Re: [Debconf-discuss] US laptop ban and DebConf
martin f krafft <madduck@debconf.org> writes:
> … at least not while we're flying in airplanes where toys with bluetooth
> are taken off children (just happened…). Since the aircraft can be
> disturbed with Bluetooth, I think we have a slew of other issues anyway,
> so it's hard to see the tree in all that forest.
Note that the second sentence doesn't really follow from the first. The
idea that this stuff interferes with airplane navigation equipment is
mostly nonsense. (I only say mostly because there have been some
*remarkable* security flaws in airplane software.)
Unfortunately, air transportation safety in the last thirty years or so
has entered some bizarre zero-fact zone where the public statements from
the people responsible for safety protocols are completely unbelievable
nonsense, like the idea that a cell phone might interfere with airplane
navigation, or like the idea that 95% of the stuff confiscated at
checkpoints has anything whatsoever to do with aircraft safety.
In some cases, these policies may be hiding real security threat models.
I suspect there are more legitimate threat models underlying this crap
than we're giving them credit for. But because nearly all of the public
statements are such total absurdity, and because at least in the US the
screeners are so maniphestly incompetent given even their own internal
testing, they've burned their credibility so completely that it almost
doesn't matter any more. We're in this weird state where actual
legitimate policy may or may not be buried under a layer of unjustified
ass-covering, but all one can actually see is the ass-covering and
blame-shifting.
Airline safety has been a completely bipartisan failure in the United
States. The last three administrations have been equally bad, regardless
of political affiliation. The FAA and the TSA just pile new rule on top
of new rule with no defensible public justification other than furious
flag-waving and vicious attacks on anyone who questions them. It's sad;
the TSA was never any better than marginal, but I used to have real
respect for the FAA as a fact-based, thoughtful, methodical investigative
body grounded in real science.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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