Maybe someday I'll get tired of posting stories like this, but that day has yet to come. This is from BoingBoing, on how to smuggle dangerous liquids onto an airplane. The dangerous liquid in this case was a bottle of Vidalia Onion salad dressing. It is dangerous because it was more than 3 ounces and not in a single, quart-size, zip-top, clear plastic bag," as per TSA rules. Three ounces is the rule, because, according to BoingBoing, that is the size ll liquids become high explosives (unless they are bought at duty-free store). Here is how to do it. Warning: reading further will make you subject to surveillance by Alberto "Torture" Gonzales. In fact, not reading further will also make you subject to surveillance:
All you need to do is surrender the bottle at the screening station, wait for the the TSA to throw it away in an unguarded trash-barrel on the "secure" side, and then retrieve it from the trash.[snip]
The reason this "smuggling" technique works, of course, is that liquids aren't dangerous. Everyone knows this -- even the TSA. That's why they don't guard the barrel after they confiscate your wine, water, and salad-dressing. The point of taking away your liquid isn't to make airplanes safe, it's to simultaneously make you afraid (of terrorists with magic water-bombs) and then make you feel safe (because the government is fighting off the magic water-bombs). It's what Bruce Schneier calls "security theater." (BoingBoing)
The discoverer of this technique, John Hargrave, has also smuggled a quarter-ton of electronics into the Super Bowl and cleared TSA security with a buzzing vibrator in his pants.
I don't feel any safer but I certainly feel more satisfied. Thank you, Mr. Hargrave.
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I can also tell you that airport security isn't all that tight. At my local airport I could pretty easily get through security without having anything scanned.
I'm flying out of Roanoke on Monday. I have a wicked case of poison ivy, and I am not traveling anywhere without my calamine lotion. Alas! The smallest bottle of calamine lotion I could find is a 4 oz. one. OK. I've located an empty 3 oz. bottle and am transferring some of the lotion into it. Just doing my bit for homeland security. There. Don't you feel soooo much safer now? (unless you are sitting next to me and catch sight of my pustule-covered arms--do you suppose poison ivy eruptions can be mistaken for smallpox pustules?)
Care to know where the 3-ounce limit came from? Europeans decided 100 ml was too small to be dangerous. Since the US won't endorse SI, that gets converted to fluid ounces, 3.3814 of them. If the US rounded up to 4 ounces that would exceed the EC limit, so they rounded down to 3 ounces.
Now for a sanity check. 3 fluid ounces by volume of nitroglycerine would have a weight of about 3.5 ounces. Ask a chemist how big of an explosion that would make.
As a flight attendant, I can firmly attest to the total ineffectiveness of the TSA. They're a total joke. We often entertain ourselves by displaying our collections of things we accidentally forget we have with us but still make it through security carrying (knives, liquids, etc.).
Not entirely true. We instituted the 3 oz restriction before Europe instituted their 100 ml rule. As soon as they did, this resulted in obvious problems for international travelers, so the DHS changed the restriction to 3.4 oz. However, virtually every airport has been too lazy to change their signage and recordings, so everyone still thinks that 3 oz is the limit.
It's rapidly reaching the point where I just do not want to fly anywhere because of the insane 'security' rules. It really is intrusive and humiliating.
Gork -
The whole 'plot' was that someone could have two containers of different liquids (which would not set off explosive detectors), which would then be mixed on-board to make an explosive.
This not being hollywood, this is a very difficult thing to do. Assuming you've gone to the toilet (with your bag..), you now have to mix your chemicals at exactly the right temperature - too cold and the plane will land first, too hot and you will most likely coat the inside of the cubicle with reagents. So you need a thermometer, and a decent amount of ice (several airline cup's worth) and at least an hour in the toilet. And no turbulence..
http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/200608/ms…
Last week I had the good fortune to fly 2000 miles across the country and back in a private charter plane. What a thrill, drive the car right up to the plane, hand luggage to the pilot and we're in the air in 10 minutes. You can do that at hundreds of small regional airports all across the country. No hint of any kind of security whatsoever. Many of these airports handle jets (a 727 was parked at our refueling stop in Wyoming) and good sized cargo planes.
