TSA Security Directive SD-1544–09-06

http://volokh.com/2009/12/28/tsa-security-directive-sd-1544-09-06/

by cwan • 17 years ago

63 116 17 years ago

"Disable aircraft-integrated passenger communications systems and services (phone, internet access services, live television programming, global positioning systems) prior to boarding and during all phases of flight."

Because you can't blow up the plane if you don't know where you are.

timcederman• 17 years ago

I did notice that the map was disabled on my flight back from Australia yesterday. Pretty annoying.

By the way - GPS watches work just fine in a plane.

mrduncan8• 17 years ago

By the way - GPS watches work just fine in a plane.

It sounds like they are not allowed to be used according to that document though. I would imagine that cell phones also work just fine (I've never had the urge to try), but that doesn't mean their use is allowed.

Edit: Misread the document, I stand corrected. This is just another one of the TSA's typical security illusions.

lallysingh• 17 years ago

By the way - a departure time, and arrival time, and a wristwatch all work fine in a plane.

jm44• 17 years ago

I think you're missing the point. The idea is to make it more difficult to stage an attack around a specific location, such as a heavily populated area or landmark.

icey2• 17 years ago

I didn't notice anything requiring that window blinds must be closed though; it doesn't really seem to me that it would be too hard to just look out the window and figure it out.

bmm6o4• 17 years ago

Is that speculation, or have you seen that provided as an official rationale? It just doesn't make sense to me that someone would not blow up a plane just because it wouldn't be maximally effective.

DannoHung2• 17 years ago

Because Detroit has landmarks.

jrockway9• 17 years ago

Airplanes have windows.

Also, I could write a computer program to use my cell phone's GPS receiver to activate an electronic device at a given location. (Hell, I do this to turn off my ringtone at work.)

Stuff that into the overhead compartment along with your bomb, and the plane is finished... at exactly the location you pre-program. (You don't even need to be on the plane. Put your bags in the overhead compartment, stuff some other bags in front of it, "oh shit, I forgot $foo in the terminal", done.)

bmm6o4• 17 years ago

Yes, this is the part of the rules I find most confusing. Someone with the ability and desire to blow up a plane wouldn't do it unless they could be sure they were on approach to the destination? There would be more devastation if the plane crashed into a densely populated area, but he would give up if he couldn't maximize the impact?

The only thing I can think is maybe it has more to do with the altitude of the aircraft and the hour window is whether the plane is on its final descent or not. Perhaps the explosion is not too powerful, and the pilot could recover in time if the plane is high enough? I'm not sure that's plausible.

waterlesscloud2• 17 years ago

It's not too difficult to notice your plane is descending.

And you know the length of the flight, within a reasonable tolerance. So timing can't be too hard.

This rule makes no sense at all.

dagw2• 17 years ago

Let's say you are a terrorist organizer and have found a novel way to get a bomb onto a plane. Assume also that if you abort the mission before detonation chances are good you'll get the bomb off the plane without detection. You probably also realize that any method you use will only work once, so you want to make sure that one use is used to best effect. Given this I can see the logic in aborting a mission which would give a sub-optimal result given that there is a reasonable chance you can try again for a better result later.

mrduncan8• 17 years ago

The original posting (as best I can tell), which has additional information, is at the following site - http://boardingarea.com/blogs/flyingwithfish/2009/12/27/tsa-...

This blog appears to have just repeated what was posted there.

jparise• 17 years ago

The liquids aspect of this sounds like a pain to enforce. At least in the US, the initial security screening (before you get to the gates) is supposed to filter out all liquids (over 3oz.), but once you're through security, you can buy gallons of drinks, etc. from the stores in the terminal. Thoroughly inspecting those liquids at the gate without advanced equipment sounds really difficult.

apgwoz• 17 years ago

What's interesting to note is that I've found box cutters in the stores within the gates of one airport before. I wonder what the regulations are for airport merchants?

steveklabnik2• 17 years ago

Often, restaurants 'on the inside' will give you knives with your steak.

