“For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind” — Hosea 8:7
It may be surprising to hear, but it is a plain historical fact that modern international jihad originated as an instrument of US foreign policy. The “great menace of our era” was built up by the CIA to wage a proxy war against the Soviets.
http://www.dansanchez.me/feed/they-sow-the-cyclone-we-reap-the-blowback
The U.S. was by no means the only one to pursue such a strategy. Echoing the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, Israel in fact supported Hamas — now its sworn arch-enemy — when the Islamist group was first forming in the 1980s. Israel backed Hamas’ militant founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in order to undermine the secular socialist resistance of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,”
The kinds of people who blame Islam and Muslims for the spread of extremism are the kinds of people who have utmost faith in Western empire.
Want to stop terrorism? Ron Paul had it right: get out of Muslim countries. Stop bombing. Stop installing dictators. Stop stealing. Stop intervening. Stop killing.
If the TSA were to start focusing on finding extremists, and stop harassing normal travelers — then this discussion might be relevant.
There is no detection system of any kind that can overcome the corruption and stupidity of the agents using it. As long as the TSA culture remains anti-US civilian, they will continue to have problems.
Every single terrorism incident that has been thwarted since 9/11 was thwarted by civilian passengers keeping their wits about them. Every single one. The TSA has stopped nothing, all they have done is harass business travlers, humiliated old folks with colestomy bags, and disabled kids in wheelchairs.
The TSA is a multi-billion dollar failure, and throwing more technology at it will not fix the problem
I have the solution.
Start serving mideastern cuisine on all US flights (foreign and domestic) and show non-stop Omar Sharif movies in-flight.
They’ll be so busy eating and watching the movies they’ll forget about blowing up the plane.
Yawn, more stupid bullshit from Mish. If you are a 20-something male from Pakistan who flys often, you have probably been singled out for ‘enhanced searches’ more often than the single mom flying with baby bottles.
The problem with this tired old ‘profiling is the solution’ is:
a. If the bomb is really undetectable in the laptop then the 20-something Pakistini male is probably going to pass through even the enhanced search.
b. If I were ISIS, I would then simply recruit a mom with a baby who will easily slip extra bombs thru because you decided it’s silly to harass a mom with a cute baby. Sure its easier to recruit 20-something males but it isn’t impossible (but then we already had women ISIS terrorists). More importantly, ISIS only needs to recruit one to walk thru the door you would open.
I wouldn’t worry about that 25 yr old Pakistani. He’s only 40% of the terror. The other 60% are from Timothy McVay types…..yeah…..riiiiiiiight…!
I don’t understand. Worry 2x as much about the 25 yr old Pakistani if you wish. Why does that magically make it impossible for ISIS to send a mom onto a flight with a bomb? People like you pretend that by just adopting an anti-PC stance that actually means you know what you’re talking about. You are remarkably ignorant of even those you pretend to cite as role models.
Israel, for example, profiled based on their experience. Suicide bombers were males, until female suicide bombers started showing up. If your aiming for 100% prevention then you cannot avoid the fact that a dynamic enemy will shift tactics based on your own tactics.
Yeah – I see where all the El AL Israeli planes have been getting blown up because the islamists changed from men to women……….do you see them all…?
I personally don’t give a shit if ANY Pakistani ever gets to fly into the US. I DO give a shit if ANY US airplane gets blown up by a Pakistani. Now, THAT said, we have to be reasonable – and I have nothing against ANY Pakistani (as an example) that doesn’t want to kill us. I have everything against one who hates us. They do not belong here – any more than if I went to Pakistan and started blowing up THEIR country because I don’t like them…..
How long before White Christians would be banned from Pakistan if the roles were reversed….? And don’t tell me about ‘our Constitution” allowing bad guys to come do what they want…and their ‘rights’ and other BS. JOB ONE of every part of our govmint is to Protect our Country. We’re not doing that…..
El Al, though, does fly planes with Muslims on board. If you think being a White Christian means you can fly El Al over and over and never get ‘enhanced checking’ then you again don’t know what you are talking about. El Al, rather than demonstrating the value of profiling actually demonstrates its limits.
“And don’t tell me about ‘our Constitution” allowing bad guys to come do what they w”
If you really care about protecting the US then you’d start by having real conversations about actual facts. rather than ones with people that exist only in your imagination.
FACTS? The Facts are on that chart you can’t read – and the Facts are that WHATEVER EL AL is doing WORKS. No hype, no liberal BS, no citing white Christian home-grown idiots from 20 years ago….just the reality of the world we live in.
Pull your head out – and look around. You have blinders of some sorts on…are you a liberal that believes everyone in the world has our Constitutional rights? Are you an islamist by trade or choice? Are you a OneWorld Diversity First person who cannot see the difference in our cultures from other who throw gays off rooftops and honor-kill little girls who get raped by some old goat-fu@kers? Are you an Apologist for all that? Do you believe that the original prophet of that religion was a pedophile who savagely killed everyone in his way – Can you see the difference between that guy and Jesus, Budda, Ghandi, Zoaster, B’Hai Alah, and others? What DO you believe?
