Brace for Chaos If U.S. Expands Airline Laptop Ban | Hacker News Reader

Brace for Chaos If U.S. Expands Airline Laptop Ban

bloomberg.com

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14311073

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14312210

I think the worst part of this is the fact that there is a lot of people who have to travel with laptops with potentially sensitive data (myself included), and it is just fundamentally wrong to let the laptops get out of your sight. I can't trust that my laptop is being handled properly going across borders and potentially could be putting people at risk. Because of the nature of my work I also need to bring the confidential information of my employer with me just to debug the problem in the first place, but by the nature of my work I could have accidentally contaminated it and not realized it.

I am surprised that consulting firms haven't already gotten onto the warpath.

Is the distortion of public opinion by means of the now fairly mature fields of economics, politicology and psyops how things got so bad?

What can a person do to not feel powerless in the face of this?

Did people actually believe that this was ever about drugs and terrorism? Do people still?

Can someone help enlighten me? Are there books I should be reading? Could I even learn to understand why, or can I just strive to bear the weight of this pervasive madness?

I find it very hard to accept the existence and scale of these issues, to accept how insignificantly small I am compared to them. To accept I barely understand enough of them to know that they should be solved, and that solving them will be a long and painful process that I'll have little say in.

It's a very lonely and alienating experience to hold these views and opinions. I wish I knew how to express them better, so I could be understood and understand myself better.

In somewhat news: depression is ungood and our anchor is hitting the couch.

Am I the only one who thinks that this is getting ridiculous? Sometimes in life you meet a person who is very worried about ISIS, terrorism or germs. And that's fine, and it's usually about their fear. But requiring hundreds of millions of people to re-arrange their life because you are a fearful person is where I draw the "Completely ridiculous" line.

And where is this different from: Our king woke up today, and he thinks everyone must wear red. Police and military will be deployed all over the city; those who are wearing any color but red will be arrested at gun point.

Or does that mean that for the last decades we have been flying unsafely the whole time; and somehow avoided the major catastrophes these new laws protects from?

This is nuts! So this will make you:

a) Check-in luggage you want it or not.

b) Check-in your 2K€ laptop and risk it getting lost. Along with all the time required to put hardware, software and data back.

Great. I won't fly unless strictly, strictly necessary (frequent flyer here).

> Check-in your 2K€ laptop and risk it getting lost.

or stolen.

>“Picture a technology firm moving employees from Europe to the U.S and telling the developers in those firms they can’t use laptops on airplanes,”

>Chaos

Yes total chaos I'm sure, if you can't be without your laptop for 8 hours then your company has horrible time management.

How about "you can't be without your laptop during your business travel at all"?

Who puts a laptop worth several thousands of euros in check-in luggage which gets lost, stolen and damaged all the time?

You don't. You buy a $200 beater laptop and use that for travel. Load only what is necessary to remote back into your network. Don't carry any other data on it.

If it gets stolen or searched, no loss. Just buy the cheapest thing you find at an electronics store at the destination.

My old org kept a bunch of used thinkpads for this purpose. International travelers were prohibited from taking their work devices, just a loaner and a Remote Desktop client.

Sounds like a whole lot of work for me for absolutely no reason at all.

Hey I have this sick idea: How about we instead let passengers carry laptops on planes?

Wouldn't that be a hell of a lot simpler?

Wait, no, you're right, it's inherently dangerous. In fact, it's so dangerous, that in the past decade during which we've let people do just that, hundreds millions of people have died (Maybe some of that was old age, but we can't be sure it's not laptop-on-plane related).

Clearly something has to change.

I don't get to control what the TSA does. I do get to control how I handle the problems they create.

> The wise man adapts himself to the world, while the fool tries to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the fool.

Well, the 'chaos' they're talking about is the operational and logistical concerns airports and airlines face about how to implement such a ban and the challenges it brings.

I rarely see any travel use his laptop during flights. (I travel economy, though). I think most travelers are worried about their laptop being damaged or stolen.

According to the article the main problem isn't people that can't be without a laptop, but rather the additional risk of losing or compromising a laptop with sensitive and/or important data.

I don't know if this is a good or bad call, and I don't know if it's being driven by the out of touch perspective of the current administration, or if there is some rational logic behind the decision that the public isn't a party to.

What I do know is that all of the opinions I read about the possibility of an in flight electronics ban ignore the first two questions and jump straight to the impact of lost productivity and inconvenience.

If the point were ever to be proven right, there would be instant outrage that action wasn't taken in light of the threat.

> If the point were ever to be proven right, there would be instant outrage that action wasn't taken in light of the threat.

Possibly, but outrage is not always correct. Politicians know that there will always be some outcry no matter what they decide.

i don't have time to read this specific article, but in another discussion of this issue, a real threat was brought up in forcing laptops to be checked. there are non-zero occurrences of laptop fires happening on flights, but since they were with people in the cabin or in the overhead bins, they were able to be supressed. if these fires started in the luggage storage, they might have raged unchecked or created other issues. i would be surprised if airplanes don't have fire supression in the luggage compartment, but forcing the storage of laptops there seems to be asking for trouble.

