TSA to allow some small knives in carry-on luggage

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21678267

by ComputerGuru • 13 years ago

26 44 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

phren0logy• 13 years ago

Glad to see a step toward reason, but this seems like an interesting first concession. How about just letting me keep my shoes on?

joonix• 13 years ago

Yeah, if anything small knives seem like a legitimate threat given box cutters were used on 9/11 to kill people. It's about time to allow shoes and belts to remain on -- it doesn't make sense to take them off if you're going to force people through naked xray scanners either.

nevinera• 13 years ago

But small containers of any kind of liquid are right out.

erichocean• 13 years ago

Especially a bottle with breast milk that is being actively consumed by a baby (I still can't believe I saw this happen).

leeoniya• 13 years ago

i've asked before about my sealed bottle of water, if i open and drink half of it in front of the agent, can i take the other half aboard? no, of course not.

IceyEC• 13 years ago

And they let us carry bottles of water and liquid Tylenol through about a month ago

metajack• 13 years ago

Breast milk is expressly allowed. I have personally taken breast milk through the airport with my children by myself (I'm a man) and they didn't bat at eye at me. Supposedly you can take it through without the child too, which makes sense for traveling, pumping mothers.

Sometime they will test it, which involves holding a small trip of paper above the open container. I think that happened only once to me.

They are pretty lax most times if you have children along. You can take water through with kids (or at least I have several times), and they have always skipped any of the extra screening and scanning when I'm with my kids. We just walk right through the metal detector.

Shivetya• 13 years ago

Insulin is not, my mom has flown with her pump and extra insulin. They even let the syringes go with it. Just has to have proper labeling, not like an industrious terrorist/loon would ever know to fake that.

lucian19002• 13 years ago

Who the fuck would object to this change? There's nothing significant one can do with such knives.

Also, how about fucking liquids?

ryanglasgow• 13 years ago

People said the same thing about box cutters prior to 9/11. The Flight Attendants Union Coalition is against this too, so there is plenty of objection.

MartinCron3• 13 years ago

For what it's worth, box cutters and utility knives would still be strictly prohibited according to this change.

Bill_Dimm• 13 years ago

Also, how about fucking liquids?

K-Y Jelly is fine if less than 3 ounces. If you need more than 3 ounces, well, maybe try leaving your hotel room occasionally.

lucian19002• 13 years ago

It annoys me that several times I forgot that some particular item is forbidden and it got confiscated. Even jam!

Zak4• 13 years ago

I can think of several places I could cut you with a knife like that which would cause you to bleed to death in minutes. That doesn't actually seem like a good reason to prohibit them; larger knives, clubs and guns are legal to carry in most public places in the US. Crowded places with hundreds of witnesses are not where people usually assault each other with these items.

The threat of hijacking is the reason planes get special treatment, but the combination of secure cockpit doors and the perception that hijacking will lead to the deaths of everyone on the plane makes gaining access to the cockpit effectively impossible regardless of the availability of weapons.

jacquesm2• 13 years ago

> I can think of several places I could cut you with a knife like that which would cause you to bleed to death in minutes.

You could do just the same with a credit card with a sharpened edge on it. Maybe they'll ban amex & visa next?

sfn09sj84f• 13 years ago

I'm still awaiting the next bomber who's stuffed a bomb up his ass, and how airport security will follow

hollerith• 13 years ago

Shh!

tokenadult• 13 years ago

It's interesting to see flight attendants objecting to allowing even those knives in airplane cabins. I'd like to be able to carry a pocket knife on an airplane again. The last pocket knife I bought was actually bought (just before 11 September 2001) to bring along with me on plane trips, which I was never able to do on a carry-on basis. That knife was eventually confiscated a couple years ago when I still had it in my pocket as I was about to go on a plane trip with my son.

I remember better days of air travel, when everyone felt a lot more carefree.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5216204

But on an issue like this, I have a lot of empathy for the flight attendants, and might sooner advocate for keeping my shoes on in the airport rather than again making it convenient to carry knives on board airplanes. With training, any device that can cut a pilot's or flight attendant's carotid artery can be used to take over a plane. Intelligence to stop the plots to take over airplanes from happening in the first place is an essential step in defense, but maybe leaving knives in checked baggage is another.

Zak4• 13 years ago

I'd rather have less invasive searches than tiny pocketknives too, but I don't think such knives present any real risk of taking over a plane.

