More Airport Idiocies

[Haggis]

Upon bringing up www.msn.com, a headline caught my attention: "Airport screeners on the lookout for 'pillow bombs'." I immediately thought this would provide some entertainment with disinformation and general ignorance. I was correct. http://www.msnbc.com/news/980084.asp Take a look for yourself.

A few sentences in particular were quite interesting:
"Al Qaeda operatives are being trained to apply special chemicals to the material inside to transform them into bombs." It makes it sound like a bit of these 'special chemicals' can magically transform the (most likely synthetic) material into a 'bomb'.
"American Intelligence Officials have picked up several indications that al Qaeda is attempting to create a chemical called nitrocellulose to fashion explosive devices that could be smuggled aboard jetliners." Funny how they say they are 'attempting,' although NC is the easiest nitration around.
"Among other things, confiscated al Qaeda training manuals show the sophistication of its preparations, the document said." Sophistication? HA! Any k3wl with drain cleaner and stump remover can do it.
“It has to be confined in an area to be explosive,” said Gregory G. Baur, a former director of the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators. “Producing this requires somebody who has some sophistication and who knows what he’s doing.” I am not sure how 'confined' a teddy bear is, but usually they are soft and yielding, hardly confinement.
"If dried carefully, it emits no odor, but if dried incompetently, it has a slight etherlike smell." How incompetent is a person that cannot leave it out to dry. Etherlike?
"Nitrocellulose, also called guncotton or cellulose nitrate, can be created by combining cotton or cottonlike material with nitric acid or sulfuric acid, substances that are used in various forms to clean drains and by artists in metal etching. Mixing in nitroglycerine makes the mixture even more dangerous. " Scary chemicals! All around us! Panic! Well, thank you for telling me that NG makes NC more dangerous, I never would have guessed. Besides, in our terms, it would be 'more effective'.

[bobo]

I wonder what they are actually afraid of. Is it the NC that the bomber makes in his garage and smuggles aboard the airliner inside his teddybear? Or is it fear that he mixes nitric acid with his turban while inside the closet?

What keeps us from taking explosives into a plane anyway? Is it the succesful detectors the weapon inspectors used to find Saddam's massive arsenal of WMD's with? Or a dog who can smell NG and Semtex but not (for example) nitromannite? Metal detectors? Unless the USA have far more advanced techniques than we do they can't possibly stop this.

It is an interesting thought however. Can you smuggle a large amount of fluids into an airliner and create an explosion one way or the other? Or a few kg of KCN or worse and some acid to turn the airliner in a big flying gas chamber?

I haven't witnessed a runaway AP accident, but according to the horror stories about AP I keep reading... Could you blow a plane apart by tossing a few liters acetone inside a bucket H2O2 with a lot of conc'd sulfuric acid at once (with emphasis on a lot, at once:D )?

[EP]

And how do you plan on brining all that liquid onto a plane? :rolleyes:

[grandyOse]

I think they should get several arabs to all drink as much chemicals as possible just before going through security. Once onboard the plane they can all cram into the bathroom and puke their loads into the toilets and/or sinks. Any number of high expolisves could be made this way.

Anyone with the alquida email address should suggest this to them.

[Sparky]

I was deffinetly turned off (appalled even) by Microsofts 'news' that they put on their pages, especially the messenger adds they force upon you now if you have their latest chat program. Then again, what can you expect from Microsoft.

I have to give this author some credit though, his story actually contained some facts. I have thought before of having a (white I guess) T shirt made of nitrocellulose. In a way it seems like sort of a clever idea, with the hole hiding something in plain sight thing.

The thing that annoys me about this article is that they portray nitrocellulose as something new. The story is about the fact someone might smuggling explosives onto a plane... ya, so what else is new? And the thing about adding nitroglycerine to the nitrocellulose is just wierd. I mean come on, if you add nitroglycerine to pretty much anything it makes that something 'more dangerous'. Gotta love the way they put it - adding nitro makes it 'more dangerous'. Not 'more brissant' or anything, just 'more dangerous'. As if the only reason to use blasting gelatine is to kill people.

To me the real part of this article is that the government agencies got word from 'credible sources' that Al Queda is trying to build a bomb like this. This implies of course that they just about had a whole team working on it. I mean come on how many people does it take to produce some nitrocellulose? They could freaking pack their briefcase with sheets of flash paper with printing to disguise the sheets - you can go out and buy flash paper for crying out loud. It really emphasises what one reasonably bright person could do by themselves (with nobody to squeal on them) if this is the way goverment agencies catch people. Good thing these people aren't reasonably bright eh :p .

The next thing you know the security gaurds will be running around with torches checking to see if peoples clothes are nitrocellulose :D .