TSA Response to XKCD “Bag Check” Cartoon

http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-bag-check-cartoon.html

by MikeCapone • 17 years ago

80 113 17 years ago

khafra• 17 years ago

Direct link to Randall's comment: http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-bag-check-cartoo...

lbrandy• 17 years ago

Randall's comment is simultaneously correct and misleading on a particular point. A laptop battery may have quite a bit of energy density, but that's not entirely relevant, as he points out in the next sentence. The speed at which the energy is released is far, far more important.

I provided that remark just so I could repeat this awesome factoid: a stick of butter has more energy than a stick of dynamite.

ars3• 17 years ago

Bring potassium chlorate (an oxidizer), and a strong jar with you and you could probably make the butter explode (although not detonate).

With a little work you could turn the butter into a fuel-air bomb. A flour bomb would probably be even easier.

camccann2• 17 years ago

A laptop battery may have quite a bit of energy density, but that's not entirely relevant, as he points out in the next sentence. The speed at which the energy is released is far, far more important.

Remember all those news stories a few years back about Dell laptops bursting violently into flames?

lliiffee3• 17 years ago

His asks if the TSA ever tests if confiscated liquids are actually explosives. This is a brilliant question! If there is no cost to trying to sneak in liquid explosives (unlike, say, a gun), terrorists can easily try again and again until they succeed, and the ban really is very pointless.

tptacek16• 17 years ago

You think a 1/10000 chance of arrest is going to deter a suicide bomber?

aroon• 17 years ago

and the response to Randall: http://www.tsa.gov/blog/2009/10/response-to-bag-check-cartoo...

pmorici3• 17 years ago

Both this and the above link are giving 404 errors? I think the TSA is censoring the comment posts. Typical.

ErrantX2• 17 years ago

2 things.

Firstly; I think XKCD was just being amusing....

Secondly: bullcrap. You can make a bang big enough to kill a plane with laptop batteries - the fact you can make a bigger bang with liquids is surely irrelevant. And also it's perfectly possible to change the contents of a battery - no? So put something more explosive in it....

Batteries are very easy to remove.

The reason liquids were banned is because of the evidence someone came up with the suggest there were liquid bombs being planned (and I think one failed attempt) - not a bad response at all! It's the same reason a lot of airports (especially UK ones) ask you to remove your shoes and Xray them.

At the end of the day they can only respond to the perceived or suspected risks - if you really put your mind too it it shouldnt actually be too hard to smuggle a bomb on a plane.

EDIT: by which I mean it is more a case of making people feel safe (by inconveniencing them, basic psycology) as well as causing more inconvenience for a small number of possible potential attacks. The actual security effect is fairly minimal - simply for practical reasons pointed out a billion times over.

sh1mmer• 17 years ago

But can you make a bang big enough to break into the cabin and crash the plane into, say, a large building in a major metropolitan city?

ErrantX2• 17 years ago

If the plane flies near said metropolitan area at the right angle then, technically, the rest is just maths and timing. :)

EDIT: damn I thought I was being genuinely amusing :(

inerte• 17 years ago

Funny. (you probably know this but) The cartoon isn't about if batteries are more dangerous than water bottles or even a jab on the TSA policies about grading the danger of stuff, it's about how nerds will dig their own graves because it's on our nature to point flaws, to improve a system/process, and how detached from the way relationships work (specially these of power, like employer/employee) we can be. In other words, how reason and logic tramples everything else.

At least this is how the cartoon resonated with me.

But hey, we all look at our own bellies.

codexon• 17 years ago

We may all be thanking Randall in the near future for being unable to use laptops while flying.

notauser2• 17 years ago

Our only hope is that someone uses the TSA to blow up an aeroplane - the resulting paradox should cause them all to vanish in a puff of logic :-)

Semiapies11• 17 years ago

What a disingenuous defense of a policy enacted in response to a completely infeasible terrorist plan.

The funny part is that people generally know security theater like this has jack-all to do with actual security or safety. We just obediently continue to take off our shoes, surrender our nail-clippers, and buy our drinks at the stores in the airport.

tptacek16• 17 years ago

"Completely infeasible terrorist plan" is exactly the wrong argument to make. (a) you don't actually know it was infeasible, which costs you credibility right out of the gate, and (b) you're tacitly accepting that every "feasible" terrorist plan deserves explicit countermeasures.

