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What's the threat vector that they are trying to mitigate against? The attack already happened and the vector that the attack used seems to be applicable to any

What's the threat vector that they are trying to mitigate against? The attack already happened and the vector that the attack used seems to be applicable to any device with a battery. Are they worried about pagers that are affected but didn't go off in the original operation?

mingus88 2y ago
You must be new to airport security theater We all had to start taking off our shoes after the Richard Reid shoe bomber. Twenty plus years later we are still reacting to a terrifying attack with an ordinary object that didn’t even work. And we are still bottlenecking hundreds of people in a crowd BEFORE the checkpoint and it won’t be until someone attacks there will we ever actually do anything about it It has never been about preventing anything. It was about the appearance of doing something.
- tomohelix 2y ago
  Agree. It is simply idiotic how they conveniently gather hundreds of people in a crowded spot who are all pulling and tinkering with stuff from their backpacks. A bad actor can easily cause more deaths there than on a plane nowadays. Everytime I go through that charade, I roll my eye at everything they do since it is so obviously useless and unnecessary. The worst thing is, apparently, some people really believe in it.
- bruce511 2y ago
  The US particularly is extreme in this regard. The TSA has become such a large employer that it's now unthinkable to scale it back. 9.11 was of course tragic, but that problem was solved by locking the cockpit door. And yes, no-one wants to be on a plane with an explosive device, but those are really rare. Not least because that same device is easier to use, with more effective results, in pretty much anywhere else. And after all that money spent, it's unclear that the TSA would actually prevent any serious attack. Outside the US things tend to be a lot more relaxed. (So much so that special checkpoints are arranged for flights to and from the US to conform to US requirements.)
  - Aeolun 2y ago
    > 9.11 was of course tragic, but that problem was solved by locking the cockpit door. Which caused its own problems, which were resolved by always having at least two pilots in the cockpit at the same time.
- n_ary 2y ago
  Well, by regulation, an aircraft is a “national property”, so a blast in an aircraft is seen as “national incompetence”. The security check is just a filter, an attack there is seen as general terror. The stakes are very different. It is also easier to de-escalate someone with a gun or other dangerous objects at the security check, people at that location are well trained to handle such situation and extra support is just a radio away, in aircraft, not only is the situation extra dangerous because other people sitting will act immensely irrationally or panic, the crew is only trained in minor de-escalation, and it is difficult to call a backup security in mid air and any shots fired in that environment is 1000x more dangerous.
  - echoangle 2y ago
    > Well, by regulation, an aircraft is a “national property” Do you have a source for that?
    - n_ary 2y ago
      That is AirportSecurity101 training for anyone working in aviation. I have performed the training in non-English, not sure I can quote it from somewhere online unfortunately. It is internal training material.
  - tomohelix 2y ago
    First of all, I doubt TSA agents are "well trained". They are incompetent at their main task, which is screening for weapons in luggages and they are assisted by state of the art technologies. Second, I also doubt people waiting in lines at the airport will be anything but rational the moment someone take out a gun and or a bomb. At least on a plane, nobody can run anywhere. In the airport check in, there will be shoving and yelling and stepping on each other to get out faster. Also, it is harder to smuggle a rifle onto a plane. It isn't difficult to bring something extremely destructive to the check in gate.
    - n_ary 2y ago
      You can doubt, that is your prerogative. The closed nature of the aircraft induced twice as more fear than in a crowded open area. Also, even if we assume everyone is rational, the person holding the prohibited object is not guaranteed to be rational. The difficulty of bringing a rifle is exactly the security check(also mocked as security theatre here), and anyone willing to risk a destructive object has zero incentive to bring it through security checks because they are discouraged by the security theatre, finally the risk is well worth in the air or blowing up something close to a massively valuable(i.e an aircraft).
diebeforei485 2y ago
Other electronic devices (laptops, tablets, etc) are far less likely to contain anything like this, because Apple, Huawei, Dell etc manage their supply chains and don't just let anyone make products carrying their brand. There are so many manufacturers of walkie-talkies and pagers, it's essentially a wild west. No one knows how many PETN-laced pagers were manufactured. The ones that exploded were the ones that happened to have certain phone numbers and were in range at the time. It's unclear how many of those might have PETN, which is essentially undetectable. It doesn't give off any vapors, so sniffer dogs cannot detect it. 6 grams of it can blow the fuselage of the plane. It doesn't show up on X-Rays.
- eesmith 2y ago
  Ahh, so we must have more e-waste because terrorism means we can't replace our batteries with anything not under the full control of Buy n Large.
- echoangle 2y ago
  > The ones that exploded were the ones that happened to have certain phone numbers and were in range at the time. Nitpick but the pagers don’t have phone numbers, right? As I understood it, they are using a completely separate network from the phone network and are waiting for a message starting with a specific code which identifies them. But I don’t think you could send an SMS to a pager for example, without some gateway in the middle.
  - diebeforei485 2y ago
    Yeah they have a pager number, not a phone number.
- philwelch 2y ago
  This doesn’t match my understanding of the operation. The reporting I’ve seen said that Mossad became aware that Hezbollah was in the market for a large order of pagers and quickly set up a shell company to sell them the exact batch of compromised pagers that they subsequently detonated.
cedws 2y ago
Better safe than sorry. Especially when hundreds of lives are potentially on the line.
m1keil 2y ago
I think the reason is clear - they suspect that there might be still devices in circulation that didn't go off and can risk a flight. This is similar to the spontaneous igniting Samsung devices story from few years ago.
rasz 2y ago
They know who uses the airline and are worried of repeat. Stating outright "Hezbollah/IRGC passengers not welcome from now on" wouldnt be good PR for an airline catering to Iran https://www.emirates.com/ir/english/destinations/flights-from-tehran/ https://www.emirates.com/ir/english/destinations/flights-fro...

