Miguel de Icaza ᯅ🍉1d ago
TSA, the 25-year old boondoggle dedicated to the detection of shampoo and water bottles is facing funding challenges.
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@Migueldeicaza For reference, this measure was enacted in response to the very real plot which the UK managed to stop in 2006:

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

2006 transatlantic aircraft plot - Wikipedia

Mar 23 at 5:46pmWeb
Show threadMatt22h ago
@agreeable_landfall @Migueldeicaza Because 20 years ago, some guys allegedly came up with a completely harebrained idea with even less of a chance to success than the moron "shoe bomber" that still has all of us taking off our dangerous chancletas at security, we still can't take a fucking water bottle on board in many countries 🤦‍♂️
I have some experience from my teens with the stuff they were trying to make; first batch was in a middle school cafeteria, luckily well before that time. If you want to make significant quantities, you have to cool it to keep it from blowing up the container; if you make just a little, that's fine in a bottle, but then you get enough for maybe a firecracker. And in any case you get it as a precipitate floating in a watery mix that stinks to high heaven (there's acetone and a strong acid in the brew) and does fuckall unless you manage to get the liquid out (that's the part where we were wise enough at 15 to leave the cafeteria before). Chance of pulling this off on a plane, undetected: zero. Especially after ordering a few kilos of ice cubes from the crew for, uhhhhm, just my drink.
Show threadGlitzersachen20h ago

@menos @agreeable_landfall @Migueldeicaza

On the other side, you don't know what else they fear. You can do a lot with liter of liquid that nobody checks what it is. I, personally, believe that they refrained from publishing every scenario they came up with to not give the baddies any ideas.

Show threadMatt10h ago
@glitzersachen @agreeable_landfall @Migueldeicaza Fair enough if you don't want to take it from that one weird kid with the chemistry kit, but more competent people than me (duckduck Bruce Schneier, Ross Anderson, Security Theater) have illustrated nicely what they fear: being seen as not doing things. Whether these things are effective or not, nobody cares, they just have to be visible. Not like adding detectives sitting in a office doing detective things like the ones who found the liquid-explosive idiots, nobody sees those. Running your shoes through an x-ray that detects about one in twenty actual weapons when tested, that's the stuff people see.
https://www.travelcodex.com/tsa-misses-95-of-weapons-in-its-own-tests/
TSA Misses 95% of Weapons in Its Own Tests - Travel Codex

TSA's own tests showed 67 out of 70 fake weapons or explosives managed to get through security check points when "Red Team" members posed as passengers.

Travel Codex