Another reason why this discussing annoys me; people always insist on having it on the TSA's terms. Why? They'll win this argument every time. They have more facts and their facts are scarier than yours.

Semiapies11• 17 years ago

Infeasible, as in their explosives would not have detonated. Don't lecture me about "credibility", educate yourself about the facts of the case.

But yes, I'm sure the TSA and its supporters can devise ever-so-many facts about how we have to be protected from water-bottle bombs that fortunately don't require any more special disposal than tossing in a garbage can.

Semiapies11• 17 years ago

"exactly the wrong argument to make"

Incidentally, what is the right argument to make in your mind? You say it's "retarded" to talk facts and that you're annoyed that anyone's even talking about this issue in the first place, so what's the tptacek-approved rhetoric, here?

btilly2• 17 years ago

The next time you're in a security line, turn to the person behind you and say, "Here's a thought for you. Aren't you glad that the shoe bomber didn't hide the explosives in his underwear?"

Guaranteed laugh. Try it. You can say it to the screeners as well, and they'll laugh as well. And it perfectly highlights the absurdity of the security theater we suffer through. Some guy tries to blow up a plane with explosives in his shoes, FAILS, and we all have to take our shoes off now.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater if you haven't heard the phrase security theater before. Not only does the term describe the TSA perfectly, it was actually invented to describe the TSA.

mcantor• 17 years ago

I think your comment is funny, but it's probably also the fastest way to get yourself a private strip-search if you say it in earshot of a TSA employee!

btilly2• 17 years ago

You would think that, but in my experience they laugh harder than anyone else. They know the policy is stupid, they just aren't supposed to admit it.

However I'd avoid saying it to them when they are busy or distracted, because then they can't enjoy the humor.

gfodor• 17 years ago

I'd avoid using the terms "bombs" or "explosives" anywhere within earshot of airport security. Maybe if you use "Richard Reid", most of the TSA employees probably don't know who that is.

mrshoe• 17 years ago

I believe it was Scott Adams who suggested that one woman should take one for the team and build a bomb into her bra. Once the TSA realizes that they would have to require each woman to remove her bra while passing through airport security, the whole thing would unravel pretty quickly.

mquander• 17 years ago

Yeah, or we'll all have to arrive two hours early and get strip-searched if we want to get on a plane. Think it couldn't happen? I wouldn't bet against it.

tptacek16• 17 years ago

You're already getting strip searched before you board planes; they're just using millimeter wave scans to do it. People really need to start calling these things what they are: electronic strip search machines.

haasted• 17 years ago

I think the suicide bomber they mention in this article did that ... sort of.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10...

I am certainly afraid that this incident will have an impact on the security searches we'll be subjected to at the airport.

tvon• 17 years ago

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

tptacek16• 17 years ago

Jesus. Can we move on, yet? George Carlin nailed this topic over 10 years ago. xkcdsucks (nb: usually funnier than the comic!) nailed this cartoon: jokes about airport security are so overdone that there's actually signs at the airport warning you not to make jokes about airport security.

Yes, the "3-1-1 restrictions" are completely retarded. Yes, people are mostly liquid. Yes, batteries are dangerous. Hollering about that here isn't going to help you, because the TSA people live in an entirely different universe than you do. To them, the 3-1-1 rule is perfectly rational. It's a reaction to an actual threat they had. To abandon the restriction, they have to accept responsibility for the next time liquid explosives are used to destroy a plane. They are never. going. to. do. that. It would be irrational --- from their perspective --- for them to do so.

This TSA response isn't disingenuous. It's exactly what any thinking person expects them to say. So what are we discussing here?

randallsquared• 17 years ago

jokes about airport security are so overdone that there's actually signs at the airport warning you not to make jokes about airport security.

That's not why those signs are there. They're there because it removes the "I was just joking!" defense.

abrown28• 17 years ago

Someone piss in your Wheaties?

bk3• 17 years ago

You know that recently a terrorist tried to use a bomb in his intestine to assassinate a Saudi-Arabian prince (http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/qaeda_ass_assin_h...). (I know, not the greatest source).

As soon as one of those is discovered at an airport, according to your reasoning about the TSA's rationales, they would have to and should cavity search every passenger.

The real questions underlying a topic like this are:

Why do the people have so little say in their own security?

