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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

I have no idea what the point of this is.

> the ban will apply to nonstop flights to the U.S. from 10 airports in eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa

Personal electronics are near-indispensable. By restricting their carry from Muslim countries, freedom of movement to and from those countries is significantly curtailed. This is about getting around the illegality of the Muslim ban without banning any persons or groups. This is about "cultural protectionism" through isolationism, not terrorism, and it's not even trying particularly hard to pretend otherwise.

The premise you're going with doesn't make much sense. The devices aren't banned, you have to pack them in your luggage. It won't significantly curtail freedom of movement at all.

You're not wrong. I suppose I'd call my own statement a bit weak if this wasn't the third highly targeted policy in the past 2 months - in fact one of the few types of policies this administration has pushed all the way to action. It's possible my lens is broken, but it seems to me none of the policies considering the general populace of the middle east should be considered in isolation.

There's zero question it's intentionally narrowly targeting Islamic terrorism at best, and at worst is a staging ground for how much power of restriction they now have (or can get away with) when it comes to those sorts of things. The same way phone searches are a trial balloon that will inevitably spread to not just the general population at airports but the local / state law enforcement as well.

My point is specifically that I don't believe it'll impede freedom of movement meaningfully. People will simply pack their devices in luggage. Interestingly, it might result in fewer laptop searches at the airports (whereas they might have asked someone to open / turn on / provide a password), among that targeted population.

It will make espionage much easier: checked-in laptops will be trivially stolen as part of security checks (US authorities can and will open any checked-in bag they feel like opening, and now any involved Middle-Eastern authority will also be able to do the same).

> Interestingly, it might result in fewer laptop searches at the airports (whereas they might have asked someone to open / turn on / provide a password), among that targeted population.

I don't think that's right. Such demands are not generally made at airport security at the origin, but at the CBP checkpoint at the arrival airport. There, passengers have already retrieved checked bags.

Origin checks are used to prove that the electronic device is not a container for a bomb. (If it boots and looks normal, it probably is.)

interesting theory. but is keeping you from your laptop (but still allowing a smart phone) really much of a deterrent these days? most younger people are content without a laptop, using their phones quite a bit.

It would be for me. My laptop is my access to my work and without it I'm not traveling for work and I will not let it out of my sight without buying another laptop and doing a complete re-image. No way I'd trust it after passing it off for several hours. Paranoid? Maybe.

...this is absurd. It's a 96 hour ban, this has absolutely nothing to do with the travel ban.

Could you link or explain where you are getting further info?

Neither Bloomberg nor this Reuters article mention the period it will be in effect.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-airlines-electronics-i...

While some initially reported it as a 96 hour ban, some of those reports have been updated to say 96 hours allowed for airline compliance. I honestly don't know which one is right.

At least we can rest assured this has been as carefully prepared, vetted, and communicated as other recent policies. </s>

http://thehill.com/policy/transportation/324846-feds-tempora...

Fox has since updated their coverage.

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2017/03/21/electronics-ban-on-...

Subjecting a targeted group to repeated fear and uncertainty through changing rules seems to be more of the plan than an absurdity. A rule like this establishes precedent, even.

You put up this headline without any of the other political context and I am right there with you. But there is no shortage of context.

> This is about getting around the illegality of the Muslim ban without banning any persons or groups.

This was my first thought until I saw a Saudi airport on the list of originating airports that will be impacted by the ban. Trump avoided listing any countries where he had business connections with in his ban orders, so I'm more likely to believe this is the result of actionable intelligence than xenophobia/Islamophobia-related bullshit.

Still, I could be wrong and it could just be the current administration keeping on their anti-Islam crusade.

These parts of the article provides plausible explanation:

"Brian Jenkins, an aviation-security expert at the Rand Corp., said the nature of the security measure suggested that it was driven by intelligence of a possible attack."

"The ban would begin just before Wednesday's meeting of the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State group in Washington. A number of top Arab officials were expected to attend the State Department gathering. It was unclear whether their travel plans were related to any increased worry about security threats."