zandorg• 17 years ago

2.1. All people wishing to fly must flap their wings. Airplanes are banned for being unsafe.

flatline• 17 years ago

At least they are (so far) only enacting it for a few days. I really wonder what would happen if people consistently, politely resisted, by keeping things in their laps, by getting sick and having to run to the bathroom in the last hour of the flight, etc. Seriously, how are flight attendants supposed to enforce this stuff, and what are they to do about unruly passengers? An airplane is not exactly a high-security area.

mrduncan8• 17 years ago

The security on an airplane is the other passengers (and air marshals). I can guarantee that if you start resisting commands from the flight attendants you're going to attract attention from other passengers. Like it or not, the first thing that's going to pop into their heads is that you're planning on bringing their plane down.

Hypothetically, lets say that all passengers coordinate such an event - I'd imagine that's a really easy way to gain admittance to the no-fly list.

pavel_lishin2• 17 years ago

> I'd imagine that's a really easy way to gain admittance to the no-fly list.

And that's probably your best case scenario.

henrikschroder2• 17 years ago

Seriously, if another passenger was arguing with the flight attendants about wanting to use the bathroom, the first thing that would pop into my head is that the guy probably really needed to go to the bathroom.

callahad2• 17 years ago

I can foresee a lot of involuntary "resistance" of the bathroom restriction. An hour is a long time, and quite a few people have health considerations that make waiting that long simply impossible.

NikkiA• 17 years ago

And on the larger airliners 300+ passengers trying to go to the bathroom all at the same time at 70 minutes before landing is going to be fun.

henrikschroder2• 17 years ago

Why even comment on this story? It isn't even security theater anymore, it's amateur's night at the corner pub, with knee-jerk policies that a normal five-year-old kid can figure out how to get around.

maxklein2• 17 years ago

And people still ask me why I prefer taking high speed trains! Flying by plane is so nerve-wracking nowadays, what with dogs sniffing about and burly custom agents and you have to arrive 2 hours beforehand, wait in long lines, sit in an enclosed room and wait even longer, share a bathroom with hundreds of other people.

In euro style fast trains, you arrive 2 minutes before, walk in, you can go have a meal, there is electricity for your laptop, there are toilets everywhere.

For any journey that can be done in 6 hours with the train, the plane journey, which would take between 1 hour and 2 hours actual flying, will take much longer.

That high speed train china built is the way to go. Planes should be used for flying really big distances, and then trains should be used to go on. The entirety of europe should be connected with trains, the U.S should have 10 major airport hubs and the rest done with trains.

Nowadays, flying is just such a bother!

ams61102• 17 years ago

Terrorists blow up trains, too.

callahad2• 17 years ago

And yet, somehow, they're still a more civilized means of transit.

daten2• 17 years ago

The "terrorists" aren't the reason he prefers the train. Terrorist attacks on both are so rare that they're not a real reason to prefer one over the other. However the overly invasive, rude and ineffective airport security is a strong reason not to fly when there's an alternative available. For some reason the trains, malls, schools, libraries, churches and stadiums around where I live aren't getting blown up by terrorists and they have little or no security at all.

axod2• 17 years ago

Shhhhhh! Don't let the authorities know, or they'll start silly security theatre there as well.

mechanical_fish2• 17 years ago

Yes, but for some reason that extremely rare event doesn't attract the same level of paranoid security theatre that other, even rarer events do.

There's something about planes. Perhaps it comes down to ground-dwelling-mammal hindbrain psychology: We're intrinsically more comfortable when we're close to the ground, even when we're theoretically more vulnerable there. I suppose if birds ran our transportation system they'd think differently. ("I'd sure hate it if someone set off some fireworks when I was on my feet on the ground -- I'd be trapped! Only two dimensions to maneuver in, low potential energy, I can't even move my wings properly, and just think how vulnerable I'd be from above! I'd far rather be 20,000 feet up, where I can jump out a window in case of trouble.")

albertcardona• 17 years ago

The fear is the use of an airplane to crash against a building with people inside--i.e. to use the airplane as a weapon. The train can "only" be used for terror: to threaten to blow up some people. If you cynically add that government high officials are unlikely to use a train and very likely to be targets of an airplane used as a weapon, you get why traveling by train is still a pleasure.

dtf• 17 years ago

In euro style fast trains, you arrive 2 minutes before, walk in, you can go have a meal, there is electricity for your laptop, there are toilets everywhere.

