Correct. In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. It's all security theater.

TSA Chief Out After Agents Fail 95 Percent of Airport Breach Tests

"In one case, an alarm sounded, but even during a pat-down, the screening officer failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to an undercover agent's back. In all, so-called "Red Teams" of Homeland Security agents posing as passengers were able get weapons past TSA agents in 67 out of 70 tests — a 95 percent failure rate, according to agency officials."

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-...

It's about making people feel safe.

We're not rational beings, so what do you do about an irrational fear? You invent a magical thing that protects from that irrational fear.

You're orders of magnitude more likely to die in a road accident, but people don't fear that. They fear terrorist attacks far more.

You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many of which can't be protected against due to the laws of physics and practicality - short of forcing everyone to travel naked and strapped in like cattle, with no luggage. And even then, what about the extremist who works for the airline?

So you invent some theater to stop people from panicking (a far more real danger). And that's a perfectly acceptable solution.

On one hand, I think it's a valid criticism to say it's security theatre, to a degree. After 9/11, something had to be done, fast!, and we're still living with the after effects of that.

On the other hand: defence in depth. No security screening is perfect. Plastic guns can get through metal detectors but we still use them. Pat downs at nightclubs won't catch a razor blade concealed in someone's bra. We try to catch more common dangerous items with the knowledge that there's a long tail of things that could get through. There's nothing really new there, I don't think?

> The motivation behind the liquid limits is that there are extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids.

The limits were instituted after discovering a plot to smuggle acetone and hydrogen peroxide (and ice presumably) on board to make acetone peroxide in the lavatory. TATP is not a liquid and it is not stable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_pl...

From my understanding, the new CT machines are able to characterise material composition using dual-energy X-ray, and this is how they were able to relax the rules.

Not a chemist…but if someone can carry on 3 bottles at 3.4 ounces each, now they have 10 ounces.

Two people do it and it’s 20 ounces. All within the “TSA Standard.”

This is where the liquid limit never made sense to me…if we were serious about keeping these substances off of planes, we would limit the total liquid…right? Or require that any liquids get checked.

I just don’t see how per-bottle liquid limits are anything close to deterrent for motivated attackers…but they sure are deterrent for me when I forget that I put a hotel water bottle in my bag.

I'm fine with some liquid potentially being explosives, but the fact that security just throws them all in the same bin when they confiscate them makes me think that not even they believe it makes any sense.

Also, why 100ml? Do you need 150ml to make the explosive? Couldn't there be 2 terrorists with 100ml + 50ml? All these questions, so little answers...

most of airport security rests on the notion of going over a series of long tests will elicit unusual (fear, stress) responses from malicious actors and these can then be flagged for even thorougher checks which will then eventually lead to discovery, banning or removal of luggage

so it's not the test accuracy by itself but rather then the fact that these tests are happening at all

> Average people have never heard of them because they aren’t in popular lore.

Everything I know about liquid explosives I learned from Die Hard 3.

OP is talking about (mostly) TATP here. It's very easy to make, harder to detect with traditional methods and potent enough to be a problem. It's also hilariously unstable, will absolutely kill you before you achieve terrorism, and if you ask people on the appropriate chemistry subreddits how to make it you'll be ridiculed for days.

These liquids show up as slightly different colors in the new CT scan machines and this can finally be reliably detected by software.

This is also why a bunch of airports no longer ask you to take electronics out of your bags.

It was always theater, Bruce Schneier did a great set of blogs and tests back in the 2001+ time showing flaws throughout the process. At the same time, he pointed out that humanity had already adapted their response to airplane hijackings _that day_ (the Pennsylvania flight). An airplane exploding from a bomb is definitely scary, but not as scary as airplanes being turned into missiles by a few suicidal passengers.

> . This reminds me of the chemical swipes done on your bags to detect explosives. Those swipes can only detect a narrow set of explosive chemistries and everyone knows it.