Why do people accept being separated, rudely interrogated, strip-searched, subjected to (unconstitutionally) secret laws and regulations, etc.?

Why are expert opinions completely ignored?

Just because it's "rational" for the TSA/US Government to cover their asses doesn't mean people shouldn't make a fuss about it. Democracy and liberty vitally depend on people making a (meaningful) fuss.

tptacek16• 17 years ago

You seriously think that reasonable arguments like this are going to get the TSA to stop supporting policies that cost them nothing but mitigate massive possible career risks for themselves? Because I think it would be irrational for this administration to step back even an inch from where security is now. They'd simply get blamed for anything that happened within the next 10 years.

dschobel3• 17 years ago

We're discussing the fact that the TSA left the safety of their lair to try to debunk an online comic by a well-known figure in techy circles. This is a remarkable event.

Hence, we are remarking.

tptacek16• 17 years ago

The TSA has been blogging for many months now. They don't have a "lair". We just don't like what they have to say.

CodeMage2• 17 years ago

You know, I would've thought it evident by now that it's not exactly what any thinking person expects them to say. It's sort of evident from the existence of so many:

- articles, such as: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/18/60minutes/main4675...

- blog posts, such as: http://msinfluentials.com/blogs/jesper/archive/2008/12/24/ki...

- web comics, such as the xkcd one

I don't really understand what you're trying to accomplish here, but whatever it is, you're not helping your case by stating that xkcdsucks is funnier than xkcd. Yes, the humor in xkcd might be extremely nerdy at times, but at least it's not hateful trollery.

tptacek16• 17 years ago

xkcdsucks is hateful trollery?

(Oh. Sorry. Didn't notice your nick. ;)

gort2• 17 years ago

Good grief, could they miss the point any further?

"The batteries may be more dangerous than a bottle of water, but they are not more dangerous than a water bottle filled with liquid explosives."

The relevant question is whether the batteries are enough to cause an explosion that could bring down a plane; not whether batteries are more dangerous than water.

tlrobinson• 17 years ago

I feel like TSA must know they're running a security theater operation, and this post was to defuse (no pun intended) any public concern about laptop batteries so they don't have to go and ban them too...

ars3• 17 years ago

They for sure know.

What would you do if you were charged with preventing someone from smuggling a weapon onto an airplane, while at the same not not inconveniencing people, and also while being denied, as illegal, the only tool that actually works (profiling)?

They are being given an impossible job. Not hard. Impossible. They don't have a choice except to do security theater.

ajross• 17 years ago

FTA: When you show us a bottle of liquid, we can’t tell if it’s a sports drink or liquid explosives without doing a time consuming test on it.

Right. Which is why all self-respecting terrorists won't bother to show you the dumb bottle in the first place. Am I the only one who has, on multiple occasions, checked my bags through the scanner to realize that I'm technically in violation of the "no liquids" rule because I'd forgotten something?

The rule is ridiculous. Just live with it.

shpxnvz• 17 years ago

On one occasion I accidentally passed through security with with a Swiss Army knife in my backpack.

What's funny to me is that upon discovering so after getting to the gate I was much more worried about someone finding out I accidentally brought a pocket knife with me, rather than the possibility of someone else with nefarious intentions having also gotten past security with one.

bbb• 17 years ago

Same thing happened to me; I had the Swiss Army knife in my backpack between a whole bunch of CDs. I wonder if the edges of the CDs somehow concealed the knife, or if the security person simply wasn't paying attention.

By the way, what's the likelihood of TWO people bringing a knife/bomb on board the same plane? Pretty small, huh? Hence, you should always bring your own bomb to fly safely! ;-)

fuzzmeister• 17 years ago

In the past year, I've accidentally left liquids in my bag multiple times, and every single time the scanner has spotted them. Perhaps I'm just unlucky, but the technology seems to have gotten pretty good.

orangecat2• 17 years ago

I've taken more than 3 ounces of contact lens solution through a dozen airports in the last few years and never had a problem. I think there's an unofficial policy to let them through unless there's some other reason to be suspicious.

puppetaccount• 17 years ago

I once flew both legs of a return flight with a foot long knife in my bag. I had put it in there while moving and forgotten all about it. Didn't empty the bag at my destination and never found out.