Or for those stuck on last Friday's Paris-London Eurostar, not so much toilets everywhere as everywhere a toilet. I payed a premium to use the channel link to get me home this Christmas and, after 3 days of travel hell and sheer incompetence before I finally got on, I can't see myself ever using them again. In fact, after reading what actually occurred under the channel on Friday - tunnel operators seemingly asleep, staff going AWOL, passengers urinating on the floor, not to mention Kent police interrogating those who finally made it out as if they were potential terrorists (save for Claudia Schiffer, who got a police escort home and a free croissant) - I'm not sure I actually trust them to even run a safe service, let alone a convenient one.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/12/22/eurostar_eurotunnel_...

My faith in international rail travel from the UK has been destroyed completely in one fell swoop, and it has nothing to do with the engineering malfunction that instigated it all.

ig12• 17 years ago

From my experience European flights are much easier than international flights, typically you only have to turn up an hour before the flight and security is pretty quick at both ends, especially at smaller airports and if you've only got carry-on.

From friends who've travelled business class out of City Airport in London, I've heard you can turn up as little as 20 minutes before the flight time.

Trains are more pleasant, but it's not the huge chore that say flying to JFK is.

elblanco8• 17 years ago

I'd say this is definitely true at smaller airports (Munich for example), but horrendous at the mega-monstrosity airports like Charles De Gaulle or London-Heathrow. There's just nothing you can do to move through those places faster. (My last trip through London put a warning on my transfer boarding pass to allow 1-hour to get from gate to gate. I thought they were joking.)

imajes6• 17 years ago

It doesn't have to be. Flying for me is fairly painless, but i've been doing it enough so i can optimize the process out. It doesn't take long (or much effort) to make flying equivalent to train travel, for instance (and it's much faster almost all the time).

steveklabnik2• 17 years ago

This might be easy for you to do, but that's also only if you can shake the feeling of worry. I'm some punk kid, with tattoos and ear gauges, and when you combine that with my general distrust of authority, and mix in how terrible the consequences can be, it's not just the process that causes stress with flying. I don't carry a knife, but I do some craft-y stuff sometimes, and I constantly worry if I've accidentally left something in a pocket somewhere.

bbgm• 17 years ago

Yep. Which is why on European trips, when possible I travel by train. More efficient, more comfortable and on the right routes, you get to enjoy some good scenery too. I miss trains in the US, both for local transit and long distance travel.

I don't mind flying, and I fly crazy amounts, but it's become increasingly difficult to justify the headache, especially for some of the shorter fly-in, fly-out trips that I take

ubernostrum2• 17 years ago

And people still ask me why I prefer taking high speed trains!

I know! I just love that hourly New York-to-London train service that runs under the Atlantic...

pavel_lishin2• 17 years ago

You don't need sarcasm to make fun of rail. Every time I try to get a hypothetical route on Amtrak.com for Dallas to New Orleans, or Florida, it insists on routing me through Chicago. Every. Single. Time.

maxklein2• 17 years ago

That would likely be a bit claustrophobic should it ever be made. That's what I mean - big planes should be used between big hubs, for example leaving from the ocean beside England and landing in the ocean beside new york, then you take a bunch of trains to the various destinations.

Check-in, security checks and all that can then be distributed amongst all the small train stations. When you arrive at a plane hub, you just walk in with your hand luggage.

I used to think that smaller regional planes were the future, but nowadays I'm thinking perhaps the large titanicesque planes may be the way to go to solve this problem.

jrockway9• 17 years ago

To be fair, this would be an amazing engineering project. The technology needed already exists: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C5%AB%C5%8D_Shinkansen

LHR to JFK would only take about 9 hours. By train.

axod2• 17 years ago

I still really want someone to try and blow up a plane by dousing their clothes in some flammable/explosive/unstable chemicals.