Taxi ride to the airport on the way back, and the cab could drive right through the secure gate and up to the waiting plane. (Cab driver just yelled to the guy running the weed trimmer on the other side and asked for the security code to get through the gate, trimmer guy just hollered back with the code and in we went!)
This trip completely reinforced for me that TSA and Homeland security are an elaborate production to make the appearance of doing something. It's all a performance. Sadly, if I go to a theater and don't like the show I can get up and walk out.
Tom in I. Please send me an email with the name of the airport and I'll take care of this one for you. You have to understand that most of these airports are the most likely problem. The weed eater guy violated the law and not a regulation. memphisservices@bellsouth.net.
I'll need the name of the FBO too.
I do hope that you all get a vibrator and try to take it onto a plane with or without it vibrating. The new magnetometers and wands will catch it just like this one did. Enjoy the ride downtown after you stammer and stutter about what its doing there and what its doing in general. Promoting peace and tranquility I am sure.
As for you folks with medical conditions.... take the material to the TSA agents walking the terminals as they require BEFORE you get onto a plane. You can always of course check this or move it as cargo but most dont I guess dont understand that part. Ask for them to screen it and have it at the gate for flight xxx. They have chemical analysis capability at the bigger airports. They will take you to the office, get your ID and then test the materials. No one is supposed to have their medical materials removed from them. If they try to withold it, ask for a supervisor. I wouldnt try though to say that a vibrator is a medical device. I would detain you on the spot and generally for being an asshole and make you miss your flight. Write your Congressman and tell him/her you had your vibrator going and you were detained because of it and it took an undue amount of time to remove it. .
That vibrating thing this guy thought he should shove up his crotch is funny. I do too. Right up until the time that the stupid bastard takes it onto a plane. Its about a half a pound possible of plastique, a battery and initiator instead of a motor. It could bring a plane down. Now theres a big vibration for you. G in Indy probably doesnt think this post is funny about this either as her hubby drives people planes. I certainly dont.
Elf Eye-So you confirm the process. You arent able to take the usual quart sized bottle of calamine onto the plane (use prednisone instead) but you are able to take enough to get you probably domestically anywhere unless you are drinking the stuff. Its legal if you declare it and they inspect the stuff. Its a surveillance, not a search and seizure . Of course its an inconvenience, but so is getting blown out of the sky. Look folks you can sit there and bitch and try to change the world back to what it used to be, or go with what it is. There is a large and very determined group of people out there who would do you harm. Think we could get them to stop by getting out of Iraq? Sure, relax and just negotiate with them if and when it happens on one of your flights. Try to get into their minds and just see what their problems are. Thats the ticket. Worked real good on Flt. 93. Security is inadequate everywhere but at Tel Aviv Airport IMPO.
As for the in and out of the trash for Boing Boing. Its not a perfect world, I feel somewhat safer climbing onto a plane though because it was removed. It was done in response to a credible threat to binary weapons. Mix two chemicals and shake them hard and Allah is going to be happy to see you all. A little but not much harder than that. Never fail to racial profile a flight that has more than three Middle Easterners that seem nervous, carried on liquids of any kind and are all heading back and forth to the bathroom in pairs. Duh.... Get enough of the same guys on the plane with enough of the right materials and 3 oz aint squatty. Its more like say 30 oz. for five or ten guys. Really catty people can make it out of pee, little harder but very, very feasible. Lets remove everyone's bladders, or better air travel all together.
But you know, I can think of almost 100 ways to bring a plane down that I dont even have to get onto so I wonder what the guy on the ground is thinking.... all the time.
Quick Call Mo. G. I am sure he has 999 possible ways to bring one down and one confirmed one. Then deny, deny, deny... then let him take responsibility and then almost coincidentally medical hostages and then pay him off. I have a pay off for him and them. Oh and if and when it does happen and you are on a plane you or or your family can then blame it on Bush that all of the general security measures are inadequate. I keep on seeing and hearing negatives here on airplane security, lets hear what you guys have that will improve it. I can bet it will start with big bottles of liquids that cant be identified being let onto a plane along with vibrators shoved up someones ass.... for grins and pleasure of course. Yep, lets start right there with that funny liquid that says glycerin on it that bubbles. Or this little packet of potassium nitrate, or ammonium nitrate. No thats cool, let it on!!! How about both and fulminate of mercury? Or glass bottles of nitric acid? We have to do something that at least lets them know we are looking.
