Christmas Bomber: Where Airport Security Worked | Hacker News Reader

Christmas Bomber: Where Airport Security Worked

schneier.com

28 pointswglb20 comments

I think he should stick to writing about cryptography. I read his blog from time to time because of his expertise, but recent posts has just been filled with assumptions and speculations.

What specific assumptions or speculation in this article do you find objectionable?

Mainly that "detonating PETN is actually very hard" and "no security system [...] on the planet, is designed to catch someone doing this". I remember his analysis to be more detailed than this, but maybe I remember wrong. There were also a post about the predator drone about a week ago, which had some good technical points, but in my opinion was poor from an intelligence perspective.

Those statements are both true, and they support his point that the airport security systems have done some good. I don't see the problem.

I think it's reasonable to point out that almost anyone could have made the same observations based on media reporting over the past several weeks; it took no particular skill or experience to note that no security system is perfect or to note that liquid explosives are hard to detonate.

Perhaps it doesn't take much skill, but that observation doesn't really jive with my not having seen these points in print or on the news since the incident. Bruce's blurb was the first time I heard anything about either aspect of the case.

houseabsolute is right on this. You do not see any blasting caps, or explosive devices, military grade or not, made with PETN, that do not have a trigger. Fancy-named explosives like C-4 get all the glory in the movies, but tricky bits like the triggers don't get any attention.

Thankfully for us, the same properties that make a trigger a trigger also make triggers kind of a pain in the ass to manufacture. If it will blow up easily on the plane, it'll blow up even more easily when you're trying to make it from scratch or if you're prying it out of an artillery shell (how in God's name one would try to attempt the latter, I have no idea).

Yes, you need a detonator, but it still not "very hard" to detonate. It's actually relatively sensitive to impact, and very sensitive to explosive initiation. If you call (basically) the most sensitive secondary explosive for "very hard to detonate" (like he did) you are probably not very experienced with explosives, which was my point in the first place. And while I'm very far from an explosives expert, my experiences are not from the movies.

It strikes me that most of the complaints on this issue (ignoring the partisan frothing) center on self-reassurance - a faith that we can stop all terrorists with reasonable security measures, it's just that someone was slack on the job in this case. Blame hard enough, and we'll be safe.

You're very right. I think that stems from the 'we're on the right side' feeling that people have somehow.

The truth is a determined enough organization with some money to burn will always, now and forever have the ability to disrupt society to some extent and murder a bunch of people in the process.

To admit that though means that you're going to be lumped in with the fatalists instead of with the realists.

Any fool can break a window, it takes lots of effort and knowledge to make a clear, flat piece of glass. In other words, destruction is so much easier than creation that we should be happy the terrorists are as incompetent as they are.

They'd like to destroy the western world (so we're told) and they've managed to kill < 10,000 people in many years of trying.

They would be more effective if they started cutting brake lines on vehicles at random.

"I think that stems from the 'we're on the right side' feeling"

What does that have to do with this?

It's linked to 'faith' and it's cousin 'fate', the idea that something strong flows from being on the 'right' side of a conflict and that that in turn can somehow be used to affect the outcome.

Of course all sides think they're on the 'right' side, and besides that there is no deity that will intervene with reality to make a difference.

But that does not seem to stop people from thinking that something will work against the 'bad guys' so that we can 'win' this thing.

As long as the world is structured the way it is there will be an endless supply of 'bad guys', and some of them will be successful no matter how much we destroy our own society in order to try to thwart their plans.

Being on the right side literally does not enter in to the equation, except in the heads of those that believe strongly in good and bad, and most likely in heaven and hell.

Which is a good part of the cause of all this trouble anyway.

David Foster Wallace has a sort of fatalistic view toward the balance between freedom and safety, arguing that we ought to have just accepted that people will die if we are to live in a free society: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200711/wallace-safety

This kind of mentality has a lot more in common with the values of the founding fathers than the idea that perfect security is possible or achievable.

I honestly feel better living in a society that takes its chances with 'the terrorists' and relies on citizens standing up for themselves when required as opposed to having a police state.

Freedom has always come at a price, I don't see why this should be any different.

Not long ago in nl a kid was stabbed in a day-care center by some lunatic.

You can then put an armed guard in front of every day-care center to ensure it will never happen again but there are a million other 'soft targets' ready to be taken.

So lock the idiot up and throw away the key but keep on living in a normal way.

Bruce Schneier seems to be very intent to leverage his expertise in computer security in to getting himself associated with the 'war on terror' gravy train, the best thing in the security scene since the red scare and the cold war.

It'll make him a bundle.

Or maybe it's just been an interest of his over the time that "security" and associated paranoia have been a part of the public discussion in the US.

Do devices that can detect plastic explosives through clothing exist?

There are "sniffer" devices that can detect the minutest traces of target chemicals. Parts-per-million or parts-per-billion detectors are no longer unusual. http://www.officer.com/web/online/Investigation/Sniffer-Devi...

Yay for false positives. They had/have those in the CN tower in Toronto, major nuisance. But since it is obviously high on the target list of every extremist organization they can't take chances.

Some airports use "puffer" machines which will blow air on you and then sniff it for trace amounts of specific chemicals. In practice, they seem to have issues with becoming clogged as well as false alarms - http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003744097...

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