Ok, let’s assume at some point an average terrorist brings down a plane with plastic/other explosives undetected by airport security. What does this mean for the TSA? For other countries with flights to US?
We have body scanners…what’s next?
[del]2001[/del] [del]1940[/del] 1875 called, they want their issue back.
TSA already swabs for explosive residues. You ever see them run a cotton patch over your luggage, then drop it into a machine that goes “beep?” That’s what they’re doing.
I mean, I think the TSA is pretty incompetant, but not so incompetant that they haven’t considered the possiblility of someone using explosives to blow up a plane.
My what a vague question. You do realize that plastic explosives are very detectable by airport security, right? They check every bag for it already.
What other “undetectable” explosive?
BTW, peanut butter shows up as plastic explosive. So, if you want peanut butter, you’re better off buying it when you get there.
Um-ok. Well of course they’ve considered plastic explosives and have taken some measures although I have never seen any person at any US airport directly “swabbed” (I have been swabbed abroad). What I’m asking is what the next measure (annoyance) will be once an attack is carried out…
Clarification: I’m talking about something contained on a person’s body, not in a bag.
Underwear will be banned on planes. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are said to be supportive of this measure.
You’ve never gone through one of the body scanners? That puff of air is doing the same thing the cotton swabs are doing.
There goes my burgeoning career as a peanut butter smuggler.
Is the ban on liquids due to the fear of liquid-based explosives a purely USA thing, or do all airlines ban them? How about shoe bombs? Are we the only people asking people to take off their shoes (bear in mind that the guy caught back East with bombs in his shoes was pulled out of line because of profiling, not because anything went “beep”)?
If other airlines don’t ban liquids, how many bombings have there been on other nation’s flights using liquid-based explosives or shoe bombs? I’m thinking, not so many.
I would say that (a) the TSA has, in its mighty diligence, sufficiently cowed terrorists worldwide to prevent them from blowing up even planes the TSA isn’t screening, (b) only the USA’s flights are worth blowing up, or © we’ve caught all the people who want to blow up planes.
I don’t believe the screening they’re doing is to catch people with bombs. I think it’s to prevent people from trying to bring bombs on board. With a couple notable exceptions (see above), it’s working pretty good so far, even if does smell strongly of Bengal Tiger repellent.
Plastic explosives aren’t the new threat. The new threat is explosives implanted in the body. They are currently undetectable. I don’t know if there are any successes with this technique, but there was an attempted assasination of a Saudi dignitary using this technique. There are questions about the feasibility of bringing down a plane because the body absorbs a lot of the explosive force, theirs a limited size of the explosive that can be implanted without detection (are they searching hunchbacks yet?), and the triggering mechanisms may be unreliable. But a security wonk on the TV last night said it would make out current security structure useless. Al Qaeda has plenty of suicidal nut jobs ready to carry implanted bombs on planes, into crowds, and as close as they can get to high profile targets. We have a huge effort ongoing in Yemen right now to kill the bomb maker who has been producing more and more sophisticated bombs for them.
The TSA is all about “security theater,” the various annoying screening techniques are there mostly for show. Profiling, for as much bad press as it gets, is by far the most effective way to catch terrorists before they blow something up. I have a strong suspicion that smuggling explosives past the air-puff thing is probably not really that difficult.
A condom full of C4 up your asshole, pull it out and detonate in the loo.
Oh and when flying back to the USA in 2004 from a small country the metal detector was broken and they were just waving people through, where is this fantasy land where every country flying to the USA has high tech gizmos?
Let me know when TSA deigns to search baggage handlers or other airport personnel who have access to the plane on the ground. Currently, if this link is correct, they don’t. Why AQ would try to go through the toughest area of screening, and not simply suborn members of the ground crew, is beyond me. The ‘body bomb’ threat keeps TSA’s budget and public awareness high though, and I guess that’s what matters. While grude’s condom of C4 may work, getting the blasting cap or detonator through the metal detector may be a little more challenging. Doubt it’s impossible though.
As far as plastic explosives bringing down an airliner, it’s happened already.
That’s easier yet. Recruit a baggage handler, and have him slip a bomb into some random person’s luggage. By the time the bomb goes off, he’s gone home sick, and by the time the Feds think to question him, he’s nowhere to be found…
“Simply”? “Easier”? You think it’s easy to convince people with good jobs in first-world countries to go rogue?
True, few people are going to be corrupt enough to knowingly bomb an airplane. But, how often does ICE announce drug busts involving baggage handlers? One a year? One every other year? Do you think those criminal handlers all know what’s in the packages they’re smuggling? Think it’d be terribly difficult to swap out a bomb for whatever is normally smuggled? Hell, if you feel like brute-forcing it, just kidnap one of their loved ones and threaten to send pieces of them to the handler if he won’t mule a “package” onto the airplane. Other potential methods of persuasion will no doubt come to mind.
The point is this: it’s a lot easier to suborn a baggage handler, airport hose dragger, or mechanic, (and you get a lot more bang if you do), than it is to try and stick enough explosive and detonators up a guy’s rectum and then march the martyr through security. And then trust that the brainwashed mental-defective can perform bomb assembly at 33,000 feet, place the bomb where it can bring down the plane, and actually detonate it. It doesn’t seem that easy to do; see, Richard Reid or the underwear guy. IIRC, most suicide bombers are very closely watched and escorted, right up to the moment they’re released on their run or drive to their target. They’re given a pre-packed vest or car. They aren’t left alone for 2-4 hours to stew by themselves and they aren’t asked to assemble their own devices.
(Aside, has there even been a single instance of a suicide bomber successfully bringing down an airliner? One of the Russian air disasters comes to mind, but I’m drawing a blank on any others. IIRC, pretty much all successful airplane bombings stem from pre-packaged bombs, smuggled in luggage, either carry-on or checked.)
It doesn’t happen because the necessary apparatus to do so—the safe houses, materiel, pool of recruits, $$$, guys to organize all of the above—isn’t in this country. Yet. Thank God. I doubt your garden variety, AQ-affiliate terrorist group has links with organized crime in this country to pull off my above scenario. Eventually though, the U.S. will piss off an entity—my money’s on Iran—that historically actually has far-reaching, global sophisticated terrorist links and the will to use them. If the U.S. starts using drones on the drug cartel leaders, that’s another way we might see this sort of thing.
So, if we’re going to now have to watch out for the butt-bomber, trying to squeeze through the crack in the front door, TPTB might want to instead first close some of the wide open back doors. Assuming the security fears are actual, and not hysteria generated to keep the department budget solvent.
Me? I’m not going to fly, if at all possible. But that’s because I can’t afford private charter, and I don’t want to be groped or made to stand in front of a nudi-scan, not because I fear the less than 1 in 9 million (bomb plots vs. average U.S. domestic annual departures) chance of the plane being blown up.
Rumor had it that 2004 Russian aircraft bombings - Wikipedia was brought down by a female suicide bombers using a bra filled with plastic explosive, according to “un named” sources in media stories(presumably someone in government).
Choosy moms choose Semtex.