The current rules define large devices that must be stowed during take-off and landing as any device over 2 pounds.

If the TSA uses the large device classification in their new rules, you may be able to bring a laptop on anyways as long as it's under 2 pounds. Good luck explaining this to a TSA agent though once they start enforcing the new rules.

The current ban which is in affect limits devices based on size and is different from devices being stowed during take-off.

If the justification for this is that you can hide explosives in a laptop, it seems pointless when a Macbook is about as thick as an iPad. If they are going to ban anything shouldn't it be all devices over a given thickness or internal volume?

that's what the ban is. It bans any devices over a certain size. Kindle and iPad is also included in the ban.

> If they are going to ban anything shouldn't it be all devices over a given thickness or internal volume?

That would be even more complicated for TSA.

I wonder if the NSA is vouching for this, so they can snoop on laptops that get checked in.

Fine by me. My overseas travel rate just went up. You want me to come and be at your office in the US, I already ask you to pay about double my standard rate, as well as a travel rate. This is precisely calculated on the amount of hassle I can expect to receive going from here to there, and the additional hassle I have actually working at your location instead of mine. With more of these shenanigans, my hassle will be significantly increased, so my travel rate increases as well.

Probably a boon for laptop rental. And cloud storage.

It'll accelerate phablet sales. If there's only one device allowed per person on-board, might as well try to get the most done with your phone (and bluetooth keyboard).

Until those get banned.

Or the government mandates that prior to boarding, you've got to place your phone/phablet device in an EOD containment chamber along with everybody else's device, which sits in the cargo hold.

It sounds absurd, but then again most of what we have to go through now at the airport is, compared to what took place prior to 9/11.

Google has good opportunity to promote Chromebooks to airlines and frequent travelers. If you use Chromebook logging into your Google account with a Chromebook provided by the airlines will mean you get all your stuff without needing to carry around a laptop.

Air travel has been heaping accretions of indignities on passengers for decades without blowback. Why would this latest one be the straw to break the camel's spine?

Chrome book rental service. All I got to say.

Affected airlines are already offering laptop and iPad rentals, and complementary devices for those travelling in higher classes.

Settle down, settle down shrieking Liberals overhyped by fake MSM news.

For a technical crowd, I'm stunned not one of you understand the root cause for this ban. But I also understand it's not your fault because you would have to read the news from the Caliphate to know what's going on.

ISIS can make or has the intent to make or is trying to make Lithium Ion battery bombs.

Exageration you say? Go research it on Youtube, you'll see. This flaw has been known for years.

Think ISIS won't do it? Believe some crazy conspiracy that ISIS is a Mossad-KGB-Thule front?

Remember that recent passenger jet in Egypt destination Moscow that ISIS blew up killing everyone on board?

I saw with my own eyes the Mujahideen on Telegram weeks before the plane crash where they posted selfies of their new bomb. It literally fits in an Plastic Orange Soda bottle.

Now if you're brave and not under surveillance and not a Muslim and you live in a Nation that respects Free Speech and you want to know the Real News, see page 30 of this pdf:

https://azelin.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/inspire-magazine-...

That is Al Qaida's 2015 magazine issue with the easy DIY blueprint for how to make it.I don't recommend reading all of it, but just enough until you go "holy shit it's that easy."

I almost didn't want to post this because god forbid the wrong you-know-who ever saw it and got "Inspired", but at the same time, this is a Catch-22, a Clear and Present Danger that folks need to know is real and is out there and so we must do whatever safety counter measures are necessary to ensure ISIS can never succeed in these style of attacks.

Take ISIS at their word--they are deadly serious, it's not a joke.

So If the solution to this horror show means fly naked, so be it! Don't complain, be grateful for your privilege.

Would you rather stay alive along with your fellow passengers, or have the convenience of dicking around on your laptop?

You still can use your iPhones so it's not like you're being strapped into a straightjacket for an 8 hour flight.

This is just more security theater to ensure the easily terrorized remain compliant with the whims of law enforcement, not something that will actually make people safer.

In fact, putting a whole lot of high-capacity lithium-based batteries close together in a concentrated space that's hard to access—such as the cargo hold on an airliner on a transoceanic flight—actually seems more dangerous than having them in the passenger compartment mixed among the passengers.

But of course Daesh wouldn't possibly be able to do anything with checked luggage, they can only operate in passenger compartments. Right?

I think many people are well aware of all these news reports, and the general desire of terrorists to smuggle bombs onto airplanes.

But can you explain how moving those same bombs into the cargo hold makes us any safer? Don't we need to focus on detecting them in the first place?

Bear in mind that no planes have crashed as a result of terrorist bombs in recent years, while several have crashed as a result of (accidental) cargo hold fires... So there is evidence that bombs in the passenger cabin are actually safer.

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