US Homeland Sec boss has snazzy new laptop bomb scanning tech – but admits he doesn't know what it's called Flying into America? Don't worry about that crackdown on laptops and similar gear in your carry-on luggage. It's no longer happening. No, instead, the US has something else up its sleeve. New screening technology in airports will sniff out any bombs in your IT kit. So says Homeland Security boss John Kelly has, although he …
"[...] whereas he was satisfied that Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates did do background checks before allowing their citizens to travel to the US."
He probably means that women can't travel without a male relative. Shortly to be also implemented for US citizens wishing to travel from the USA.
It's bad enough that no-one seems to know what The Gestapo Homeland Security are even for, but the clueless boss can't even be bothered reading his briefing material.
Then, when given the correct answer makes fun of Mr. Pistole.
I am going to go ahead and assume that someone senior working in the Transport Department actually needs to know what they're doing, because the Transport Department has proper work to do.
Just ... stay away, okay? Just stay the f*ck away.
A GOP spend-nothing, do-nothing, know-nothing Congress critter has realized that it'd be a helluva lot cheaper to build a tall wall around each of 'merica's airports; all foreign visitors to conduct business & visitations from within said walled enclosure. No exceptions. When said business & visits are done, board a flight and leave. Nobody allowed aboard foreign flights but foreigners. Plane blows, so what?
Oh.... that pesky issue of the Great Southern Border Wall budget? A 300-yard zone utilizing recovered Iraq/Afghanistan/Syrian land mines will suffice. Budget problem solved.
America seeks security. So just stay the f*ck away.
Sounds like a bit of a loose cannon to me.
And am I the only person thinking "In Mission Impossible if the agents get caught the Secretary will disavow them. But in the TSA do the agents disavow the Secretary instead?"
Kelly does seem to be a total f**kwit but then I suppose you can't expect all the members of the Trump Cabinet to be up to the intellectual level of the D, who is (as he's said himself) "very smart."
Mine's the appropriate weight jacket for the season with no interior pockets or obvious bulges.
"Right now, Bannon Wormtongue seems to be running things."
Even the Vatican is worried about conservative US Catholics getting into apocalyptic political liaisons with Bannon et al.
Quote:
[the Vatican approved author] added that their vision was "not too far apart" from Islamic fundamentalism.
Can't they just use a Casio F91-W ("Terrorist Watches" that,combined with certain physical characteristics, could win you a very unpleasant time at the airport, and maybe a free ride to Cuba)?
More seriously, the TRS80 Model 100 had provision for the laptop's own real-time clock to bring it out of sleep and run a program at any designated time. 1980s tech, so I'm sure not everyone has forgotten how to do it.
As for not understanding the tech, I suspect this is just his way of (not) saying: "Well, it's a CAT-scan machine like you find in many hospitals, but these will be a special version that we cannot discuss until we have all the shell corporations in place to prevent a recurrence of the kerfuffle about the last Scanner binge, where due to certain traitors, it somehow appeared that members of Homeland Security had a financial interest in the one approved vendor"
Penguins can test for a usable wakeup timer with:
[ -a /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm ] && echo got one || echo not there
If one is there, cancel the detonation with:
echo 0 > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm
If you can get clear in 4 minutes, type:
date '+%s' -d '+ 4 minutes' > /sys/class/rtc/rtc0/wakealarm
You can then shut down you laptop and flee.
'intelligence community had told him that although an "undetectable bomb could be made for laptops, a remote trigger could not".'
Whichever idiot said that has an entire planetload of scientists, engineers, bomb-makers , chemists and electronic engineers laughing heartily.
There are so many miniaturisable, disguisable, effective and reliable ways for creating detonators that the statement must have been made by someone of exceptional stupidity and/or ignorance. You can fit a ultra-low-power timing circuit or a barometric sensor or even a tiny RF receiver into something no bigger than an electrolytic capacitor. A microscopic piece of thin wire, indistinguishable from the 75,000 other interconnects in a laptop, acts as the final detonator.
Let's be honest: the idea of putting the stuff in the hold was witheringly stupid and did nothing to make anyone safer. Indeed, packing extra Lithium-battery devices in there probably made everyone LESS safe.
This was the predictably hysterical, ill-considered, ill-informed over-reaction to a piece of dubious "intelligence",and it merely happened to coincide with causing unnecessary inconvenience for countries the US doesn't like and airlines which it thinks unfairly compete with its own.
Sometimes stupidity is just regular dumbness, but sometimes it's enhanced by the presence of politicians and their weasel brains.
This statement has to be parsed with a lot of care.
Are they talking about a remote trigger whose signal is undetectable? Probably not. Except what good would that do you? What you want is the hold to be RF shielded to stop it doing anything if someone sends it.
Are they talking about a remote trigger that would not show up on current sensors? That sounds more likely. Dodgy circuit board on Xray machine monitor? Time for a deeper probe.
Note. Modern laptop batteries are not passive devices. They contain embedded electronics as well.So on balance just about true, and IRL likely to be so for decades to come.
@Youngone I'd be really careful about assuming that John Kelly was "clueless" or couldn't be bothered to read his briefing papers, or that his "nerd" remark was meant or taken in bad humor.
