4 ms·
What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device int
by xrd 4mo ago
What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it.
This reminds me of the SNL sketch where TSA employees had no answer for someone bringing two separate bottles of 3.9 ounces onto the plane.
I'm sure Sean Duffy, of Real World and now Sec of Transportation, will fix this.
- lazide 4mo agoThe same thing that is stopping them from suicide bombing the super crowded security checkpoint line before ID checks. Nothing really.
- bdcravens 4mo agoOr going into the baggage claim area with a bag containing an explosive device, then acting like they grabbed the wrong bag and putting it back on the carousel, and then leaving.
- bruce511 4mo agoAs an aside, this is something I've only seen in the US. At least in my country the domestic baggage claim area is not accessible unless from an arriving aircraft. I'm guessing that has more to do with theft though than security.
- hvb2 4mo agoNo, that's because in the US they're handling the international flights separately. It's also the reason why even when you have a layover, you need to clear customs. Domestic flights in the US are like busses/trains elsewhere. Most people fly without a checked bag
- thrownthatway 4mo ago[flagged]
- objclxt 4mo ago> That sounds like bullshit to me. Have you taken a US domestic flight? Everyone wants to bring their massive roll-ons into the cabin, nobody wants to check if they can avoid it.
- warmedcookie 4mo agoIndeed, although today I got on a plane at LaGuardia and they made me check my carry on at the gate even though there was plenty of space in the overhead bins ( 60% capacity flight, about half of us had to do this) so YMMV. No idea why they made us do that, but I had to grab my bag at the luggage claim.
- monkeywork 4mo agoI don't know if we are the level of "most people" but I'd say we are defintely at a "signficant percentage of ppl". Due to cost of checked luggage the popularity of one bag carry on flying has exploded.
- hgoel 4mo agoMost domestic flights are short duration trips, a week's worth of clothes fit in carry-on suitcase, and the other stuff (laptop etc) can go in a backpack. In all my domestic flights in the past year they've had to ask people at the gate to volunteer their carry-on suitcase to be checked into the hold because they didn't expect to have enough room in the overhead bins. I usually volunteer because: it's free, I don't mind waiting at the pickup, and it's slightly more comfortable when getting off the plane.
- asdff 4mo agoAbsolutely true and you can tell at least in the old days when you'd fly southwest. Every other airline the overhead bin fills up. It is an inevitable drama when the flight attendants have to say "overheads are full now we are gate checking bags." Southwest, at least before they changed their bag policy, would let you fly with two free checked bags. Finally everything worked as intended and those overheads were seldom used. Maybe for a jacket or purse or something, but no one was shoving a roller bag up there. Spirit was another airline with ample overhead space, because they charged you nearly the same rate for overheads as checked bags.
- thrownthatway 4mo agoDo people collect their bags from the baggage claim area and then immediately reboard an aircraft to exit the terminal? How do the arrivals exist the terminal Are you not allowed to have a friend who is picking you up assist with baggage claim?
- lazide 4mo agooften baggage pickup is on the terminal side of the ‘one way exit’.
- thrownthatway 4mo ago[flagged]
- bruce511 4mo agoyes. In the US. that's what I'm saying. This appears to be a very US design. (Although obviously my experience of domestic air travel is limited to a small number of countries.)
- bruce511 4mo ago>> Do people collect their bags from the baggage claim area and then immediately reboard an aircraft to exit the terminal? >> How do the arrivals exist the terminal You arrive, go to baggage reclaim, then into the "public area". You can then exit the terminal, or go check in for another flight or whatever you like. The point is that once you have left the baggage collection area you cannot re-enter it. >> Are you not allowed to have a friend who is picking you up assist with baggage claim? exactly. No-one from outside is allowed into the baggage collection hall. But equally, we don't get charged for trolly use. So you don't need help. You stack everything onto a trolly (which are there waiting for you for free.)
- mysterydip 4mo agoWe need to put a checkpoint before the checkpoint so that never happens!
- datadrivenangel 4mo agoIn Uganda they make you get out of your car and go through a metal detector before getting to the pre-security security screening at the actual airport... 3-4 layers...
- koolba 4mo ago> What's to prevent terrorists from going through TSA, waiting in the scanning line when everyone is still going through, and then planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag? I never open my carryon once I have packed it. I make it a point to hold up the whole line until it is my turn to go through the xray. It gets fun when they mandate a pat down in lieu of the millimeter wave scanner but refuse to have someone available for it. It’s the only way to honestly say you have kept your bags under watch. If anybody tries to send in my bags without me , I immediately speak up in a loud stern voice, “That is not your bag!”
- stouset 4mo agoI’m not saying this as an ad hominem and simply to throw insults, but with the hopes that it will encourage you to change your behavior. The only thing this accomplishes is making you the kind of asshole who interferes with other people that are just trying to make their flight on time. You are not highlighting flaws in the security system. You are not taking a principled ethical stance against tyranny. You are just acting like an asshole for the sake of being an asshole and making life just a little bit worse for everyone else around you. This is not something to brag about. This is something to be ashamed of.
- isatty 4mo agoSome people deserve to be insulted. It’s fine.
- koolba 4mo agoBy taking a stand and inconveniencing the world around me, I hope to induce change for everyone. What’s the alternative? Lose track of my stuff or risk it being stolen?