When I emptied my bags after coming home, I had one of biggest "oh shit, phew!" moments of my life, accompanied by visions of Guantanamo.

nostrademons2• 17 years ago

There is such an easy way to get around the "well, it might be a liquid bomb" problem...

Have people drink from any water bottles they're taking on board.

If someone managed to make a liquid that's simultaneously explosive and non-toxic enough to be ingested, we have bigger problems, namely ingested bombs. Heck, I can just imagine some terrorist swallowing a condom full of explosives, then lighting the detonator wires hanging from his butt.

Maybe then they would have to ban assholes on planes.

mbreese• 17 years ago

This isn't a good option either. It would be possible to have a bottle that was lined in such a way as to have drinking water and an explosive in the same container. Or, perhaps the explosive is denser than water and non-polar... if this is the case, you could add enough water to make it drinkable, and still have the explosive available.

Semiapies11• 17 years ago

You could also have a hidden bladder of fluid inside most anything. That'd make much more sense than trying to hide fluid in a portion of a fluid container.

notauser2• 17 years ago

And, indeed, that's just what I said to the security goon before he dragged me into this interview room officer. I really don't understand the problem!

nostrademons2• 17 years ago

Hence the asshole comment. You can always find a way to smuggle a bomb onto a plane. Limiting case: swallow a condom full of plastic explosives and shit it out in the restroom, the same way drug mules carry cocaine or heroin. There's no real way to stop this short of X-raying every traveler.

The questions the TSA should be asking are:

1.) What is the likelihood that a potential terrorist will use this means of smuggling weapons on board?

2.) How effectively can our screening procedures catch weapons, given that they exist?

3.) How much inconvenience does this cost passengers?

People had little problem with metal detectors and X-rays, because 1.) your clothes and carry on luggage are the natural hiding places for a bomb 2.) the machines will catch most of these instances and 3.) they're not a huge hassle for travelers. But by the time you get down to chucking water bottles because there might be a liquid explosive in them and it might be denser than water and it might be non-polar - really, what are the chances that a terrorist will use that means of smuggling? Compared to, say, overvolting a laptop battery?

For that matter, I think metal detectors may also be obsolete, now that it's fairly easy to make plastic/composite knives and guns.

Retric• 17 years ago

If they are willing to bomb the plane they are ridding then I don't think they are going to care about long term damage from drinking it. So worst case you eat something to slow the poison and then blow up to plain in an hour or so. Which brings up a separate but important point, you could probably smuggle a lot of explosive the way they move heroin. The blast would be muffled by the human body but... nm.

buugs• 17 years ago

Actually the human body is quite good at muffling explosions and would require a substantial amount of explosives to cause large damage outside of ones body.

edit: Here's a Schneier post on such a bomber: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/ass_bomber.htm...

amalcon• 17 years ago

I don't really feel like eating my shaving cream, deodorant, or toothpaste, or drinking my shampoo. The water, on the other hand, is something I'm fine with just drinking before the checkpoint. As such, any solution that only solves the problem for things I'm willing to ingest only solves the lesser problem.

ax0n• 17 years ago

You can get a large amount of almost any liquid onto a plane in your carry-on so long as the label is somewhat official-looking and identifies the contents as being medical supplies. Get one of those contact lens caddies and pack it with a 12oz bottle of ReNu and see what happens at the TSA checkpoint. They'll likely just set it aside. If not, you're only out $5 or something. That ReNu bottle could be full of nitroglycerin or kerosene and they'd never know.

kscaldef• 17 years ago

Actually, most of the time they do a trace chemical wipe of the container if you bring saline or other liquid meds through the security line.

ajju2• 17 years ago

The TSA has a blog where they reference Ars Technica and XKCD? I am forced to acknowledge that they are slightly more enlightened than I thought.

Having said that, the arguments in that post are bullshit (as evidenced by several comments before this one)

pmorici3• 17 years ago

"TSA has a blog"

In this day and age that makes them about as enlightened as saying "the TSA uses electricity". They are just doing it because everyone else is doing it there's no credit for original independent thought here.

paulgb2• 17 years ago

That would be a harder claim to make if you had quoted the whole of ajju's sentence. I think what's interesting here is not that they have a blog, but how the blog is run. They respond to a webcomic, they enable comments, they respond to comments, they write in a human tone, etc.