Then we'd all be told to fly naked, or in airport provided suits.

jrockway9• 17 years ago

I'm waiting for people to start blowing up expressways. Then maybe we can get some decent public transportation.

msluyter• 17 years ago

I used to joke that in the future they'd simply take all of your clothes and personal possessions at security, stamp your hand with an ID number, and make everybody wear hospital gowns.

cjoh2• 17 years ago

Keep in mind this is only about flights originating in non-US airports with destinations in the US. None of this stuff applies to your flight back home to New York from Kansas next week.

acangiano• 17 years ago

For now.

mixmax2• 17 years ago

Not all of us are from the US.

cjoh2• 17 years ago

No America-Centric implication was intended and I apologize if I came across that way. Just seemed important to bring up since the lead comment as of this writing is about using high-speed trains as an alternative. And unless there's something happening that I don't know about, there isn't a high-speed transatlantic train in the worls.

akl• 17 years ago

.. kind of. There are some reports of these rules being enforced on domestic-only flights, too:

http://gizmodo.com/5435117/the-unofficial-guide-to-flying-af... (scroll down to the 'be ready for anything' part)

beeker• 17 years ago

The more scared people are, the easier they are to control.

muriithi• 17 years ago

The terrorists have won.You don't have to bring down an aircraft to make flying a nightmare.

I know this sounds insane and the Terminally Stupid Administration will not allow it, but if someone came up with a "low security" airline, where screening was done by the airline itself using their own guidelines, I would be an enthusiastic customer.

We only need two things, an airline that values it's customers but is not willing to lose any planes and passengers who are alert and ready to take on any threats in the air. The latter attitude has been there since United Airlines Flight 93, the former is a mirage.

decadentcactus2• 17 years ago

I agree. I don't see the need for such an invasive govt run organisation to get airlines to provide security - they already will have an interest in not losing their planes, they're expensive as hell.

lssndrdn• 17 years ago

It's true that these security directives don't seem to make much sense, but what is the alternative? I think what they are tring to accomplish is to simply reduce the risk of a repeat "accident" along the same line of the one that happened on Dec 25. After an incident like that, the TSA just cannot afford to have someone else pull a similar stunt, it would only further ruin their already low credibility.

The challenge is about striking a balance between having passengers bring whatever they want on a plane and having them fly naked and anesthetized, just like if they were cargo.

trafficlight• 17 years ago

Nobody is going to pull the same stunt. The people building these devices aren't stupid. Kneejerk reactions never solved anything.

jsz0• 17 years ago

It sounds like these directives are based on specific intelligence of currently planned attacks and not meant to be broader long term regulations. What if there is good intelligence to suggest there are a dozen other attackers known to be trained and ready for this mission? If they are already in-transit and have a communication black-out from the leaders it seems entirely possible they would attempt it despite the failures.

mortenjorck• 17 years ago

The TSA has now officially become like an abusive, paranoid husband. Every event that has happened thus far has made him more suspicious and less rational, but the "lap burner" has at last pushed him over the edge into raging paranoia, doubling down with fevered lists of arbitrary, bizarre restrictions that make sense only to his unhinged mind.

And there's nothing we can do. We depend on him. We can't just walk out; where would we go?

elblanco8• 17 years ago

I've noticed though, that ever sense the TSA got their new dark blue uniforms (from the old white ones), they seem to be quite a bit more respectful at least.

icey2• 17 years ago

What do you think will happen after this directive expires?

  EXPIRATION: 0200Z on December 30, 2009

nollidge• 17 years ago

I was going to point that out also. This isn't a permanent change. It's still silly, but at least it's not permanent like the stuff with liquids and toenail clippers.

pmorici• 17 years ago

Notice how the thing is signed,

"Gale Rossides Acting Administrator"

In other words the TSA still doesn't have a permanent head even though the new administration has now been in office for a year.

TSA Security Directive SD-1544–09-06

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