I mean, he was nominated for his previous job by a chap called "B. Obama", and confirmed by the Senate for that role (Commander, United States Southern Command).
I detest Trump and most of his cabinet, but I would not underestimate a modern Major General (USMC, Ret), which is what he is.
So the chief doesn't know jack-shit about the new technology behind the postponement of his agency's most controversial current initiative, and but his deputy knows this important piece of information, and the deputy is a nerd for knowing that?
Sounds like poor leadership 101 to me.
"And I'm not a fashion whore."
You heard it here first folks. Opposition to a narcissistic crook, sexual predator, bigot, con-artist, pathological liar, possible traitor and science denier being in the White House is fashionable. Who knew? For your information I'm from Scotland and we hated him with passion and reason long before his name ever stained your ballot papers.
I'm also amused that you thought "utterly paralysed, perpetually scandal-hit global laughing stock government" would be preferable to "big government", but I guess it takes all sorts.
Back in the day someone trying to sell passenger explosive scanners asked the airline what they would pay to have this.
"$70 a flight"
Note that, a flight, not a passenger.
Why? Because their real threat assessment of the threat was it was too small to raise ticket prices by any significant amount to counter it. Although I can hear also hear Mel Gibson saying "Not many men know how much their life is worth. I do..."
Let's remember the real threats have been caused by a)Unaccompanied luggage b)People with box cutter knives getting into the cockpit. c)People who've had weapons put on the plane by a route that bypassed customs search entirely.
All the hype about "liquid explosives" and other such BS has only been demonstrated when experienced bomb techs had about 30 attempts to get an explosion, with reagent grade chemicals.
IRL almost anything is possible. But a lot of stuff is just complex or ineffective or expensive to do.
As others have noted how many cleaners have turned out to be undocumented people, who in theory should never have passed a background check, but (apparently) did?
A lot of people have blasted Kelly for calling Pistole a nerd. That may be the case. But it may not be. The printed word, particularly a transcript, loses a lot of meaning.
If might have been said in a way that indicated humour and camaraderie (perhaps even respect and affection) because tone of voice and body language convey a lot of meaning.
It might have been said in a way that indicated contempt.
Given that Williams asked Pistole for an explanation and thanked Pistole for giving one, Williams seems to have held Pistole in some esteem. Given that Kelly got a laugh for calling Pistole a nerd, there's a chance it was said in a humorous way or the audience might have responded differently.
That's purely conjecture on my part. My interpretation could be completely wrong. But the interpretation that is scathing of Kelly could also be completely wrong. There isn't enough information in a transcript to be sure either way.
And now I shall await the inevitable downthumbs that come from people who dislike having their hasty assumptions challenged. You know who you are.
"He said that, given his military background, he'd been skeptical that you could pack enough explosives into a laptop to destroy an aircraft"
Remember most grunts are just fuckwits in uniform. And I've been there among them.
When I did my time I was always surprised at how little explosive it took to kill a tank - there's only about 2.2kg in a MILAN missile. That's worth pausing and thinking about. Its in a conical shaped charge, but remember its killing a 50+ tonne machine covered in steel. Slap a tank next time you are at a museum or near one. Solid is an understatement.
How much explosive would it take to punch a hole in a plane? Fuck all. Tamping it would be the hardest part as the missile in flight provides the tamping for the shaped charge. And blowing a hole isn't 100% certain to down the plane...
Its a sign of our times that I have decided not to complete this post and to post as an anon. I was going to guess how one might down a plane, because it is a fun mental exercise, but I genuinely worry now about publicly discussing such stuff. NOT because I worry I might inform a terrorist - that's fucking vanishingly unlikely - but because the "powers that be" nowadays seem to be such incredible tossers that just talking about this may get me into trouble.
We are living in dark times.
There have been reports of a computed tomography scan being harmful to pacemakers and other medical devices:-
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crim/2009/189429/
And putting a laptop through CT is going to deliver a generous slug of gammas to a device that is not built anywhere near as robustly as an ICD / pacemaker. To get through the casing will require more MeV than through a person, and the flux density will be higher too.
Space based devices need to be hardened against radiation flux (although low-earth-orbit radiation doses to satellites over a unit lifetime are substantially higher than one single CT). Such protection is a whole study in itself, and requires a many-tiered response to prevent failures that can range from trivial to catastrophic. The catastrophic fails occur near power supplies or motors, where the battery charging circuits or the H-bridges to drive motors fail so that the power rail is connected to ground via a low impedance circuit. Rapid, untrammelled battery discharge is one especially unwelcome result.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hardening
I whole-heartedly approve of the TSA's unrelenting efforts to keep us safe while flying, and will joyfully** endure the most undignified and invasive examinations to assure my fellow passengers that I have not shoved a bomb up my arse ... but I really do not consider this CT exam of my laptop a good idea.
Regards, Tony Barry
** well, joyful might be an inappropriate adverb. I am not gay enough to ever be joyful about such things. But it seems the TSA will leave no turd unturned in their search for explosive devices. I salute their zeal and diligence, and wish them the best in their fruitless cavity searches.
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