US Wants to Extend Laptop Ban to All International Flights by Catalin Cimpanu.
From the post:
US Secretary of Homeland Security Gen. John Kelly revealed in an interview over the weekend that the US might expand its current laptop ban to all flights into the US in the near future.
“I might,” said Gen. Kelly yesterday on Fox News Sunday. “There’s a real threat. There’s numerous threats against aviation. That’s really the thing they’re really obsessed with, the terrorists, the idea of knocking down an airplane in flight, particularly if it is a US carrier, particularly if it is full of mostly US folks.”
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Is there an FOIA exception to obtaining the last fitness report on US Secretary of Homeland Security Gen. John F. Kelly when he was serving with the Marines?
Loading fire-prone laptops, which may potentially also contain bombs, into a planes cargo hold for “safety,” raises serious questions about Kelly’s mental competence.
Banning laptops could be a ruse to get passengers to use cloud services for their data, making it more easily available to the NSA.
As the general says, there are people obsessed with “the idea of knocking down an airplane in fight,” but those are mostly found in the Department of Homeland Security.
You need not take my word for it, consider the Wikipedia timeline of airline bombings shows eight such bombings since December of 2001. I find it difficult to credit “obsession” when worldwide there is only one bomb attack on an airline every two years.
Moreover, the GAO in Airport Perimeter and Access Control Security Would Benefit from Risk Assessment and Strategy Updates (2016) found the TSA has not evaluated the vulnerability at 81% of the 437 commercial airports. US airports are vulnerable and the TSA can’t say which ones or by how much.
If terrorists truly were “obsessed,” in General Kelly’s words, the abundance of vulnerable US airports should see US aircraft dropping like flies. Except they’re not.
PS: Anticipating a complete ban on laptops, now would be a good time to invest in airport laptop rental franchises.