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Comment by NoZebra120vClip | Hacker News Reader

The difference was not the location of the strings. To the TSA, the difference was your expertise in being able to change them on the spot. You proved that you are a mandolin player, and not merely an assassin who is carrying one as a cover story (but you could be both.)

It's for this reason, supposedly, that we're asked to boot our laptops and so forth. Do we have a mundane or nefarious purpose?

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> It's for this reason, supposedly, that we're asked to boot our laptops and so forth.

Not at all.

The TSA got credible information from intelligence agencies that there is a group who has the plan to manufacture bombs which are disguised as laptops. They would be manufactured such that they appear normal to the commonly used screening technologies. This is what we know. From here on it is speculation.

The easiest way to accomplish this is by replacing the battery of a laptop with explosives. You wouldn't want to have a mix of real battery and explosive though because that would be very hard to hide seamlessly on a scanner. So the theory is that these laptops would not function, and when being turned on they would appear to be out of battery.

So no. Being able to boot your laptop does not prove that you are not an "assassin". It proves that it has functioning batteries inside.

Besides how silly that is? I wager that we could teach mandolin stringing and laptop booting to anyone in an hour tops. Attacker or not. In fact anyone who can chew gum and walk at the same time can probably string a mandolin in 15 minutes (not to the exacting expectations of a real mandolin player, but to appear competent enough to a screening person.)

It's BS solution and another "security by obscurity" theatre since laptops like Thinkpad X250 have 2 batteries, one internal and one external which is removable. This is another proof that this "security" doesn't work, and anyone willing can go around it.

Seriously? We got "credible information?" Did we? I've never been asked to boot my laptop. One been asked to turn on other things. Never a laptop. And it isn't like you could design a laptop to work with a bomb in it. Or maybe your battery is dead.

You agree with me; why all the downvotes.

I think the idea is that if you just take a mandolin through security you wouldn't have been stopped in the first place, even though it has metal strings as a component that are trivially removed (much more difficult to put back on, but you don't need to do that step).

You have an awful lot of faith in the TSA.

Isn’t a belt, a shoelace or any one of a thousand other things also a garrotte?

Yet I can’t drink part of my water bottle to prove that it’s not an explosive.

If I'm going to blow up the plane I'm on, maybe I wouldn't care about poisoning myself a few hours before? As long as its slow enough acting.

This kind of insane fear is why flying (especially in/from/to America) has become so miserable.

Yeah anyone motivated to take down a plane can just buy a surface-to-air missile for a few grand.

You can't get those on aliexpress, but you can get drones. And laser pointers, a surprisingly effective anti-pilot weapon. And, of course, in America you've got a constitutional entitlement to as many small arms as you think you might need for ground-based terrorist attacks.

12 Monkeys https://youtu.be/ok9tswBa-ZI

I thought they don't allow water bottles so you don't mess up on the airplane.

I don’t know if it’s different in the US, but here in Europe you can bring water bought after going through security. I think it’s more a means to make people buy things at the airport at inflated prices.

You can buy water in the us airports, or bring an empty bottle and fill it. And besides they HAND you a cup of water on the plane if you ask. Had nothing to do with making a "mess" not did it have anything to do with forcing you to purchase anything. It is merely because it might be liquid explosives.

Most airports provide a water fountain, often with a dedicated water bottle filling spout, right after security.

I flew Scoot from SE Asia (Singapore or Bangkok, can't remember which) to Germany back in 2019, and they had one functioning water fountain between security and boarding. Needless to say, everyone wanted to fill their water bottles and the queue got long. So long that the plane started boarding before it was half done. Aircrew staff were shouting at people to stop filling their water bottles and get on the plane. We passengers, realising that for once we had some power, refused. We knew they couldn't take off with our baggage but not us, and getting our baggage off the plane would take longer than the delay to just fill our bottles. So we ignored the shouting and filled our bottles. The plane took off 15 mins late (iirc). It felt great :)

I have no idea if it affected Scoot's policy on charging for water on the flight, or the airport's attitude to water fountains. I like to think it did.

Flying out of Panama this year, we discovered that they don't care about water bottles. I would love for airport security to finally get over this idea that water bottles might potentially contain explosives.

This. In most European airports I empty my bottle before security, and refill after.

Shoelaces are allowed, without proving that I am a skilled shoe player. So the rest is just bullshit make-works projects.

While this sounds great, it's bullshit and we both know it.

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