Jackasses like this who do it will ensure that even though its a security breach that someone WILL get one thru, it WILL take down a plane, and it will ensure that some old grandmother is going to get the glove up the ass to check and make sure that she isnt packing explosives. Keep it up, point out the breaches that you are aware of by all means, but God help you if you get caught with contraband on the clean side of the belt. More so, God help you if you are on a plane after having made all these jokes about it and they are too.
They could have total security I can assure you, but you suddenly would be looking at the trains for transportation again.
Yep, take something out of the trash on the other side of the belt... Please. Go ahead. I want you too. The fine is hefty or if someone else is smart enough to get it by, then climb on the plane with them. All the smart and funny guys in the world go down with the plane. Buy stock after that in glove manufacturers... the high elbow kind.
M. Randolph K. - the airport with the weed trimmer man was not unique in my small (3) airport sample, but was the most secure. Access through the gate (with the code) was obtained by the driver who picked us up and the pilot of our plane (so he could bring his rental car out to the plane) by simply asking for it at the desk at the airport office. I don't think I'll share it's location.
The gate at our departure airport was not closed, nor seemed to have been for quite while, although I did not inspect it closely as we drove in.
The airport where we stopped to refuel had no gates. This airport had loaner cars for pilots to use to drive into town if they needed. Both cars were already lent out, but the man fueling our plane offered us the keys to his personal car so we could drive into town for some lunch. We took him up on his offer, walked around the hangar, got into his car and drove out onto the road and into town.
It appears that our airport security system involves a very elaborate show of locking the front door (admittedly where most of the people enter), while the back door, side door, basement door, and all the windows are left open.
As you point out, if someone wants to do some damage with a plane they will find a way. And until this experience I too felt much safer with the efforts of TSA. Now I'm not so sure. As a pragmatist, I'm not sure where the cost/benefit lies between maximum expense and minimum risk. But in the mean time, I sure like the convenience of private air travel.
While total security is not possible, the closest we can get is if we all walk to our destinations.
Bruce Schneier, an actual security expert, calls all of this mishegos security theater. It doesn't actually accomplish anything.
Come on now Tom, you want security and this guy violated procedure and the law. The fact is that now some Osama wannabe or the great mans whiskers himself could jack a plane, load it with 5000 lbs of explosives and take out a refinery somewhere or a chemical plant. Believe me, you need to email me the airport name. Again, what if someone does and you said nothing?
Its not security theater Mel, its people having laws imposed upon them and they have all signed the statement by now by law. This guy broke it by giving or getting the codes to a security area, leaving a gate open, or door. Everyone's lamenting the poor security, I again say lets start here with this one airport. Me, I would happily send it over to the Aeronautics Security Branch and they would as happily fine this guy personally 50G's, the airport 100G's and if there had been an incident the guys would be in jail for a minimum of 5 years. Facilitation leading to an incident. They cant plead ignorance to the law because they are all required to go thru an annual class. Be vigilant. I would like to stuff that weed eater up his ass and send him thru the metal detector. He could always say its a medical device. .
No, we run a tight ship at here at least and a lot of it IS bullshit. Maybe not in Cheyenne Wyoming or someplace like it. By God though they know law now. No excuses. But I guess you wouldnt be upset to know that a car drove down runway 9 having gained access through an open construction gate right into the face of an oncoming MD-11 jet here. She of course was drunk and said she was looking for Democrat Road. They did show her Democrat on the way out, to jail. She very nearly died in a hail of gunfire. Three years suspended for her, the gate operator 50,000 and the company 300,000.
We are actually instructed to RAM anyone with a tug, car, deice truck or to kill them if necessary to prevent an action against an aircraft.
Still want to pick that bottle up out of the disposal trash?
