No snow globes or yogurt are allowed past airport security checkpoints, but the video below shows that it does not take MacGyver to build a powerful shotgun with material that you can purchase once you get past the full body scanners…
There really is not much commentary to add to this, only that it is rather sobering to see so explicitly what a joke our airport security paradigm is. Let it be known to the TSA, the politicians, and the fear mongers that anyone with enough resolve and wit can wreak havoc. The $8bn airport security game we play each year is nothing but a half-hearted attempt to pacifcy those among us who live in a state of willful ignorance about what it truly means to be safe.
I agree with your premise that our current idea of “airport security” as run by the TSA a joke. However, I don’t think this is a practical weapon either within security at an airport or on board a plane. It looks more like a bomb, that would likely hurt the operator as much as downrange targets. Plus, I’m not sure where so much lithium metal would come from, maybe more batteries? I doubt someone could procure enough lithium to make this in an airport. I believe meth cooks use lithium, which has led to limits on some battery sales.
It’s too bad most people are focused on complaining about how faulty the system is instead of coming up with a solution.
@Brad – I think a determined suicide bomber would not care much about whether he was hurt when his shotgun/bomb exploded. As for the batteries, I do not know the answer–I know 9V batteries can be purchased past security and also can be brought through a checkpoint.
@John K – I have offered the solution – eliminate airport security. At the very least, revert back to private screening, metal detectors, shoes stay on, laptops remain in bag, liquids permitted, etc.
Our security screening practice is fear-based, not logic-based.
@Matthew
Sadly, I also have a personal example of appalling airport security lapses. I had a carry-on Eddie Bauer holdall purchased in 1998 and was using it consistently for dozens of flights both domestic and international. In 2012, my trusty holdall disintegrated and I had to throw it out. Imagine my surprise when examining the cause of the failure – it was a tear from a metal object and what fell out was astounding: an old toolzall folding toolkit containing pliers, a 5″ blade and metal saw that I seem to remember losing a decade earlier around 2001!! All those X-rays, bag-checks by experts (and myself – though not a concealed object expert) totally oblivious to the prohibited item contained in the bag liner!
Turned out that the Toolzall had slipped between the frame and the base stiffener staying lodged there 11 years before! I always wondered why the bag seemed oddly heavy but just put it down to repairs that United made in 2000 after damaging it following a last-minute gate-check!!
Even more galling is in reading expert psychological studies on the underlying motivation for transportation terrorists to do what they do:
High on a terrorist agenda is the desire to place fear in the traveling public and to disrupt their ability to travel freely. Essentially, most terrorists add a notch to their scoreboard when increased security measures are put in place that further disrupt the public. So essentially airport security and terrorists have a common currency in the traveling public.
Airport security, with a substantial headcount and expensive equipment is one manifestation of an attempt to assuage the public concern that something is being done about the threat. A problem emerges when the airport security organizations become large enough to evolve into institutions in their own right such as the TSA. At that point there is a sense of long-term entitlement with a tendency to continually seek ways to sustain relevancy and personnel levels especially when threats subside or mitigation can be increasingly automated. Borrowing the line from the terrorist agenda – for airport security – High on their agenda is the desire to place fear in the traveling public -!! – hold on?? Yes that’s a perfect way to sustain relevancy. Especially if you are a massive airport security organization that would like to continue to grow and influence 🙁
Things have changed with the traveling public significantly reducing a 9/11 style takeover and I am not talking about the locked pilot door with careful in-flight egress control. If a bunch of box-cutter welding radicals try to take over a plane today, a far greater number of passengers are not going to sit idly by. Even if there is no armed air-marshal on-board, I can imagine the more aggressive passengers are going to simply break off armrests and effectively use them as clubs to neutralize the threat!
@John K
I’m with Matthew – elimination of the inefficient overdramatized airport security with better automated screening, I’m fine with face recognition, profiling, traveler pattern analysis and other tech. What we have now is not at all effective security but instead outrageously expensive, Orwellian “security theater” that attracts a significant amount of staffing by many self-aggrandized not-the-sharpest-tool security wannabe individuals where anyone questioning/challenging/acting-with-disdain is considered a threat and treated as a criminal or serious threat(which to that organization, they essentially are).
When I look at my ticket cost breakdown and I see just how much is apportioned to the vague “airport services” bucket I grimace realizing that about 90% is security.
@Matthew-Eliminate airport security? As much as I hate the TSA, would you like to revert back to the 1970’s where there was a hijacking every other week? I think it’d make more sense to privatize TSA to some degree and see if the market could come up with a more effective solution. We pay the fees for airport security on our tickets anyway and get almost no return. I’d be all for seeing if free enterprise could turn things around to a more metrics-based and efficient system. Not to mention, a private company could have the luxury of not hiring high school dropouts that legitimately have no other employable skills.
@Graham: I really do not think there would be hijackings with a steel-enforced door that is impenetrable and strict orders to never open it for hijackers. Obviously, my comfort levels are different than others and as I said in the past I do not even think it is practical to get rid of the TSA. But I would grant the equivalent of PreCheck to everyone immediately–shoes stay on, laptops in bag, liquids are fine in any quantity.
@Martin: Thanks for sharing your story and thoughts.