Meanwhile, you get swabbed, the machine produces a false positive, the TSA drone asks you why the machine is showing a positive, you have no fucking idea why, and they just keep swabbing until they get a green light and everyone moves on with life.

After 4 years of Russia/Ukraine, does anyone think that a terror group would take down an airliner with anything other than a drone? Why take any operational risk of actually going through security?

> This reminds me of the chemical swipes done on your bags to detect explosives. Those swipes can only detect a narrow set of explosive chemistries and everyone knows it. Some explosives notoriously popular with terror organizations can’t be detected. Everyone, including the bad guys, knows all of this.

I used to work at a place that sold a lot of fertilizers. We mostly sold stuff like Monoammonium phosphate or potassium nitrate.

One time while cleaning out a back storage room I came across an open bag of ammonium nitrate. I picked that thing up, carried it around, putting it on a cart and wheeling it around kicking up a lot of dust, all the kinds of stuff that you’d expect while cleaning out a storage room.

A day or so later I got on a plane and they swabbed me and my bag before doing so. I was startled when I didn’t raise any alarms.

I was completely under the misguided impression they something like ammonium nitrate would be detected on a person if they had handled it within a few days of being tested and that would have to explain myself.

So how does that explain I can take 10 100ml bottles and an empty 1l bottle through security but not 1 full 1l bottle?

If those explosives are extremely powerful then do the limits actually prevent using them to do damage inside an airplane though? TSA isn't even effective at preventing you from bringing on sharp metal objects as long as they aren't particularly knife shaped.

The motivation was that we've run out of other things to scaremonger about so we'll come up with what Bruce Schneier calls movie-plot threats and go with those instead. The few explosives that are liquid are also incredibly impractical to work with in most cases except for perhaps perchloric acid which is nitrogen-free so won't be detected but then persuading that to detonate from a seat in economy class is going to be quite a feat.

The country I'm in abolished the liquids nonsense for domestic flights (which they can do because it's domestic travel) around a decade ago with the reasoning that it wasn't serving any purpose.

I would not be surprised if this started out totally unrelated to explosives. Say that some toddler spilled an entire 3 liters of grape soda all over the plane. Or a hypochondriac brought cleaning agents aboard and gave everyone a headache.

Mostly sarcasm, but man do I see this pattern a lot. The risk mitigation apparatus is called in for something, they see an opportunity to overgeneralize and prevent an entire new category of potential mishaps, and the everyday folk end up really confused trying to reconcile the rules with their intent.

Reminds me of the parable about the bench guards. Is there an aphorism for this?

Are these chemicals freezable? Because TSA lets through large quantities frozen matter that is liquid at room temp. E.g. you can bring through a liter of hot sauce if it's frozen when it passes through TSA.

Ahh, the naïvety of the scientific mind! The security theater is intended to prevent government beaurocrats' mates from having to get real jobs and keep them happily sponging off public money. Also, set themselves up for post-career high paid gigs with those same private sector beneficiaries, so they can't be done for corruption during their career. Yes, really. Ask an AI about mid to late career public sector transitions to private sector and cross-examine 100 top examples across markets perceived as 'low corruption index'.

I assume the logic was:

1) People demand the government be accountable for their failing to protect them

2) Government responds by increased giving the appearance of protecting them, since that creates more lowest-common-denominator sense of feeling safe than the government actually protecting them does; votes protected

3) Complaints of "security theatre" don't alter the above - they just have to wait until people have forgotten their fear while very slowly, bit by bit, without it being noticed, stop doing the nonsense

Or put simply: "terrorists win"

I remember reading something around the time these prohibitions against liquids were rolled out that said none of the two-part liquid explosives were powerful enough to take down a plane unless you were carrying an unusual amount of liquid to be traveling with, or storing your liquid in an unusual way. For instance, there should be no reason you couldn't carry an ordinary sized bottle of shampoo in your luggage. No idea how accurate this is, maybe somebody could set this straight?

Won't asking people to take a swig solve a bunch of those issues?

