Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ghshephard 6013 days ago
Kip Hawley, former head of the TSA has answered this question a number of times, including conversations with Schneier. Most of the liquids that can do the type of damage the TSA are concerned about are likely highly oxygen reactive, or otherwise have significant obstacles to being combined outside of a lab environment.

If that weren't the case, the TSA would have simply banned all liquids.
1 comments
blasdel 6013 days ago
Why would you have to combine the liquids into one reservoir? Couldn't the N passengers just make N bombs from their 3x 3oz, each independently capable of going off, but intended to be detonated together for maximum effect?
link
tptacek 6013 days ago
Because then you have to get two suicide bombers on the plane at the same time.

By all indications, the 9/11 bombers were very high on the AQ food chain. The underpants bomber didn't get tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars wired to him before the op; he was a shmuck, in a strategy designed to weaponize schmucks.

If a TSA measure doubles the manpower required to carry off an AQ op, it is almost prima facie "effective". Is, I think, the logic you'd deploy against the "combine the 3oz bottles" argument.

link
ghshephard 6013 days ago
If the TSA is acting rationally, and I have to believe they are, I would have to believe that the ingredients can't be combined outside of a lab, or trivially in a washroom. Otherwise you are right - you don't even need to have more than one person on the plane carry the dangerous liquid, in fact, you wouldn't even need the person about to blow up the plane carry the liquid - just have three or four people taking planes to random areas get together, reformulate the bomb, and then hand it off to person number five who is clean.

Of course, we're now talking about a _conspiracy_ - and a conspiracy of four average people is 100x more likely to be discovered by a intelligence team than a single attacker.

So perhaps it's the forcing of attacks to be _conspiracies_ is the goal of allowing only small amounts of liquids.

Regardless - I think we can all agree that it makes liquid bomb attacks substantially more difficult than simply allowing people to carry on as much liquid as they chose, and therefore opening the door wide open to a lone attacker just blowing up airplanes at will without possibility of detection.

link