Let’s not get distracted by Texas’s side thread here.
The problem here is between fishing and eradication. In fishing you just want to catch some fish, so you ‘profile’. Go where you expect to find most of the fish and drop your line. In eradication your goal is to eliminate everything.
It is easy to measure and reward good fishing. Someone who catches a lot of fish is good, better than someone who catches fewer. Measuring eradication is trickier. A guy tells you he eliminated all the fish from the lake. His proof? He dropped a line and got no fish.
In most law enforcement the emphasis is on fishing. A cop sits on the highway waiting to catch speeders. How is he evaluated? His boss assumes there will always be someone speeding so if he produces tickets, he is doing well, if not then he isn’t.
But a local sheriff says he has made it so there are no serial killers in his local parish. What does that mean? How do we know there isn’t a serial killer secretly hiding bodies. Maybe the sheriff has some way to keep his jurisdiction killer free…or maybe he is just lucky and wants us to give him a bonus on the assumption he must have done something.
How do we know the ‘profiling’ works? Because no plane blows up? Maybe, or maybe it did nothing. The incentive then is for profilers to do more and more on the assumption that prevents bombings. Hence TSA officials hassle the mom with her baby bottles and pat down 8 yr old kids. Mish’s solution, just more profiling which means TSA officials spend more and more time scanning the Facebook profiles of Pakistani fliers pretending that somehow is ‘smarter’ than checking the mom. In reality it says we’ll spend $100M to see if anyone flying clicked ‘like on a Osama bin Laden photo while an actual terrorist will simply dodge the whole system by populating their page with kitten photos and telling the world they love Taylor Swift.
OK boonton, you gave us your opinion of what will not work.
You forgot to give us your opinion of what WILL work; how to stop the terrorists before they commit inhuman crimes.
You essentially create a sterile environment. Screen everyone and everything that gets on board the plane to keep bombs off. Make the cockpit secure so strong arm tactics prevent a hijacking once the plane is in flight. You make it impossible to take down a plane just as we’ve essentially set a standard that we’ll have zero tolerance for plane crashes in general.
And outside planes you have to demonstrate that you don’t care. When a terrorist attack happens you adopt a stance of “this is sad, let’s say our ‘sorry for your loss’ to the victims and then make it clear we are moving on”. What you absolutely DO NOT do is what Trump did during the election, make an issue of lone wolf attacks as if they mean anything. By acting like the world is over if a single person manages to kill someone after reading ISIS tweets, you essentially are saying you’ll let ISIS win by just pulling off a single attack no matter how small.
Consider BillyBob’s statement about people getting slashed in NYC subways almost every day. Essentially ‘ho hum this sort of thing happens’. What you need to do is make it clear you will not give terrorists a psychological victory if they pull off an attack.
This then puts the terrorists in the position of having to pull off a larger and more sophisticated attack in order to score a perceived ‘win’. The larger the attack the more opportunity to pick it up and stop it beforehand. But the reality is outside environments we can highly control like getting on airplanes, small scale single person attacks will not be preventable. If you cannot use ‘profiling’ to stop muggings, rapes, car jackings you will also not be able to use it to stop terrorism.
“Consider BillyBob’s statement about people getting slashed in NYC subways almost every day. Essentially ‘ho hum this sort of thing happens’. What you need to do is make it clear you will not give terrorists a psychological victory if they pull off an attack.”
I might be wrong but haven’t multiple people been killed in our domestic terror attacks? How can you compare this to the “ho hum” slashing of a commuter on the subway?
During WWII England could loose as many people in a week as we did in 9/11 and they called it a good week. If you think we are at war with terrorism then you should act like it’s a war. If you think anything other than zero causalities means the war is lost then you are already defeated.
Alternately, maybe the CIA could just stop funding ISIS.
Then the threat would go away just as the “White Extremist” threat magically appeared and then vanished during the Clinton Regime.
MISH: Couldn’t agree with you more:
” When are people going to wake up and realize politically correct bull&h!t is FATAL. This is costing our economy enormously.”
PC is a form of insanity. Discrimination means you makes distinctions. All human judgment is based on discriminating, the more subtle, the better the result. The fact that people have decided to call “it” discrimination speaks volumes. The point is not that people should be blind, but that they should not misjudge others on irrelevant attributes.
The solution for safe air travel is to isolate potential bombers. And so personalized air transport, whether by drone or other means, that carries one single flyer, or several family members, but never unrelated folks together. A solitary bomber then flies alone and can kill himself but that is it.
Yup.
It’s basically a special case of the more universal: Stop pretending there is some “we.” That is somehow different from, and opposed to, some equally imaginary “them.”
The only ones benefiting from that sort of imbecilic childishness, are the expendable rabble insisting they are some sort of the leaders of “we.” And that “them” are one of those scary hobgoblins that “we” must bend over for “our” leaders, to be pjotected from.