It's designed to protect consumer confidence so the economy hums along. A single plane is a few hundred people, but the effects ripple out. This is a big country, you need air travel to make it reasonable to connect the coasts, and the more people traveling the more cohesive and economically balanced the country is. They were fine with letting 1M+ Americans die from COVID to protect the economy. That's really all there is to it.

If I recall correctly, it was WIDELY reported by sane, savvy people that no such liquid agents existed that could be combined onboard in this way.

Are there examples you can point to?

I believe the "theater" is needed precisely for this - to catch bad actors. There could just be a long queue with some blind dog and scary looking guy at the end. What it still does is makes a bad guy sweat, plan against it and etc. You just can't have free entrance for all. However you will never prevent state actors or similar with any kind of theatre because they will always prepare for it.

> It would be great if governments were more explicit about precisely what all of this theater is intended to prevent.

That is a good statement. It IS a theater. So, the point for it IS the theater. The "evil terrorists" is just the scapegoat wrapper, similar to how officials in the EU constantly try to extend mass surveillance and claim it is to "protect children".

> extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids.

My understanding is that those are detected by the bag swabs.

I _thought_ that this was to stop people mixing their own explosives _on_ the plane? There was a whole court case in the UK about how people had smuggled it onboard and then were going to make it in the toilet.

They would need and ice bath, which is somewhat impractical.

> It would be great if governments were more explicit about precisely what all of this theater is intended to prevent.

The liquids requirement was in response to a famous (at the time) plot by people in Britain to smuggle a two part liquid explosive onto the plane. So the context was, at the time, obvious and needed no explanation.

Is it really unclear what the theater is actually for? It was immediately weaponized that any opposition placed you somewhere between 'anti-american' and a 'terrorist'. A perfect environment to pass any legislation, no matter how ineffectual and illegal.

I thought the point of replacing all the xray scanners with CT scanners was to be able to detect this sort of thing?

If you have access to nitric acid you don't need any obscure lore. 3 ounces of a simple concoction a high school chemistry student could make is enough to blow a hole in an airplane. You also stand a good chance of blowing yourself up on the way to the airport.

Is the capability of these explosives at a safe level if the liquid precursors are less than 3.5 fl ounces? If they are still capable of blowing a hole in the fuselage with less than 3.5 fl ounces then the limits on fluids are still pointless.

One theory that I've had for a while with regards to the no liquid policy is that it was somehow introduced by the food vendors on the other side of security, who want you to buy a drink and some food after you pass through.

Modern airport x-ray machines use two frequencies and then estimate the density of objects and liquids. In theory, the can tell the difference between water and vodka. I wonder if the change reflects trust in this tech?

So, security through obscurity mostly as a smoke show for the public, not actual terrorist countermeasure. It's like the TSA being unable to detect most traditional weapon in carry-ons. Business as usual it seems.

Maybe I'm being naive, but it has always seemed pretty trivial to me to use the post-security shops to assemble something that will meaningfully damage the aircraft - so the whole thing smacked of theatre.

Schiphol at Amsterdam had this for a year or so, you could bring any type of liquid and leave everything in the bag. But they reverted the liquid rule, if I remember correctly, because of the confusion it caused.

Security theater and conditioning people into accepting invasions of privacy

Security theatre.

And speaking of theatre in the air, most Indian airlines will make an announcement of turbulence just before food service starts.

This is to make the sheep - strike that - passengers go back to their seats and sit down.

The security theatre is there to make people feel safe.

It's about emotion not logic.

Well, I watched the video of some former Delta Force officer, who said that you can sharpen your credit card to make a deadly weapon out of it. Let's ban credit cards in the airplanes.

Recently, I worked all day at an ammunition plant, then the next day got may hands swabbed by TSA. Nothing detected by the machine.

Makes you wonder.

> Everyone, including the bad guys, knows all of this.

