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Airport Security Concerns: France Warns of New Terror Threat From 'Body Bombs'

9 points by alexandros 17y ago

brown9-2 17y ago
Interesting how this story has (very) slowly made it's way from small mentions like Bruce Schneier's blog to big news outlets. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/ass_bomber.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/ass_bomber.htm... Of course it's not really much of a serious threat: Lewis Page, an "improvised-device disposal operator tasked in support of the UK mainland police from 2001-2004," pointed out that this isn't much of a threat for three reasons: 1) you can't stuff a lot of explosives into a body cavity, 2) detonation is, um, problematic, and 3) the human body can stifle an explosion pretty effectively (think of someone throwing himself on a grenade to save his friends).
- alexandros 17y ago
  I think people are not thinking about women bombers when they mention (1)...
  - stcredzero 17y ago
    That's still going to be muffled by the body, unless they whip it out first. So, what's next, are we going to outlaw women in skirts?
    - sokoloff 17y ago
      I imagine parent's thinking of fake pregnancy, not a flashlight sized/shaped device. (I made that as vanilla-sounding as I could...)
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Funnily enough, it was on Leno the same day Scheier posted it. Sometimes the comedy shows are more informative than the actual news!
hughprime 17y ago
What about surgically implanted bombs in fat people? (Like in that movie I won't name just to avoid spoiling it for the small number of people who haven't seen it.) Does anyone have a good idea of whether that's a severe risk? Can anyone have a sizeable bomb surgically implanted and live long enough with it inside them to recover from the surgery enough to walk around normally?
- stcredzero 17y ago
  What about a convincing fat-suit? You could make one of those without metal components, and you'd need to require people to remove clothing, or have trained personnel pat down every passenger to detect that. And you could easily conceal about 100 pounds of explosive in that fashion. (Making it proof against chemical sniffers would be problematic, though.)
- sokoloff 17y ago
  I would imagine that if you designed it to look like a near full-term pregnancy, that you could get it close enough to the masses of people in the security lines for sure. To have a massively disruptive attack, you don't need to bring down an airliner; you only need to kill and injure a whole bunch of people, such as those conveniently massed outside the security screening areas. You could probably accomplish the same thing much more easily by just packing a stroller full of explosives and detonating THAT in the security line.
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    > You could probably accomplish the same thing much more easily by just packing a stroller full of explosives and detonating THAT in the security line. Exactly. The problem with all this security theater is that if you wanted to just kill a bunch of people there are 100's of ways to do it, low tech and cheap. What bugs me about all this is that the 'terrorists' so far have shown surprisingly little sophistication in the attacks they have made, mostly because they didn't have to. (well, maybe the 'shoe bomber' should count). For the most part, if the stated goal was to bring down western society they're taking their bloody time about it, security really isn't that good. My guess is that this is all blown way out of proportion. Sure, there are some bad guys, but there are less of them than seems to be presented, and they're pretty busy doing other stuff. Blowing up an airliner is a publicity stunt, it isn't going to derail society unless you let it. Germany had an enormous terrorism flap in the 70's, and 80's, according to the media. But in reality several tens of people died and somewhat more were wounded. Much less than a year on the autobahn.
slackerIII 17y ago
Is this idea novel to the people protecting security? If so, that is kind of scary. If not, why issue this warning? Is this some kind of bureaucratic CYA in action?
- roc 17y ago
  why issue this warning My first thought was that someone in the security lobby must be about to market a 'solution'. Something that looks good on Security Theatre.

9 points by alexandros 17y ago

Interesting how this story has (very) slowly made it's way from small mentions like Bruce Schneier's blog to big news outlets. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/ass_bomber.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/ass_bomber.htm... Of course it's not really much of a serious threat: Lewis Page, an "improvised-device disposal operator tasked in support of the UK mainland police from 2001-2004," pointed out that this isn't much of a threat for three reasons: 1) you can't stuff a lot of explosives into a body cavity, 2) detonation is, um, problematic, and 3) the human body can stifle an explosion pretty effectively (think of someone throwing himself on a grenade to save his friends).

alexandros 17y ago
I think people are not thinking about women bombers when they mention (1)...
- stcredzero 17y ago
  That's still going to be muffled by the body, unless they whip it out first. So, what's next, are we going to outlaw women in skirts?
  - sokoloff 17y ago
    I imagine parent's thinking of fake pregnancy, not a flashlight sized/shaped device. (I made that as vanilla-sounding as I could...)
anigbrowl 17y ago
Funnily enough, it was on Leno the same day Scheier posted it. Sometimes the comedy shows are more informative than the actual news!

hughprime 17y ago

What about surgically implanted bombs in fat people? (Like in that movie I won't name just to avoid spoiling it for the small number of people who haven't seen it.) Does anyone have a good idea of whether that's a severe risk? Can anyone have a sizeable bomb surgically implanted and live long enough with it inside them to recover from the surgery enough to walk around normally?

stcredzero 17y ago
What about a convincing fat-suit? You could make one of those without metal components, and you'd need to require people to remove clothing, or have trained personnel pat down every passenger to detect that. And you could easily conceal about 100 pounds of explosive in that fashion. (Making it proof against chemical sniffers would be problematic, though.)
sokoloff 17y ago
I would imagine that if you designed it to look like a near full-term pregnancy, that you could get it close enough to the masses of people in the security lines for sure. To have a massively disruptive attack, you don't need to bring down an airliner; you only need to kill and injure a whole bunch of people, such as those conveniently massed outside the security screening areas. You could probably accomplish the same thing much more easily by just packing a stroller full of explosives and detonating THAT in the security line.
- jacquesm 17y ago
  > You could probably accomplish the same thing much more easily by just packing a stroller full of explosives and detonating THAT in the security line. Exactly. The problem with all this security theater is that if you wanted to just kill a bunch of people there are 100's of ways to do it, low tech and cheap. What bugs me about all this is that the 'terrorists' so far have shown surprisingly little sophistication in the attacks they have made, mostly because they didn't have to. (well, maybe the 'shoe bomber' should count). For the most part, if the stated goal was to bring down western society they're taking their bloody time about it, security really isn't that good. My guess is that this is all blown way out of proportion. Sure, there are some bad guys, but there are less of them than seems to be presented, and they're pretty busy doing other stuff. Blowing up an airliner is a publicity stunt, it isn't going to derail society unless you let it. Germany had an enormous terrorism flap in the 70's, and 80's, according to the media. But in reality several tens of people died and somewhat more were wounded. Much less than a year on the autobahn.

slackerIII 17y ago

Is this idea novel to the people protecting security? If so, that is kind of scary. If not, why issue this warning? Is this some kind of bureaucratic CYA in action?

roc 17y ago
why issue this warning My first thought was that someone in the security lobby must be about to market a 'solution'. Something that looks good on Security Theatre.