Comment by ksaj

Comment by ksaj 10 months ago

5 replies

The reason you are asked to prove your laptop can boot at airport security is that batteries and bombs have similar densities.

It would be pretty straight forward to rig a pager to run off of one battery while the other is an explosive charge made to look like the actual battery.

yonran 10 months ago

So how do you think that airport security will adjust to the widespread knowledge that you can hide an explosive alongside the battery?

  • ksaj 10 months ago

    Especially now that it is abundantly clear that a pager's batteries are large enough to be replaced by quite an effective bomb. And cell phones are a fair amount larger than pagers.

    It seems the pager bombs only killed the users. But they also harmed a lot of people around them.

ben7799 10 months ago

They have other ways to detect explosives.

I've had my stuff tested for explosives, and it did not involve turning anything on.

  • ksaj 10 months ago

    Yes, they also use that sniffer wand over the keyboard. And some airports use dogs. Some rely on Xray and similar scans.

    Not every airport does exactly the same thing. Some do multiple things. I don't think it was even implied that all airports are exactly the same. My point was about density of battery and explosive material, and not about these "other ways."

    For that matter, the xrays and other visualization scans also show the density similarities between batteries and explosives. And that density was the entirety of my point.