Then satisfy our curiosity and provide more details as to which are the liquid explosives and which common ones are not detected ? ;)

Is a open flame enough to ignite those liquids and don't they need something to press against to "explode" and not just cause a giant flame like gasoline?

In Zurich, you can buy Swiss army knives in the secure zone.

> These explosives can be detected via infrared spectroscopy but that isn’t going to be happening to liquids in your bag

There are more ways to find them. Look up Z score. TL; DR New detectors can discriminate water from explosives. Old ones couldn’t. None of them are doing IR spectroscopy.

I think the idea is that the new scanners they have are capable detecting liquid densities better so that they can actually tell the difference now?

>is reminds me of the chemical swipes done on your bags to detect explosives.

I've also had this done on my dialysis port at some airports here in India :-|

Its not just for explosives, by the way. Its also for solvents - for example, mercury, which could be used to weaken the airframe very easily.

They don't believe these liquids are actually dangerous, otherwise they wouldn't just throw them in a bin near the queue.

I wonder if the improvements can detect trigger mechanisms better rather than testing the liquid itself.

Israel strips you naked and rubs the swipe between your legs thoroughly. Source: friend.

2 part liquid explosives featured heavily in Die Hard with a Vengeance.

Why do you make a dog hold a treat on his nose?

See, when the shoe bomber or the guys doing chemistry 101 in the toilets of the plane were discovered, they put a ban on liquids and almost shoes.

I was hoping nobody comes out with an explosive you can build with cotton (and a nuclear reactor, but that would be a detail for the "security compliance" people who will come up with new restrictions). We would need to fly naked and this would be annoying.

I sure like to fly a safe plane. The problem is that I am sure the people who actually want to do something bad will use, like you mentioned, alternative solutions - and I will not even have the nail file they took from me when trying to to defend the plane during the hijacking.

how does it add confusion?

if normal people don’t know, criminals/terrorists do, and the materials are commonplace but not screened for, then everything about the current approach is wrong.

and when has a plane been brought down by the evil explosives or stable liquids in recent memory?

so the theatre put in place is just that, huh?

> It would be great if governments were more explicit about precisely what all of this theater is intended to prevent.

Have you considered just going long Palantir?

there's nothing to really understand

Because the theater raises the threshold.

TSA has always been security theater

And yet .. nothing ever seems to happen! Even though it's so easy.

That means one of at least two things. Either the terrorists are stupid and easily impressed by the security theater. Or there are just not that many bad ombres out there trying to take down airplanes. Or something else I can't think of.

Any thoughts?

It's obvious. The harder you make it to down or hijack a plane, the fewer downed planes you will see. It didn't have to be perfect to prevent and deter. Some security is better than no security. If you had no security at all you would see planes go down all the time.

And it wouldn't surprise me if some of the detection technology were classified.

It would not be "great" if governments were more open about their detection capabilities; that would cause more terrorism attempts and is one of the stupidest things one could do here.

These machines don't really detect what kind of materials stuff is composed of, much of that is just a crude classification based on density. True identification requires broadband x-rays emission with spectral analysis.

it has been such a godsend flying out of Frankfurt where they have the new scanners and you don't have to empty out your bag anymore. So much smoother. Then I fly back and get all annoyed at the other airports. I was told Oslo airport is holding out until it becomes regulation to use the new scanners. Security-Theater is still what it is. It is super weak imho, despite never having seriously attempted a heist or trying to get contraband on a plane. I miss the good old days where you handed your luggage to a guy just before boarding the plane.

There's a whole ton of people taking about MRI -- MRIs are a completely universe than CT/X-rays

Dual energy x ray has been around forever though, like decades.

Can this X Ray bit flip memory or damage NAND?

Mount Pleasant Complex is primarily a military base, not a normal civilian airport. That explains almost everything you’re experiencing. Civilian flights are effectively guests on a military base

Tiny airport, on island with tiny population, thats not a major tourist destination, thats subject to competing territorial claims, that had a major war fought over it in living memory, has extra security requirements and a poor terminal...

