Liquid Matters

I see from the TSA web­site that we’re now allowed small quant­it­ies of liquids on board flights in the U.S.A., and I assume oth­er coun­tries will also start allow­ing these items. And knit­ting needles and books are still allowed, so we’ll have some­thing to do on the flights. The thought of a long flight to Aus­tralia or Europe with noth­ing to do was not pleasant…

And you can now buy cans of drink again in the secure board­ing areas. I nev­er under­stood that par­tic­u­lar ban, I must admit. If you think about it, who­ever decided on that ban ascribed an abil­ity to plan and execute that far exceeds any­thing any­one is likely to pull off without being found out some­where along the way. To get some sort of liquid explos­ive into a can of soft drink (pop) in a vend­ing machine in the secure area would be hard enough, but then mak­ing sure the right per­son gets to that par­tic­u­lar can without any­body else acci­dent­ally get­ting in first seems impossible to me, if you pos­tu­late that the per­son who is meant to get the can has to act nor­mal so as not to attract atten­tion. And then mak­ing sure the can does­n’t leak at any stage, par­tic­u­larly when it goes thump into the tray… Over­all I think the risk of someone mak­ing a bomb out of ingredi­ents passed along in that way is infin­ites­im­al. Any­one that organ­ized would choose oth­er, easi­er meth­ods. Bruce Schnei­er calls this secur­ity theat­er; his blog should be required read­ing for whomever sets the rules as well as those hav­ing to carry them out. For the rest of us, par­tic­u­larly those sub­ject to the rules, his art­icles show clear think­ing. For example, this piece dis­cuss­ing the air­plane secur­ity meas­ures and how the Lon­don ter­ror­ists who star­ted the liquids scare were appre­hen­ded. Highly recom­men­ded reading.