Saturday’s Guardian magazine had an excellent article about airport security, quoting Bruce Schneier (whose blog should be on your must-read list):
The security expert, Bruce Schneier, is fond of pointing out that there are several fairly straightforward ways to hijack or bomb an aeroplane. Garottes can be made from fishing line or dental floss, and the snapped-off handle of a wheeled bag makes “a pretty effective spear”. Alternatively, you could buy some steel epoxy glue from a hardware store: it comes in two tubes, one containing steel dust and the other hardener, which can be combined in-flight and moulded into a stubby steel knife, using a metal teaspoon as a handle. (Neither steel epoxy glue nor metal teaspoons are prohibited in hand luggage on flights departing from the UK or the US – unlike, say, snow globes, which are banned under US rules.)
If you would rather use liquid explosive, simply label the bottles “saline solution” and board in the US, where you are allowed to travel with as much saline solution as you wish. Or you could risk it at a British airport: when security staff find liquids in volumes greater than 100ml – and they have been known to seize an estimated five tonnes nationwide in a single day – all they usually do is place them in an open bin and let the offending passenger continue unpenalised. Nor is it a problem if you’re on the US “no-fly list”, the register of people deemed too dangerous to fly (“But too innocent to arrest,” as Schneier puts it). Just target a flight for which you don’t need photo identification, and no one need ever know you’re on the list. Schneier tested this recently, taking a domestic flight from Minneapolis with no photo ID and little hassle. The terms and conditions of at least one British budget airline suggest the same may be possible here.
“There are precisely two things that have made air travel safer since 9/11 – locks on cockpit doors and teaching passengers that they have to fight back,” says Schneier, who is chief technology officer for the security consultancy Counterpane, owned by BT.
The whole article is terrific.
UPDATE: while we’re on Schneier, here’s a story from his blog this morning:
Someone drove a truck through the front gate of the Guinness brewery in Dublin, loaded the trailer with 450 kegs of beer, and drove out the gate. Security presumed it was just another legitimate contractor coming to pick up beer for distribution, and ignored him. Moral: look like you belong.