I'm flabbergasted, this is absolutely shocking and outrageous!!!

I would much rather see the penguins in the maldives!!!

I flew to Belfast in the mid-2000s. I don't remember the security screening as being that unusual (for an American), but the terminal architecture was interesting.

Apart from a lack of space a lot of that is very normal, and it's hardly surprising things are a bit janky if they only have one flight a week.

Dudes must be really bored there

That's crazy.

No successful terrorist attacks on planes going to/from western countries after 9/11/2001, that's a pretty good record. Maybe we can't prove that the security theater was responsible for that, but still, the only planes that were bombed after 9/11/2001 were inside Russia or going from Egypt to Russia.

Don't forget to account for the risk we added by creating places where hundreds of people line up outside the security check. [0]

[0] https://www.rand.org/pubs/commentary/2016/05/out-of-line-how... -- "The study also identified an easy way to make people a less attractive target — improve ticketing and security operations so that crowds of people aren't waiting in line."

How many man hours and how much money have we wasted over SREs at <tech company>? Has it been a worthwhile trade off?

- Half kidding but this is what a lot of CEOs/CTOs think, SRE is one of the least invested skills because it is so difficult to prove that they are worthwhile. Similarly they are invested into AFTER a major incident.

Depends who the 'we' is. It worked out great for the airports; increased drink sales means increased rent for airport shops.

No hijacked planes, no terror attacks?

no

3-1-1 is rarely enforced. I always got confused why the 100ml limit existed, since I could just take multiple bottles of 100ml of whatever I wanted and it was okay. Then I realized that technically I only could take 3 bottles but I’ve been getting away with more for decades.

> Not because of a sudden outbreak of sanity, but because they have CT scanners now.

What's is the evidence for believing so strongly that airports all over the world have been prohibiting large amounts of liquids due to widespread insanity?

Yeah, I flew thru Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands a few years ago, and I couldn't believe they let me through with water.

The security used something I would describe as out of an Iron Man film, they were zooming around a translucent 3D view of my backpack. (It was on an LCD display instead of hovering midair, but I was still impressed. But the fact they let me keep the water was even more amazing, hahah.)

I would say just as if not more important are probably some advanced nitrates detector.

Dublin has been relaxing their restrictions for a while now, and when I travelled two weeks ago, had also completely dropped the rules. You no longer need to remove liquids or electronics from bags, and the liquids per bottle limits are much higher (don’t remember exactly, maybe 2 litres) with no restriction on total number of bottles.

I watched a YouTube video about it a few months back and apparently the new devices, at least those used in Dublin, are much more accurate in detecting the difference between materials that previously looked similar to the machines, they can also rotate the images in 3d to get a look from different angles. Both of these make it easier to tell whether a substance is dangerous, apparently.

When you don't know much about a topic, probability is higher that your are missing some piece than some entity doing things that make no sense.

I know it's easy to get the impression that's not the case. But when your stop making fun of / belittle such events / persons / decision and be curious instead you start to realize that more often than not you are just missing a piece of information.

The truth oftentimes is just not interesting enough and not clickbait worthy.

I believe the article mentioned density as well. I suspect that is extremely key in determining what it is, or at least determining if it is something really odd that should get additional screening.

It's not just large amounts of liquids: it was my understanding that this is both a restriction on large amounts of liquid, but particularly on large containers needed for an explosive of sufficient destructive power.

You could always easily work around the liquid amount restriction (multiple containers over multiple people), but if you still need a large container, it becomes harder.

I don't know if this is true or if a resealable plastic bag also works, for instance (that would be funny, wouldn't it?).

It can detect not only large containers of liquids, but (up to a point) what liquid is in them.

Have you never been screened where they swab your items and stick it in a machine? That is to detect explosives. They can use the first machine to target people for follow up screening.

If you come in from a country that doesn’t fall under the TSA, you have to clear TSA before getting on a flight that does.