- stouset 4mo agoNo, you don’t. You are being an asshole to prove a point. But I am going to assume that you are an intelligent person, and since you are, you know as well as I do that nobody you are treating this way is in a position to do anything about the situation. Nobody in line is going to empathize with your stand when you are disrupting their travel. You are doing this so you can feel high and mighty, but you know damn well it isn’t behavior that will induce change. The alternative is to either a) allow others to pass until you witness your bag enter the scanner or b) accept that nobody is going to steal your stuff directly in front of law enforcement officials and just go through the scanner. Stop acting like an asshole.
- umvi 4mo agoSeems like an effective DoS attack - ground all planes in the US by sneaking cheap bluetooth speakers into people's luggage with provacative device names
- ZeWaka 4mo agoDoesn't even need to be a speaker. Just a battery and transmitter.
- simulator5g 4mo agoThis would probably be a supply chain attack if it ever happens.
- rayiner 4mo agoNothing. TSA is a joke. At first, the security theater arguably had a legitimate psychological purpose. The airline industry nearly collapsed after 9/11 because people were so scared of filing. But that was a generation ago—the psychological trauma in the aftermath of 9/11 dissipated ago. But we’re still stuck with the TSA because in the meantime it turned into a massive jobs program. We’d be better off spending TSA’s $8 billion budget on paying people to dig holes and fill them back in.
- jim33442 4mo agoEvery other country seems to do the same thing though
- Loughla 4mo agoIt's not just security theater. It shifts the attack vector entirely. Instead of airplanes as weapons that could be used to kill thousands, terrorists can blow up a few hundred people. Those checkpoints are only there to provide a soft target instead of letting it be a plane.
- jim33442 4mo agoI agree. Sure you can still get weapons through screening, in fact I've accidentally done it twice with like 4" pocket knives, but not sure what the odds are. A lot of the "security theater" argument seems to be annoyance at having to go through TSA, cause what's the alternative, just barely screen people like before?
- rayiner 4mo agoNo, the “security theater” argument is because TSA consistently fails penetration tests: https://abcnews.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-operation-us-airports/story?id=51022188 https://abcnews.com/US/tsa-fails-tests-latest-undercover-ope... “When ABC News asked the source if the failure rate was 80 percent, the response was, ‘You are in the ballpark.’”
- 4mo ago
- jacobrast 4mo agoWhy would a terrorist want to plant a Bluetooth device on someone else's bag when all it would accomplish is a minor delay of one flight and would result in a prison sentence after security camera review??
- Retric 4mo agoWhy stop at one bag for one flight? > would result in a prison sentence That doesn’t seem like a significant deterrent here.
- stouset 4mo agoThis is the type of prank you’d see some idiot do to try and get followers on TikTok, not something a terrorist would bother with.
- Kye 4mo agoYou sure about that? >> "All that we have to do is to send two mujahidin to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written al-Qaida, in order to make the generals race there to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving for it anything of note other than some benefits for their private companies." https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/continuing-anxiety-over-al-qaeda-flags-middle-east/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/11/continuing-anxi...
- stouset 4mo agoThey were bragging that they could provoke this type of response as a result of having flown two planes into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon, killing thousands, and causing fear, panic, and self-sabotaging outsized reactions like pouring trillions into wars that accomplish nothing. Getting a dozen of their operatives arrested for an idiotic prank that just resulted in a handful of planes being turned around would make them a laughingstock overnight. I am baffled that we are even having this argument.
- hackyhacky 4mo agoThis is the SNL sketch in question: https://www.tiktok.com/@hamtelevision/video/7276358099089231147?lang=en https://www.tiktok.com/@hamtelevision/video/7276358099089231...
- laweijfmvo 4mo agoit never made sense. i could bring two or more identical 4oz sunblocks, for example, but not a single 5oz toothpaste.
- stouset 4mo agoIf you’re a terrorist, I’m pretty sure you can think of dramatically more consequential things to do than cause a handful of planes to potentially divert. That’s a wildly pointless prank for something that will invariably wind up with you being arrested. Why do that when you could simply attack people waiting in the security line? That would actually cause terror and shut down an entire airport for days.
- goda90 4mo agoA saboteur might want to cause disruption without violence against people, and such cases would still likely be labeled terrorism.
- stouset 4mo agoOnly because we have labeled anything and everything terrorism these days. Even then this is an extremely lame and ineffective form of sabotage, compared to the kind of prison sentence you’d be risking.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- LPisGood 4mo agoPeople accidentally sneak weapons through TSA all the time. There are many anecdotal examples out there. More scientifically, they had a horrific detection rate in some audits.
- AndrewOMartin 4mo agoEven worse, what's to prevent the terrorists from temporarily renaming their Bluetooth bombs to something innocuous just before going through security and only renaming it back when they need to conveniently find them again while pairing?
- HNisCIS 4mo ago[dead]
- al_borland 4mo agoYou're supposed to wait to walk through the scanner until your bag is in the x-ray machine, or far enough along to not be tampered with. Doing that, I'm still always waiting on the other side to see by bag come out the other end.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- r3trohack3r 4mo ago> What's to prevent terrorists … planting a bluetooth device into someone else's bag Reminds me of Professor Chaos trying to flood the world by leaving the garden hose on.