“Rather, this will result in a massive push towards video conferencing/telepresence in lieu of business travel. I’ve been a management/technology consultant flying weekly for 20 years now, and if this ban were extended to all domestic and international flights, I’d likely either find an alternative to in-person meetings or switch careers if it were not feasible. ”
Let’s put it this way: Chase away enough business travelers, who are relatively price-insensitive, and the airline industry will fall like a cheap house of cards, because the “Clampetts” (what those in the industry derisively call the persons in cattle-class) won’t pay enough to keep the airlines afloat.
Maybe if Saudi Arabia and Qatar stopped funding these maniacs and the US stopped training them and giving them weapons and air support and Jordan & Turkey stopped allowing them to train, then help smuggle them into Syria and Iraq and if Israel stopped providing them medical care in the Golan Heights, then maybe they’d dry up.
Reblogged this on sentinelblog.
Detection tech isn’t a solution because it is by definition reactionary. Even employing white hats to sit around and dream up possible ways to smuggle destructive materials isn’t going to be good enough, only because there are so many of the bad guys looking at the problem.
I’m often reminded of Marvin Heemeyer, who wrecked havoc on Granby Colorado with modified a bulldozer:
Wang said the anger didn’t surprise him. At 6-foot-4 and 230 pounds, Heemeyer was an unpleasant man, full of bluster and rage, said the mayor, who had presided over portions of the zoning dispute.
“I’m trying to be politically correct, but this guy was a nasty son of a bitch,” Wang said. “He had the maturity level of a 5-year-old.”
http://www.denverpost.com/2014/06/04/granby-bulldozer-rampage-revisited-ten-years-later/
After the fact, people in town who knew him came out of the woodwork to talk about it. They all said he had told them he was going to do what he did, yet no one took him seriously. He was always very belligerent when he appeared before the town council.
Why didn’t someone stop him? A well timed dope-slap might have worked wonders. Getting him counseling or a priest probably would have helped defuse the situation too. Of course that would have needed to happen long before he fired up the welder.
I get that we’re all entitled to our privacy, and there were plenty of people who were locked up in mental institutions who didn’t belong there. I get that. But despite the narrative from psychology that everyone is capable of every horrific act ever known, the reality is most of us are fairly benign and peaceful. There are people who, if their rage isn’t channeled in a positive direction, will turn to terrorist activity. There are also people who, after attempts to correct anti-social behavior, simply cannot be trusted to live amongst the rest of us. It’s not a racial thing, nor a religious thing. It is a behavioral thing. And we still don’t have a clue as to what triggers it. (although bombing their country and family for 10 years might have something to do with it)
I would like to suggest the reason they pester people over baby formula is to make the efforts public and continue to raise the alarm that “someone needs to do something” about everything and that someone becomes… Government.
So simply interrogate the quiet people and be effective at what they do without making their presence known would do nothing to polarize the populations into the nationalism frenzy that the war mongers need to ensure they have unquestioned control of America.
It’s not about creating safe air travel or combating a terrorist group. It’s about creating an unquestioning voter base that will self police anyone speaking out against the state.
Here is the new security protocol for United States domestic airlines:
1. All passengers strip and put on TSA provided paper “johnnies”.
2. Passengers are then sedated and placed in traveling tubes. Note: this eliminates many things that are already painful for the air lines and they can add more passengers because they are truly stacked like cord wood.
3. All luggage off all kinds is shipped by a drone aircraft that flies in parallel with the one carrying the human cargo.
Think of the advantages! No more drunken, rowdy passengers. All passengers alive rested. No more seating issues. If you’re out cold you don’t care about the fat, smelly slob in the tube next to you or the absence of leg room. No more squealing kids. No need for flight attendants, increase the airline’s profit margin. Win, win, win. Let’s do it!
The people who come up with these rules all seem to fly private/gov/agency jets, i.e. their decisions and mandates don’t affect them. Let them fly commercial (and with no special agency or VIP pass-through for either them or their relatives), and then see how long these asinine regulations stay in force.
Better yet, just go back to the 60’s, where you just bought a ticke – paid cash if you were so inclined – t and got on the damned plane.
Just a thought.
VicB3
Ban Islam and muslims and go back to the good old days of safe, convenient, fast and pleasant air travel…
THERE IS NO ISLAMIC TERRORISM IN COUNTRIES WITHOUT MUSLIMS.
Maybe all this talk of undetectable bombs will bring back travel by ocean liner.
Hamburg has those “naked scanners”. A coin in the pocket will lead to frisking. They took away 125 gr of Blue cheese, but the same “Bundespolizei” let it over a million strangers, most having no documents!
No photographing, fingerprinting or Iris-scanning and weighing of these people. Then they discovered a high percentage of fake documents.
I would expect to go on a “no fly list” with fake ID. But political correctness in Germany trumps everything.
(Mish, please elucidate Merkel’s views on global immigration – the German MSM has left her alone. While the EU completes Libyan smugglers’ task by bringing everyone they rescue into the EU, instead of dropping them off on African shores).