The worst I had was in India, flying to the US. Not only was there the normal airport security (despite having come in on a connecting flight from within India), but when I got to the gate (with only minutes to spare), there was a whole TSA check at the gate itself. Bags x-rayed (again), metal detectors (again), guy with a wand (again), the whole deal. Just getting to the gate, I had to show my papers to at least 6 people; every time I turned down a new hallway. That was my far my worst airport experience.

Flying with connections mostly within Schengen, or EU<>US via CDG, I never had to clear security again at layover, but I recently learnt this is rather an exception, and apparently it's a very common thing in most airports to have to clear security again.

LHR is actually notorious for this; you don't have to clear security again at LHR only when the connection is domestic.

In many other airports it's the same when e.g. you switch a terminal. Best to check for a particular airport what are the rules before booking.

It's super frustrating losing the contents of your water bottle and then having nowhere at all that you can refill it.

Pretty common to have to re-clear security at large airports if you've come from another country, I've had to do it every time when transiting through Dubai for instance.

> My real anger is that we have found it possible to fund and implement this level of screening, at massive monetary, human and privacy cost, but I can't go to my doctor and ... get a body scan that does all the 3d segmentation, recognition, etc

Airport screening of people doesn't yield those results. It's able to notice a big inorganic mass, or a chunk of metal, but it wouldn't spot a tumour, it gives nowhere near the level of detail that an MRI or CAT scan will give. The airport scanners are also much cheaper, coming in at ~250k USD rather than ~2m USD.

Even the xray machines used for bags, while expensive and capable, are designed to differentiate metals, liquids, and organics, not organics from other organics.

Both airport security and healthcare funding have their issues, but I don't think this is one of them.

> My real anger at airport screening is that we have found it possible to fund and implement this level of screening, at massive monetary, human and privacy cost, but I can't go to my doctor and for a few pennies (sorry, those don't exist now, how about for a few nickles?) get a body scan that does all the 3d segmentation, recognition, etc etc etc. We could actually save lives

This always strikes me as a weird thing tech people believe about medicine. Full body scans just aren’t medically useful for otherwise healthy people. You’ll inevitably see something and it’s almost certainly going to be benign but might send you down the path of a lot of expensive and dangerous treatments or exploratory procedures. This is why there’s always so much debate about prostrate exam and breast exam age recommendations. There’s a tipping point where the risk of iatrogenesis outward the risk of disease.

Only in the Apple reality distortion field would I see the hubris of boot times being equated to saving lives. I see value in saving time, but without the celebrity worship, it's nowhere near the same in terms of importance, application, or utility. Besides, the same time saving desire has been a driving force in software by nameless developers since the beginning of software. Attempting to frame and attribute the concept to a single individual is dismissive and disrespectful to the work of others.

There’s alot to imaging. When my wife was battling cancer she was getting alot of MRIs and was in a trial for computerized radiology. We got to talk to the radiologist, who showed us the difference between what he found vs the machine. The machine spotted some stuff that he didn’t, but wasn’t as good at classification.

You also need context to appropriately interpret what you see.

> a few pennies (sorry, those don't exist now, how about for a few nickles?)

Wait what? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin)

I almost exclusively take trains now because the experience of flying is one of repeated dehumanization, especially in the USA.

First, if getting dropped off in a car (most American airports this is your only option), you must suffer being screamed at by traffic cops while trying to navigate a perpetually under construction dropoff area. You get one (1) peck on the cheek from mum before some uniformed individual waddles over to yell at you some more.

Then you must wait in line at a check in counter behind fifty families with 4 large luggage items each, despite the fact that you only have a backpack. Why? Because when you tried to do online check-in and boarding pass, the site broke / said no, and the self-service check-in kiosk at the airport still isn't switched on despite being installed a decade ago.

At the check-in counter, a person who knows less than you about the country you're traveling to will inform you as a matter of fact that you can't get ok the flight until you buy a return ticket, since that's what their binder says and they don't understand your visa. You must wait for a supervisor to come and verify that your visa is actually valid.

