US considers banning laptops on flights from UK airports | Hacker News Reader

US considers banning laptops on flights from UK airports

theguardian.com

48 pointsMatt3o12_57 comments

The bans sparked criticism from technology experts, who said the new rules appeared to be at odds with basic computer science.

Nicholas Weaver, researcher at the International Computer Science Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, said last month: “It doesn’t match a conventional threat model. If you assume the attacker is interested in turning a laptop into a bomb, it would work just as well in the cargo hold.”

I'm not sure what this has to do with computer science, unless computer science includes "the science of things shaped like computers", or why you need Nicholas Weaver to tell you about how bombs in cargo holds work.

Something something combinatorial explosion.

Nothing like calling Ack(8,8) on a transatlantic flight.

Logic bombs.

Speculation: maybe it involves hiding bomb components in multiple passengers' laptops, then combining them in-flight?

If someone intelligent wants to blow up your flight I bet they can. It's just most terrorist are very stupid, hence why they become indoctrinated into believing crazy lies about what the Quran (or for that matter the bible) says.

Terror groups have plenty of well-educated folks and highly skilled bomb makers. They don't send them out on suicide missions, but they're certainly there.

The ones that design the the bombs are typically not the ones that blow up the bombs, or assemble the bombs.

Lets google your claim:

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/bruce-hoffman/todays-highly...

Nowhere in there does it say most terrorists are intelligent.

Doesn't address the "computer science" part. Assuming the writer just meant "science". The laptop bomb has to be pretty small, so the terrorist's plan is to get a window seat and place it against the hull.

That's why it is undesirable to have it in the cargo area...they have no control over placement. Also, the cargo area requires something other than a manual trigger, which is either complex, or error prone.

Edit: Please note that I'm not endorsing a laptop ban.

There is no way I would ever stow a macbook pro in my luggage, only to see someone from baggage handling throw it around and be damaged or arrive at the destination and find it missing.

With everything else that is happening in the industry. I'm now starting to seriously consider JetSmarter.

I'm genuinely interested to know of experiences traveling from outside the US to the US using them. Were you subject to the same security screenings, would this ban be subject to JetSmarter as well and finally, are you able to board your own luggage?

Thanks.

I'd never heard of JetSmarter so I went to their site to learn more. The website is a scroll hijacking mess that's really unpleasant to use. I didn't make it past the landing page.

If private jets are an alternative you can as well pay Fedex/UPS/DHL to transport the laptop. Insured and cheaper than private jets.

Leaving aside the (hopefully) unlikely case of the authorities deciding to install malware on my laptop, I've had experience of the roughness with which checked baggage is treated and getting things stolen from said baggage. That makes me very wary of checking delicate electronics, unless the airports and airlines substantially improve their baggage handling.

If this goes ahead, I can see myself travelling without a laptop for short trips, and sending it ahead via DHL for longer ones, taking a disk image on a USB stick for backup.

Imagine if some source indicates that explosive fibers can be woven into innocent looking clothes, would all passengers be required to be naked before they are allowed to fly? I believe we can do better than this outright banning ...

I sometimes wonder if "the terrorists" have a twisted sense of humor. They put a bomb in a shoe, so now we all have to take off our shoes at the airport. Learning from this, they put a bomb in some guy's underwear. Fortunately we don't have to take off our underwear at the airport now, but we do have to be gawked at essentially naked by underpaid TSA rent-a-cops.

It's only a matter of time before they think of the "butt-plug bomber," and we get cavity searches before boarding planes.

There's a similar situation waiting to happen with OFAC regulations. They have a blacklist of people's names[1]. They compel banks and companies like Paypal to do loose/fuzzy string matching for any money transaction and block it. The string doesn't have to match just in the payer or payee field. It can match anything, like a memo field. It already affects people with popular common names that are similar to the real person on the list[2].

Waiting for some suspected terrorist on the list to legally change their name to "THANK YOU" or "PAYMENT FOR" or similar.

[1] https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/SDN-List/...

[2] https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/About-Business-Archive/T...

all while Emmanuel Goldstein rolls in his fictitious grave.

We already had an underwear bomber. I believe that was the driver for the body scanners or obligitory grope policy in the US.

(Edit: it seems it's all of Europe, not just the UK) So you fly to Amsterdam or Dublin, then onto the US instead.

This isn't going to protect anyone, it's just stupid and inconvenient to its very core.

I'm already apprehensive about potentially having to visit the US because of everything from asking for social media accounts to copying data off of phones. All this is doing is making sure that I'm not going to travel to the US for business or pleasure.

Its all travellers from Europe, the UK is in the title because of the special relationship.

From the Times article that has more details:

"British security chiefs have been put on alert that the US is planning to impose its laptop ban on incoming flights from some parts of Europe — a move that could be implemented within weeks. They are waiting to see whether Britain is included, according to a senior Whitehall source."

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/trump-considers-bann...

As long as there's one country in Schengen which is not affected it doesn't make sense. You could just drive to that country and fly from there. Unless it's based on different security procedures. But in that case the US could give that information to the affected countries so that they can act instead of being banned.

United and American Airlines suggest that we ban cell phones with cameras(probably shouldn't have to make this distinction) too, for umm safety.