What kind of attack would this policy avert?

https://xkcd.com/651/

May be there's a loophole in x-ray machines that scan cabin bags, but not in the machines that scan checked-in bags?

(just guessing, if at all "it was driven by intelligence of a possible attack")

Why is the ban targeting only these specific airlines? Are they so confident that a potential perpetrator couldn't fly in on Delta through Paris?

Sounds like the threat is not about generic attack against airplanes, but more targeted towards specific people traveling from certain countries to US.

Somebody hiding in the laptop chassis some kind of object that can be used to harm others.

The X rays are certainly not perfect and there is certain probability something goes unnoticed. In normal case we just make a trade off between convenience and security. In this special case somebody wants to play it safe.

I guess it's a shoutout to Trump's core supporters that he's still committed to doing "The Right Thing" by putting those brown people in their proper places.

(Totally not picked because they're muslim, I swear, wink wink.)

So who was Obama appealing to among his core supporters, when he attacked "brown people" in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen?

...Those people who can understand the difference between a temporary stopping of visa processes and a blanket ban that extends to legal green card holders?

Obama bombed those places with drones.

Trump supporters...

People who don't like ISIS, ghaddafi, ISIS/AQ, the taliban, ibid, pirates, and AQAP respectively.

Obama didn't do the wink part before he did that, though.

Easier to root and search a machine checked in?

TSA always fucks up my repack. I've had nicely-packed arts totally destroyed because of how they chuck shit back into my bag after they finish pawing through it.

it's just another distraction from the healthcare plan or the Russian ties investigation, no need to fry your brain looking for logic here.

It could be a specific threat they are now aware of.

Distracts from today's testimony by Comey.

Almost no one outside the tech or business communities will really care about this (beyond individuals annoyed with not having iTunes on a 14 hour flight). I don't think it's attention fodder (nor do I think it's a valid means of protecting flights). Not sure what this is.

"Almost no one outside the tech or business communities will really care about this"

That's kind of a massive segment of the population.

Or people traveling with kids (for whom iPads on board are a saving grace on long haul flights).

Saving grace for those traveling adjacent to those traveling with kids too.

To prevent passengers from having access to communication while going through customs. To limit pictures and social media posts in the time between when they get off the plane in the US until their retrieve their checked bags from baggage claim.

It seems not to apply to cell phones.

Also, the one time I came into the US, I carried my checked bags through customs.

Phones are an exception to this policy, so neither of these is applicable.

They'd better have a very good reason for this (e.g. very credible threat). Otherwise even moderates that voted for Trump are going to suffer from serious case of buyer's remorse.

Does Trump have many voters flying from Saudi Arabia?

No, but his policies are making the U.S. look pretty bad. His hardcore supporters won't care about that, but swing voters that swung his way would.

This sort of stuff spooks travellers from other countries also ("I saw a headline that said I wasn't allowed to take my laptop to America!"). End result is likely to be a drop in tourism and international students which will hit some industries harder than others.

Maybe not the KSA, but Dubai for example is a key connection for travelers from Asia.

I doubt there is a credible threat prompting this ban. It's appeasement IMO.

especially if it only applies to non-stop flights...

It wouldn't make any sense otherwise. Non-stop flight is another way of saying "flight to the US", right?

"flights to US could include" multi-stop flights. There is a non-stop flight from Singapore to USA i think, leaves airport there and lands here. Multi-stop flights have a stop in EU if they are coming from Asia to USA or they might stop at Japan or something. Eg: Nepal -> HongKong -> Japan -> USA

In which case the ban would apply to the final sector, but for all intents and purposes, passengers boarding at earlier airports would also be prohibited to bring electronics onboard as checking luggage during a flight connection is pretty much unheard of (unless of course it's an overnight stopover).

Your luggage is not with you from the beginning. And the carry on is definitely checked in connecting flights depending on the airport. HK and New Delhi used to have it up to two years ago. Unless they recently changed it.

and does not apply to cellphones.

"cellphones and medical devices were excluded from the ban."

Without doing any further research than what you did when you made this comment, how long do you believe this ban is for?

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