Before security, you're offered the rich person line if you have the money to pay for it. Literally advertised as a "white glove experience." If not well, into security with the rest of the cattle.

At security, you get to be screamed at by TSA for not knowing the exact procedures of this airport you've never been to. Why must they have to tell Passenger, who is one person they see ten thousand times a day, over and over again that you have to push your box onto the automated belt yourself, rather than let it be pushed on as a train with the other boxes. Passenger must be stupid. Surely it's not because of poor signage that Passenger doesn't know what to do. And by the way, take off your shoes and let us look at your genitals. Oh, you don't want us to look at your genitals? Well then we'll have to just grope every inch of your body, and nut check you for making us do our job in a slightly more annoying way. Just in case you're terrorist scum, we'll check if you have bomb making residue on your skin, while someone else opens your luggage and digs around in it so everyone else in like can see what your underwear looks like. At TSA we offer full service sexualized humiliation, guaranteed!

The dehumanization never ends. Once on the flight you are packed in like cattle, so tight you're rubbing shoulders with the person on your right and left, while your knees dig into the back of the person in front of you. You're served a tray of slop that you have to pay for now. Security took your water bottle, but when you ask for water on the flight, it's given to you in a tiny plastic cup, that's free if you're lucky. Now sit there quietly while we try to sell credit cards to this captured audience.

Finally you land and it's time to get off the plane! Oh actually no, the curtain is closed in your face. Silly peasant, you must watch the first class passengers leisurely pack their things and stroll off the plane. Only until the last one is off may the dirty peasants pass the fabric barrier.

Booz, L3, Rapiscan, Smiths, Leidos, Verint... their logos are mostly everywhere at the airport

I noticed my eyes started automatically skimming right after that paragraph. It's funny my brain has learned to calibrate its reading effort in response to how much perceived effort went into writing it.

Defense in depth.

Heathrow is by far the largest airport in the UK, with several times more flights per day than any other, and flights to a broader range of destinations. So it affects a lot more prospective fliers. I looked up European airports and found some mention that Rome and Milan also have this new equipment, but they're both still significantly smaller than Heathrow.

Schiphol had this for a while (several years I think, I don't fly often), but they reversed it a couple of years ago because European regulators didn't agree for some reason, and now liquids are forbidden again (discussed elsewhere in thread). So this surprises me and is news to me.

Because Heathrow markets itself as a world class airport and they have been woefully behind the times with regards to updating their security tech

You're already allowed to refill large water bottles from a water fountain after passing through security, so the situation you described is already allowed to happen.

What exactly was stoppnig you buying a 2L bottle of vodka in a glass bottle a duty free after security and having this happen?

How did they force you to do that?

Why did you allow them to humiliate you like this?

Where were you prohibited from bringing in food?

I don't even know what I need to show at at the start of the line. My ID? My boarding pass? Both?

I don't recall it in Frankfurt last summer, but it was definitely going earlier this month. Though, they've got a weird security setup for some of the gates, so I'm sure it varied from gate to gate. Dublin and Edinburgh have had it for a while too, Dublin since last summer. Really speeds up security.

The free wine on the planes has gotten better since then. ;p

Thankfully, Edinburgh airport has relaxed it liquid rules. You are now allowed up to 2 litres, across one or more containers and they stay in your bag while going through security.

Doesn’t duty free shopping typically happen after one goes through security?

Hmm, I once transited in Heathrow in a return flight from europe to the US and had to go through Heathrow security for whatever reason, where they subjected me to liquids rules way stricter than either my source or destination did.

E.g. 1 day use contact lenses and prescription creams all having to fit in a tiny plastic bag. So I'm happy for this change.

It’s slowly happening at least in Europe: https://www.skycop.com/news/passenger-rights/airports-liquid...

You know they don't take your liquids at the destination airport, right?