This is insane and will not end well. I suspect it'll not be nearly as damaging as it should be for the US, though.

So what's stopping them from flying to Canada and taking a connecting flight?

Or putting the device in the cargo hold, landing in the US, and detonating it at any sports event or concert?

This whole thing smacks of Security Theater more than anything else. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater

The hit to in-flight productivity will be enormous.

Then again, this falls into the same 'collateral damage' category as speed bumps - saves lives but also shortens lives with air and noise pollution, interferes with paramedics, increases commute time etc.

Except we have studies showing that speed bumps actually do save lives. There's nothing indicating that this ban would prevent bombs on planes in any meaningful way.

I'm for speed bumps, but the equation is life years saved minus years taken. The subtraction part comes from shorter life spans due to increased air pollution, from deaths caused by speed bumps, from emergency vehicles having to drive slower in time-critical situations etc.

Isn't this why we pay for all those fancy color scanners?

We pay for fear. ;)

My life improved so much once I decided to stop flying.

While it might be environmentally friendly to fly, or cosmically irrelevant, my life is enriched by visiting places. You don't like far off vacations?

I'd love some Matrix-like virtual reality in the future though.

Last flight I was on, I took my friend's mini-geiger-counter, and the radiation level at 35,000 feet (over Oregon, not the Arctic or anything) was fifty times the background radiation at the airport. Obviously it's not acutely dangerous, but you have to wonder how many, say, cigarettes that's equivalent to as far as cancer risk.

If the laptop ban comes into force, I doubt you will be able to bring that Geiger counter on board either...

Doesn't include cigarettes, but shows a NY to LA flight as equivalent to 2 chest x-rays: https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Indeed flight crews have an elevated cancer risk: http://www.webmd.com/breast-cancer/news/20031021/flight-crew...

But the risk is 50% more than normal, which is not extremely high compared to how much more radiation exposure they get.

EDIT: Flight crews working on intercontinental flights have higher yearly exposure than nuclear workers apparently (https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2013/11/27/radiation-exposu...)

Answer: For each flight, you get 2.3 cigarettes worth of radioactivity.

You would need to fly 4572 East-West coast flights per year to reach same dose as from smoking 1.5 packs of cigarettes per day.

---

Data points:

Smoking 1.5 packs of cigarettes per day is equivalent to between 60 and 160 milliSievert per year http://mathscinotes.com/2014/01/radiation-exposure-from-ciga... With 20 cigarettes this means 10958 cigarettes. At about 160 milliSievert, we get 0,014601205 milliSivert per cigarette.

You would be exposed to about 0.035 mSv (3.5 mrem) of cosmic radiation if you were to fly within the United States from the east coast to the west coast. https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/air_travel.html

I think that's 345 banana equivalents. (Since you can't smoke on the plane.)

Goole street map + htc vive + order food from Chinatown

Probably 50% of the experience without the risk of being used as a battery.

No, I've become somewhat sceptical about the 'benefits' of travel, mostly it seems to have become more about one-upmanship than anything else.

That is definitely a thing, but you only have to care about what you bring into it. I don't care about travelling for show, but to places I find interesting. But if you don't get anything out of it other than the stamp in your passport then I guess it's not for you.

You don't really have a choice if you need to travel between Europe and the US. Travelling by sea would take far too long.

The time it takes is one thing, the other I expect is the cost. Is there really an alternative still running ocean transport between Europe and the US? (and not getting on a container ship Michael Palin's Around the World in 80 Days style)

Yeah QE2, costs about the same as an airline ticket last time I checked. For some people who are terrified of flying this is how they manage to visit the US/Europe.

Cunard. Prices aren't as too terrible, basic rooms are ~£1000 per person one-way.

I'm not sure about a regular ocean transport, but you could take a cruise ship between Southampton, UK and Key West, Miami or New Orleans. They're not particularly regular, on top of the additional cost/time constraints.

Even if you had the time (five days on the QE2 from Southampton to New York) there's not a lot of choice with schedule.

With a travel time of 5 days I assume you won't arrive jet lagged? I think that compensates for lack of schedule choice.

With the plane you can spend 2 days recovering from jetlag and still come out ahead.

They change the clocks an hour daily, so it is pretty easy on the body clock. More so in one direction than the other, of course, but still better than flying.

I'm curious where you saw that figure of 5 days. Everything I've seen is 7-8 nights, e.g., depart 9/9 and arrive 9/16. That doesn't substantively change your point; I was just surprised to see 5 days.

They can do it in 5 days, but most of the time they want you on there longer. It means they can both conserve fuel, and have you spending money for longer once you're captive.

Source: I worked on cruise ships for a couple of years. FWIW the crossing I did with Holland America took 6 days.

Cool, thanks for explaining.

They already use these bomb detectors on some bags with random checks. Apparently these scanners can detect any residue of explosives. Why not make it compulsary for all laptops? Should be impossible to transform a laptop into a bomb without creating some residue.

Or are they concerned that people use batteries as bombs? In that case you could just use several phones instead.

if they ban anything larger than a smartphone how do they figure that the terrorists won't just use smartphones?

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