Sure, an attacker could kill people with a small knife, but killing and/or threatening passengers and flight attendants will not gain an attacker access to the cockpit. Everyone involved now assumes that a hijacker who gains access to the cockpit will try to crash the plane in to a building, so a significant portion of people will fight to the death against any attempt to enter the cockpit. I suspect everyone who would seriously contemplate hijacking a plane knows this and would not attempt a plan using only small knives.

eurleif• 13 years ago

How would a larger weapon change that?

jammur• 13 years ago

I don't really see this lasting for very long. All it will take is one drunk, out of control idiot with a pocket knife to ruin the whole thing. I think most of us remember those two RIM employees who were so drunk they tried to chew their way through their restraints. Now imagine if they had pocket knives...

largesse• 13 years ago

It's funny that when people enter into the realm of hypotheticals they never think about how a laptop or tablet can put a good sized dent in someone's head.

The thing that keeps airplanes safe is the miniscule number of bad actors. That's about it. Unfortunately, that truth makes people feel insecure. Me? I'd fly even if there was no security at all. The odds are in favor of safety.

jff• 13 years ago

We managed for 50+ years allowing knives, lighters, etc. on flights--hell, they used to let you smoke in-flight, and nobody started a fire (maliciously).

jacquesm2• 13 years ago

> With training, any device that can cut a pilot's or flight attendant's carotid artery can be used to take over a plane.

Cockpit door locks.

meepmorp• 13 years ago

That and, unless you have half the plane on your side, the odds on a 9/11 style attack resulting in anything but you being beaten into a coma are next to nil.

pnathan• 13 years ago

Every time I fly, I think of the images in my head from the Soviet and Nazi eras, about having to have papers to travel and go anywhere.

I don't like that association in my head.

jdietrich• 13 years ago

What terrorists understand (but we don't) is that nobody will ever successfully hijack a plane again.

The 9/11 attacks worked because historically, a hijacked plane would invariably be diverted to some far-flung airstrip and become a hostage situation. Anyone in such a situation understood that their risk of being killed was very low, so long as they complied with the hostage-takers. It took less than a day for passengers to realise that the risks of action and inaction had inverted, as we saw in the case of flight United 93.

The hijacking MO used on 9/11 was a one-time deal. Passengers now understand that rather than being safe so long as they comply with hijackers, they are doomed unless they fight back. As such, a knife on a plane is no more dangerous than a knife on a bus or a train - the attacker might injure or kill a handful of people, but they'll quickly be overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers.

It's for this reason that all subsequent terrorist plots against aviation have been bombs, with the intention of taking down the plane in flight.

Schneier has repeatedly pointed out this systematic failure in security thinking - responding to the last threat, rather than the next.

ben10402• 13 years ago

According to the TSA news release, they're also allowing novelty baseball bats.

http://www.tsa.gov/sites/default/files/assets/pdf/tsa_permit...

I wonder if some Louisville politician lobbied for this change:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/telstar/309924706/

MartinCron3• 13 years ago

The best part of that linked document is that golf clubs are OK, but you can't have more than two. I'm trying to imagine the scenario where you wanted to carry golf clubs with you onto an airplane, but only had two of them. Would you take your favorite two with you and check the rest?

rdouble• 13 years ago

If you buy new putters for mom and dad for Christmas.

ben10402• 13 years ago

I have to imagine the more-than-two rule is at the airlines' request. With more than two clubs, you're likely going to bring them in a full-size golf bag and they don't want those onboard for space reasons.

Millennium• 13 years ago

It's about time we started showing some courage again. A keychain multitool, one of the tiny Swiss Army knives, and the like simply are not credible weapons. To ban them simply isn't rational, and it's time that we as a society moved on from this trauma-by-proxy.

gte910h• 13 years ago

The FA's point is that the 9/11 attacks were done with BOXCUTTERS.

I understand why they think these knives are still an issue, but I think the training doctrine of "don't obey the hijackers" has changed all that.

yogo• 13 years ago

+1. I think they have made a fortune from selling Swiss Army Knifes that were attached to keys--it's very easy to forget removing those before heading through security. Anyway I've always thought that was much easier to make a quick weapon by breaking something made of a hard plastic that's allowed on board (e.g. lid of a laptop). In fact a solid enough pen can often be more dangerous than the tiny Swiss Army Knives because it is easier to grip and use in a more forceful way.

Great to hear that pool cues will be allowed again :D. Nothing annoys players more than having to checking their cues especially when they are really expensive.

danalmeida• 13 years ago

I was really hoping I could keep my shoes on through airport security before they escalated to allowing knives.

sukuriant2• 13 years ago

Wait a second. They're allowing things other than "small knives" on the planes again. Could it be that the other things that are allowed on planes, ski poles, hockey sticks, etc might not be allowed it the "small blades" weren't allowed? For example, the pointy end of a pole, or a utility part of a tool. These things might have been disallowed by a sharp-pointy, but they're allowed back on, and it just so happens that the regulation of what's considered an "okay blade" and what's considered a "not-okay-blade" has to change because of that.

TSA to allow some small knives in carry-on luggage

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