Don't be sad. One step at a time. One more trip-end to connect to other trip-ends. Or do you want to wait with roll-out until the whole world is ready to do it at the same time? Always look on the bright side of life. :)

Batteries are such an incredible oversight if we are trying to control for kinetic energy.

100 watts for an hour ~= 36000 watts for ten seconds. Every fully charged laptop roughly has enough energy to bring an automobile up to highway speed (once). How many of these laptops exist on a typical flight?

We flew a couple legs on Virgin Atlantic yesterday. The info session before takeoff made several mentions of batteries - unplug devices when not on use / not in your seat, if your battery gets hot, don't leave your seat/notify a flight attendant immediately. (I think they have containers to try to contain lithium fires onboard FWIW.)

Recently flew through china where they asked 3 times if if i had a portable charger and made everyone sign declarations to that effect.

If batteries were standardized and replaceable I bet they would force you to not bring your own, and only ones purchasable passed the gate could be used. Maybe that a silver lining to the repairability issues.

When gate-checking carryon bags, staff told passengers to take batteries out of the carryons.

It seems like something that is high risk during flight shouldn't be left to passenger compliance with spoken instructions.

south Korean airlines are banning battery use in flight now https://www.timeout.com/asia/news/psa-major-south-korean-air...

other asian carriers will say they can't be in overhead compartments

This was my experience too - they're visibly angry at you for following the rules

I'm sure that going through security 5 times for the same flight is bound to trigger some extra screening and even if it doesn't, each time you cross through increases the likelihood of getting caught by the normal process.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure a large part of it is just security theatre, but part of it is also just to be enough of a deterrent that a would-be terrorist chooses a different target.

> An arbitrary limit like 100ml is pointless

Do you know that the 100 ml liquids gets scanned in the Heathrow airport? Many times they used to do a secondary scan too after the primary scan. I recall this very well because many times I was made to wait longer after my carry on arrived because they wanted to put the liquids through a secondary scan.

In many countries (Canada included) if you pass through security into the international terminal, you have to 're-enter the country' back through customs and immigration if you don't get on your flight.

Oh. So it was a security measure? I honestly thought it was a way to force you to spend money on things on the airport or abroad. Like shampoo, water, etc.

How about an undetermined adversary? Security is all about raising the cost of an attack, not about preventing one altogether

It's also hilarious that the limit is the very metric 100ml, and not some even number of freedom units like 3 or 4 fluid ounces, like Jesus, George Washington, and bald eagles would have wanted.

Well you wouldn't want a thirsty terrorist, would you?

A trick I use to bypass the liquid restriction is to intentionally pack a sacrificial bottle in addition to whatever valuable bottle I care about. In most cases when the luggage comes for manual inspection they toss the first (sacrificial one) they see and leave the actual valuable bottle alone.

> Heathrow is still a bullshit airport:

Heathrow has the best Guinness+ in the world - those pumps just don't stop.

* if you don't like Guinness, DON'T try it if you've already had a different beer/ ale (whatever). Try it before anything else or it's worse than the very devil spitting on your buds (!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHfiMoJUDVQ

Are we to worry about train terrorism also? Shop terrorism? A person might bring a bomb to any crowded space, it simply is not practical to check all of them.

In the US at least, the limit applies to containers that hold more than 3oz. So I'm prohibited from bringing an 8oz toothpaste tube with an ounce or less left in it. This is an inconvenience if I want to fly for a multi-day trip without checking any baggage.

I lost a nice swiss army knife in Singapore because I was carry-on only and forgot I keep one in my toiletries bag. Was really upset because it was a Christmas gift from my parents. Annoying they don't let you collect it on the way back, I totally get it but would have paid a fine to get it back

Enforcement is very inconsistent that’s for sure. The system is as secure as the least secure airport.

> it seemed more as if it was an attempt to meta-engineer the opinion of people, e. g. to make them fearful of danger xyz

> how the ICE deathsquads operate

Hanlon's Razor applies. These are not complicated conspiracies. Just myopic humans making bad decisions.