Sure, most organizations have blogs, but for most they are a write-only place to put press releases.

ajju2• 17 years ago

I think paulgb has covered what I wanted to say. There are "blogs" and there are blogs. Enabling comments and responding to webcomics shows a willingness to engage the public which I would never have expected from the TSA (based on my past perceptions).

Semiapies11• 17 years ago

Tangentially, it strikes me that a lot of people, including the TSA flack, miss the actual point of the comic. It's not that there are reasonable arguments against TSA policies. It's that trying to argue the policies with the TSA is futile and probably counter-productive.

paulgb2• 17 years ago

This can be further generalized. Trying to argue a policy with a bottom rung employee at any organization is ultimately counter-productive.

NathanKP• 17 years ago

Does anyone other than me wonder why TSA is using Blogger for their official blog rather than WordPress?

Anyway....

viraptor2• 17 years ago

Unfortunately while people are arguing about the security checks / rules, I see another danger. Looking at the length of current security queues, it's not a problem to find a place where ~200-400 people surround you (guesstimate; assuming one of the "quite large, but not enough to get a new terminal" airports). My prediction is that the next attack will not be a guy bringing down the plane, but simply a guy waiting until he gets halfway through the queue with any bomb he wants (noone will check him before, right?) I wonder how will they solve that one...

daemin• 17 years ago

Haven't we had these sorts of attacks already in the various hotspots in the world? Both Israel and Iraq come to mind as examples of where attacks have been perpetrated against the checkpoints themselves, and the guards and people waiting there.

bonsaitree• 17 years ago

As great as XKCD is, seeing the TSA respond to this cartoon is just as bad as CNN fact-checking the SNL sketch.

As someone with more than a casual familiarity with man-portable explosives (some R&D work on remote land mine detection), nobody with any modicum of sense would EVER confuse a bottle of drinking water with a bottle of liquid explosive. The latter have a very low vapor pressure, very different viscosity, and give off very distinctive odors. The most commonly obtained ones are also NOT transparent.

vidarh2• 17 years ago

That misses the point. The rules that are set allows for quick screening without extensive training. If they were to screen based on appearance and smell they'd need to study each bottle (what if the contents are hidden?) and/or open them to smell. The time the extra screening would take would cause far more of an uproar with people than having to abandon their liquids now.

I'm sure they know they could allow most liquids on safely if they gave staff some extra training and put people through enough extra screening. But would the end result be convenient enough? Probably not.

vidarh2• 17 years ago

InclinedPlane2• 17 years ago

The response is more than a little weak. Confiscating people's shampoo and water does nothing to improve the safety of air travel. That's the point Randall Munroe is making and it's still quite valid.

It's trivially easy to smuggle enough liquids on board an airplane to bypass the TSA's "security" measures. Simply claim it is saline solution or use something like a "beer belly".

Similarly, the TSA's ban of knives on planes is equally toothless. Many fliers (myself included) can attest to having accidentally brought pocket knives on planes without security screening having noticed them. And even a moderately dedicated attacker would find it easy to acquire a ceramic knife capable of passing through a metal detector.

It's a kabuki dance, it's security theater, it increases security not one bit, but makes it more difficult to fly.

jseliger• 17 years ago

I just left this comment on the TSA blog: "To translate:

"Our policy is irrational, but we're sticking to it anyway in the interests of security theater." "

InclinedPlane2• 17 years ago

I did a little research and discovered that there actually has been a successful terrorist attack on a plane using mostly liquid explosives, Korean Air Flight 858:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_858

Two explosives were used: C4 and about twice as much PLX (a binary liquid explosive) as C4, totaling about 1kg of explosives. The bomb was powerful enough to take down the plane and cause the deaths of all 115 passengers. I suspect C4 was used as a component in order to ensure that the PLX was detonated, because it appears to be a tricky explosive to set off with just a blasting cap.

Regardless, the critique that is being leveled against the TSA is not that such an attack could be successful, but rather that the methods being used to thwart such an attack are wholly ineffectual, with the side effect of causing a great deal of inconvenience, wasting a massive amount of effort, and providing a distraction from more robust methods of solving the security problem.

jimfl• 17 years ago

Give me a laptop battery, my belt, and some duct tape, and we'll be talking about an definition a little further down in the dictionary entry for the term "battery."

TSA Response to XKCD “Bag Check” Cartoon

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