TSA To Ban Printer Cartridges Next Week : SD 1554-10-05

TSA To Ban Printer Cartridges Next Week : SD 1554-10-05(boardingarea.com)

16 points by all 15 years ago | 27 comments

If one was a clever terrorist, you might eventually come to the conclusion that you could do more economic and psychological harm by examining the things people want and need to be able to fly with and then running terror plots that use those items. Things like shoes, underwear, liquids, and electronics come to mind.

But of course, we'd never be so stupid as to play into the terrorists hands this way. I'm sure they don't laugh at us running around like idiots throwing away toiletries, getting strip-searched, and shuffling through security barefoot while someone ogles our naked bodies in another room. We sure showed them!

aw3c2 15 years ago | |

The terrorism I feel is "freedom" (that word is often abused badly) being taken away. This is not what "the terrorists" do, but what our governments to.

tome 15 years ago | |

I'm sure they don't laugh at us running around like idiots throwing away toiletries, getting strip-searched, and shuffling through security barefoot while someone ogles our naked bodies in another room.

I don't entirely understand the individual psychology behind terrorism, but I'm absolutely certain that it isn't so they can laugh at us when we're in the security queue.

ErrantX 15 years ago | | |

You've missed his point slightly. It is not that they are literally laughing..

But the point was - terrorists aim to provoke fear and discord; blowing up a passenger aircraft is pretty terrifying, but causing anger, fear frustration and discord on an international scale can be just as good. And all they have to do is get a bomb (even a useless, utterly ineffective one) onto a plane every few months.

Bureaucracy does the rest :)

rwmj 15 years ago | |

http://wondermark.com/220/

rick_2047 15 years ago | |

Things like shoes, underwear, liquids, and electronics come to mind.

Umm.. just as a thinking exercise what can one do with this?

My take, make a bomb which is deployed in the shoe and is triggered by your urine with some electronics in your underwear. You can have some liquids which will help you piss (normal drinks do help but make it specialized).

rdtsc 15 years ago | | |

Just a word of warning, be careful about making such comments.

I know someone who was visited by FBI at their workplace, and at home, because of what they said on a message board. They speculated about how a terrorist attack _could_ happen.

Then there is the recent case of Yasir Afifi. FBI were tracking him because his friend made a post that caught their attention.

Unfortunately our law enforcement and other government agencies don't interpret "freedom of speech" like most regular citizens do. And it certainly doesn't guarantee protections against harassment and embarrassing bullying that accompanies such "investigations"

bl4k 15 years ago |

I was impressed by the concealment method used in the bomb, since the explosive has a similar consistancy to ink/toner - but this is just ridiculous.

Responding to each terrorist threat, post-threat, by banning any method they used in their attack is a bad way to secure the western world.

The terrorists will just adapt and find other methods, as they have proven time and time again. In the interim, millions of travelers take their shoes off at airports, can no longer carry liquids on planes and have perfumes and aftershaves confiscated.

With all the different ways our lives have been adjusted because of each attack attempt I have to ask myself if we are not letting them win.

splat 15 years ago |

This is emphasized in the article, but it bears repeating:

"Organized terrorists are long term planners and they do not play the same cards more than once."

jonknee 15 years ago |

This could have been an article in The Onion. If we keep up this strategy, it will be impossible to travel with anything.

Qz 15 years ago | |

I can see it now:

TSA To Ban Airplanes Next Week : SD OMG-WTF-BBQ

petrilli 15 years ago |

I believe a summary is best stated as "See, we're doing something!" Doing something, and doing the right thing, are very different things, but one is simple, and the other requires thought and risk management.

You can imagine which is rewarded and which is punished. Not just by politicians and bureaucrats, but by the public as well. The general public is also responsible for this absurdity by not being willing to accept some risk as being unavoidable.

anon_for_this_1 15 years ago | |

You just described the reason my father-in-law (and now I) believe that the best outcome is no movement. Thus we both vote (in the US) to try and create a stalemate in house vs Senate - both parties are so screwed up they damage everything they touch.

raganwald 15 years ago | |

"The Politician's Fallacy: We must do something. This is something. Therfore, we must do it. But doing the wrong thing is worse than doing nothing at all." --Sir Humphrey Appleby, "Yes, Prime Minister."

ajju 15 years ago |

Next up suitcases, clothes and hair. Forcibly shaven-bald travelers trudging naked through security carrying their belongings in see through polythene bags will be a common sight.

Invest in barbershop stocks.

awt 15 years ago |

The airline situation seems more and more analogous to the email spam problem. Right now the government is still in the blacklist phase. Hopefully soon they'll come up with something more like a bayesean approach -- training people to recognize terrorists and bombs on a case by case basis instead of blocking broad categories.

AngryParsley 15 years ago |

...however prohibiting printer cartridges poses a few challenges … mainly that generally printer cartridges do not have their ink or toner volume readily listed on the cartridge its self.

Not a problem. I'm sure people can buy/make stickers that say "15 ounces" and stick them on the cartridges.

rwmj 15 years ago |

If it makes printer cartridge vendors display the tiny quantity of ink / toner that you're buying for $100, then maybe not such a bad thing after all ...

dododo 15 years ago |

why are they overfitting the data?

wouldn't it be better to have expected volumes and masses for various items, and where items defer from these expectations, they get inspected fully?

many customs sheets include a declaration of the package contents.

cosmicray 15 years ago | |

Volume isn't really the issue, but mass might be. In the case of the toner cartridge (which appears to have been a sub-assembly of an actual printer) a truly devious individual might have removed the correct amount of toner, and then offset it with an equal amount of explosive material. The mass doesn't change (mostly due to the fact that the toner cartridge had excess space in it to begin with).

What does change is the chemical signature of the contents. That would require inspection of each item as it is presented for shipment. Hence the problem.

iwr 15 years ago |

I for one am waiting for the breast implant bomber.

lani 15 years ago |

was it scott adams who said this last time - "we're one more step closer to flying nude"