mingus88 2y ago

You must be new to airport security theater We all had to start taking off our shoes after the Richard Reid shoe bomber. Twenty plus years later we are still reacting to a terrifying attack with an ordinary object that didn’t even work. And we are still bottlenecking hundreds of people in a crowd BEFORE the checkpoint and it won’t be until someone attacks there will we ever actually do anything about it It has never been about preventing anything. It was about the appearance of doing something.

tomohelix 2y ago
Agree. It is simply idiotic how they conveniently gather hundreds of people in a crowded spot who are all pulling and tinkering with stuff from their backpacks. A bad actor can easily cause more deaths there than on a plane nowadays. Everytime I go through that charade, I roll my eye at everything they do since it is so obviously useless and unnecessary. The worst thing is, apparently, some people really believe in it.
bruce511 2y ago
The US particularly is extreme in this regard. The TSA has become such a large employer that it's now unthinkable to scale it back. 9.11 was of course tragic, but that problem was solved by locking the cockpit door. And yes, no-one wants to be on a plane with an explosive device, but those are really rare. Not least because that same device is easier to use, with more effective results, in pretty much anywhere else. And after all that money spent, it's unclear that the TSA would actually prevent any serious attack. Outside the US things tend to be a lot more relaxed. (So much so that special checkpoints are arranged for flights to and from the US to conform to US requirements.)
- Aeolun 2y ago
  > 9.11 was of course tragic, but that problem was solved by locking the cockpit door. Which caused its own problems, which were resolved by always having at least two pilots in the cockpit at the same time.
n_ary 2y ago
Well, by regulation, an aircraft is a “national property”, so a blast in an aircraft is seen as “national incompetence”. The security check is just a filter, an attack there is seen as general terror. The stakes are very different. It is also easier to de-escalate someone with a gun or other dangerous objects at the security check, people at that location are well trained to handle such situation and extra support is just a radio away, in aircraft, not only is the situation extra dangerous because other people sitting will act immensely irrationally or panic, the crew is only trained in minor de-escalation, and it is difficult to call a backup security in mid air and any shots fired in that environment is 1000x more dangerous.
- echoangle 2y ago
  > Well, by regulation, an aircraft is a “national property” Do you have a source for that?
  - n_ary 2y ago
    That is AirportSecurity101 training for anyone working in aviation. I have performed the training in non-English, not sure I can quote it from somewhere online unfortunately. It is internal training material.
- tomohelix 2y ago
  First of all, I doubt TSA agents are "well trained". They are incompetent at their main task, which is screening for weapons in luggages and they are assisted by state of the art technologies. Second, I also doubt people waiting in lines at the airport will be anything but rational the moment someone take out a gun and or a bomb. At least on a plane, nobody can run anywhere. In the airport check in, there will be shoving and yelling and stepping on each other to get out faster. Also, it is harder to smuggle a rifle onto a plane. It isn't difficult to bring something extremely destructive to the check in gate.
  - n_ary 2y ago
    You can doubt, that is your prerogative. The closed nature of the aircraft induced twice as more fear than in a crowded open area. Also, even if we assume everyone is rational, the person holding the prohibited object is not guaranteed to be rational. The difficulty of bringing a rifle is exactly the security check(also mocked as security theatre here), and anyone willing to risk a destructive object has zero incentive to bring it through security checks because they are discouraged by the security theatre, finally the risk is well worth in the air or blowing up something close to a massively valuable(i.e an aircraft).

diebeforei485 2y ago

Other electronic devices (laptops, tablets, etc) are far less likely to contain anything like this, because Apple, Huawei, Dell etc manage their supply chains and don't just let anyone make products carrying their brand. There are so many manufacturers of walkie-talkies and pagers, it's essentially a wild west. No one knows how many PETN-laced pagers were manufactured. The ones that exploded were the ones that happened to have certain phone numbers and were in range at the time. It's unclear how many of those might have PETN, which is essentially undetectable. It doesn't give off any vapors, so sniffer dogs cannot detect it. 6 grams of it can blow the fuselage of the plane. It doesn't show up on X-Rays.

eesmith 2y ago
Ahh, so we must have more e-waste because terrorism means we can't replace our batteries with anything not under the full control of Buy n Large.
echoangle 2y ago
> The ones that exploded were the ones that happened to have certain phone numbers and were in range at the time. Nitpick but the pagers don’t have phone numbers, right? As I understood it, they are using a completely separate network from the phone network and are waiting for a message starting with a specific code which identifies them. But I don’t think you could send an SMS to a pager for example, without some gateway in the middle.
- diebeforei485 2y ago
  Yeah they have a pager number, not a phone number.
philwelch 2y ago
This doesn’t match my understanding of the operation. The reporting I’ve seen said that Mossad became aware that Hezbollah was in the market for a large order of pagers and quickly set up a shell company to sell them the exact batch of compromised pagers that they subsequently detonated.

cedws 2y ago

Better safe than sorry. Especially when hundreds of lives are potentially on the line.

m1keil 2y ago

I think the reason is clear - they suspect that there might be still devices in circulation that didn't go off and can risk a flight. This is similar to the spontaneous igniting Samsung devices story from few years ago.

rasz 2y ago

They know who uses the airline and are worried of repeat. Stating outright "Hezbollah/IRGC passengers not welcome from now on" wouldnt be good PR for an airline catering to Iran https://www.emirates.com/ir/english/destinations/flights-from-tehran/ https://www.emirates.com/ir/english/destinations/flights-fro...