Well, no, if I wanted to make a point, I'd go trough the security check clean as an elven arse, head straight into the duty-free shop and buy a couple of bottles of wine or whiskey. I would then proceed to bring them into the cabin in my carry-on luggage.
Upon arrival at my destination, I would then demonstrate, using crash test dummies, how to use a bottle of wine as a blunt and/or piercing instrument.
In other words, the criticism of airport security can be summed up as follows:
1) As far as causes of death and injury go, terrorism ranks right up there with broken necks caused by falling out of beds, poking your own eyes out with blunted teaspoons and hemorrhages caused by excessive nosepicking.
There have been maybe - maybe - 500 deaths or serious injuries to airline passengers from terrorism in the past six years. Even if you add the 2500 non-airline-passenger casualties in '01 (the 'collateral damage,' I believe it's called - at least when it's white people killing brown people...), that still only brings you to about three thousand.
By way of comparison, even if air traffic accidents had gone down by a factor of two over the last decade (which they haven't by any stretch of the imagination), such accidents would still be in the same ballpark as the number of terrorism-related deaths during the same period:
Source: http://tinyurl.com/2x4zx2
Plainly put, if a tenth of the effort now put into keeping brown people from taking toothpaste onto airplanes were used to educate pilots, enforce standards of maintainance and/or improve the technical quality of groundside support infrastructure, you could save far more people.
But of course this would be inconvenient for the airlines and the airports, rather than for the passengers, and it would likely put a crimp into someone's profits...
2) As long as the duty-free stores in the 'secure' area sell enough stuff to make several kinds of blunt, pointy and/or explosive instruments, I have a kinda hard time taking all the pre-duty-free-shopping-area 'security' seriously as anything but a scare tactic.
But of course, imposing standards on the duty-free shops would inconvenience the airlines and airports, rather than passengers, as well as putting a crimp into someone's profits...
3) To the best of my knowledge, there has been one (1) terrorist wanna-be stopped in airport security checks in the last decade or so. And one attack that got through, but they don't count, because they used box cutters and those were already restricted at the time.
By way of comparison, I've lost count of the attempts to use bombs against abortion clinics, trains, researchers that use lab animals, train stations and busy streets. But we had one in London just last month, and a couple in the US.
And that's only counting Europe and the US. Including Baghdad in that statistic would, after all, almost be cheating...
In other words, considering the general vulnerability of any free and open society to terrorism, the paranoia surrounding airports crossed the line into the ridiculous a long time ago.
Please note that I don't object - nor do I believe that anyone else here does - to having our check-in baggage searched, nor to having our hand luggage scanned or to going through a metal detector. Those are all sensible and reasonable precautions. What I and others object to is in no small part the fact that it is easier to smuggle a weapon into most European parliaments than getting a bottle of wine with you home on the plane (assuming, of course, that you didn't buy it in the duty-free shop at the airport).
- JS
M. Randolph Kruger -
When it comes to binary liquid threats.. you have no idea what you are talking about. There is no way to synthesise explosives on an aircraft; it's a LOT harder than you think. (Just shaking two chemicals together will just give you a terrorist with his skin burnt off).
And no, you can't make it out of pee, not unless your flight is in the air for several weeks and you have access to a chemical lab. Hollywood isn't reality.
Sorry Andrew, you are mistaken.
(CnH2n+2) mixed with ammonium nitrate and it only takes a little. And I mean just a little, pee dried using body heat alone is enough. and this one here is mixed with hydrocarbon fuel. Easily carried onto a plane. Or use the whiskey from the flight attendant. This one needs a detonator along with a few others.
The ones that dont I am not going to put out there Andrew. Sorry.
M. Randolph Kruger -
You need containment, as well as a detanator; and if you had a detonator than you wouldn't want to take hydrocarbons. As I said, this isn't hollywood. Or Tom Clancy.
I could also point out that merely opening and sniffing a bottle would clearly identify such an explosive, yet we are ment to think that water is potentially dangerous. And an unlabelled bag of white powder is going to get you stopped in any airport..
M.R.K would appear to be a self appointed gaurdian of the status quo. Your boss's boss is now laughing at how serious you are.