[wordup] Re: At Airport Gate, a Cyborg Unplugged

[Adam Shand]

From: Richard Schwartfeger <istari at spack.org>

I read that with interest, especially considering all my recent flights
since Sept 11th (8 as I recall - 2 US domestic).

You may already have considered all of what follows, but I thought I'd
voice the ideas anyhoo:

1. I travelled with a good deal of my tools (hey, it's my livelihood :-) I
did put the screwdrivers in my checked luggage mind you.

At one point I thought I was screwed (or certainly cavity-searched) - I
remembered I had left a POST diagnostic card in my breifcase - this is a
small circuit board, with an assortment of chips and an array of
seven-segment LEDs - it looks sufficiently like a timing device to arouse
suspicion (or so I thought).

As well as this there were various other tools and gadgets that most
people wouldn't be carrying and in combo with the POST card should raise
suspicion.

But NO! Not a thing, nada, nought.  A woman in front of me lost her nail
scissors (with blades about 1.5cm long - they *might* wound a mouse...)

In fact all of this crap in my bags and no-one even flinched (not that I
wanted them to of course).

2. An associate of mine, who is a security consultant here (London) was on
his way to India to visit a client and on his way out of the office,
grabbed a few carbon-fibre knives to show his client as an example. The
idea was to pop these into his checked baggage before the flight. It
eventuated that he promptly forgot they were in his inside jacket pocket
and flew all the way to India out of Heathrow witout getting picked up - a
fact he only realised when he was getting in the car in India.

3. Carbon-fibre knives also have cousins in fine ceramics, which are
almost as hard as diamond and are often used to make cutting-bits for
metal lathes. These can be molded into almost any shape you like (most
efficient is a triangular blade - the wounds don't close easily). If these
can make it through check-in inside a jacket pocket, I'd hate to see how
many you can get by taped to your skin.

4. Along the same lines Buffy The Vampire Slayer could make it on a flight
fully armed (wooden stakes are just as effective on people too...)

5. Why is it airports were confiscating toenail clippers (if you know how
to make these lethal weapons, let me know :-) and not the metal ballpoint
pens I was carring, which I can see as far more dangerous.

6. Glock make a very nice 9mm constructed from high-tensile plastic - why
I have to ask...?

It has only 4 or 5 metal pins in it (which makes it legal as that's enough
to trip a sensitive detector). But if you know what you're doing you can
remove the pins and secrete them at separate places in your baggage or on
your person. Individually each pin is not enough to trip most detectors -
you can crank up detector sensitivity, but then peoples fillings would set
'em off.

"Ah!" I hear you say, "Surely a clip of ammo would set them off?" Well
yeah, except if they're plastic rounds tipped with cyanide or ricin.

I recently had the chance to discuss these concerns with an airline pilot,
he agreed and stated that "Basically everything you see at the airports is
window-dressing to keep the 95% of the public who have no idea, buying
tickets and getting on planes."

Window-dressing as an Anti-terrorist weapon or marketing ploy?

Considering all the noise about Al-Qaeda using the net and every net user
being a latent criminal, just waiting for a chance to attack the pillars
of democracy I wonder how many flags will be set in untold servers at
unknown locations by this message.

Who me? Paranoid?
Never.
:-)