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MacBook Air on TSA watchlist
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 12th March 2008
The Air: sure it's sexy, but you'd be more likely to catch your flight if you owned a Thinkpad.
Michael Nygard was taking his shiny new toy – sans manilla envelope – on an internal flight to San Jose, and encountered a problem so bizarre that he had to write about it in a blog posting entitled “Steve Jobs Made Me Miss My Flight.”
While checking in to the flight and passing his carry-on luggage – containing his ultra-slim pride and joy – through the airport X-ray machine, he was halted and his luggage snagged by security staff. After unpacking the laptop and asking Michael to follow them to a cubicle, the security staff are faced with a puzzle as vexing as the monkeys were in 2001.
Michael recalls one team member scratching their head and bemoaning the lack of hard-drive visible on the X-ray imagery. The same staff member declares that there are “no ports on the back.”
Just before receiving the rubber glove treatment, Michael was saved when a younger, hipper TSA staffer arrived on the scene. “The new arrival looked at the printouts from x-ray” and much to Michael's relief told the rest of the staff that “it is a real laptop, not a "device".”
Despite this corroboration from one of their own, the chief TSA official at the scene required Michael to power the Air up and run an application, just to prove it's not some twisted plot to smuggle an incredibly thin and sexy bomb on board. Job done, Michael was permitted to board the plane and depart. Well, he would have been if the TSA hadn't taken so long that the aircraft had departed without him.
I know that the TSA – and, by extension, airport security staff worldwide – are there to ensure our safety, but would it break the budget to subscribe to a gadget magazine or two?
What's your take on Michael's story: were the TSA just doing their job, or do they need to hire a better class of security personnel? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (42)Stats: 0.081 seconds
it's a waste of money and Precious lifetime.
/me laughs maniacally while chanting "f*** mac's" backwards in a satanic voice
Security Officer 2: "Uuhh..."
Security Officer 1: {displays look of confusion/ponderment} "UUUUUUhhh.... RAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!! RAHHHH!" {smash of Macbook Air on floor}
Why did they not just ask him to turn it on to prove it works? Imagine it now...
'Turn it on then'
*Owner leans forward*
*All TSA's in the room step slowly backwards*
Cant Stop laughing.
michael - "ok fine - i will" [opens up itunes]
security guy - "HE CANT RIGHT CLICK! ITS A BOMB! EVERYBODY ON THE GROUND!"
Shadows version is correct but not as funny...
If they guy left more time no problem.
I've brought PSUs, motherboards, stacks of RAM, graphics cards (all on their own in a plain plastic bag) through security, they've always known exactly what they were (and not just the young, hip ones). Most of the PC bits I've bought have been smuggled in from the states at some point (in my carry-on), without any problems whatsoever.
Ontopic again. i can understand their nervousness to let an electronic device that doest exactly match what they see as a laptop. yeah the air might be thin but thats more than enough space for a bomb :D
I had something similar after a work trip to South Korea.
I had a 500GB external HDD, one of the Maxtor ones (I know, but I didn't pick it) in the big, thick metal case.
On the way back, I wanted to lighten my hand-luggage so placed the HDD in my main suitcase and checked it in.
10 mins later, two security guards, who don't speak much english, ask me to follow them.
I'm kinda worried until I realize they just spotted a big metal box in the middle of my bag in the x-ray.
Luckily, once I opened the bag and showed them the HDD in the flesh, they were fine with it.
Was a bit scary initially though. :D
I would have been screwed though if they had asked me to boot up my laptop on that trip though - the battery didn't hold charge so I would have needed an adapter which was stashed in my hold luggage :D
If I wanted to disguise a bomb as a laptop, it would look, quite obviously, like a generic laptop. It would look scuffed and used, it would have a functional HDD, it would run happily, I would have all the cables and accessories with it. It would look utterly unremarkable. It wouldn't look like a brand-new sliver of sleek aluminium that is just going to draw attention, admiring, curious or otherwise.
Psychology, people: the unusual is best hidden in plain sight.
You could have the detonator on a mini-PCI card.
Best not to have an icon on your desktop that says "Detonate Now..." though.
yeah, its funny... but frequent traveller myself, i know how sucky that mustve feel... my vote is for TSA to get them some bloody education................
How do you like yours? mine is great but the bluetooth sucks under XP
Those TSA guys are jerks, I had to sit in the middle shoeless while they searched my luggage once, they dusted it all down with these little wipes and made me feel like I was some sort of monster. They were wrong, they are the monsters!:'(
As you can tell Im a function over form person lol
My wife and infant daughter were with me on the Lubbock flight. At the TSA checkpoint in Houston, we were told that we couldn't bring our unopened bottle of water. We explained that it is for our baby's formula (the empty bottle and dehydrated formula packets that were sitting right next to it were the first clue). He looked at us and said, with utter seriousness, "Yeah, it's not formula, it's for formula." Well, yes, that was kind of the point.
He confiscated our water and told us that we could buy another bottle once we were inside the airport.
Gee, thanks for that. I can't stand TSA, and I really wish we'd get over this fear of everything that moves.
-monkey
Not fly much then? Airport security have to be the thickest bunch of "special" people I've ever had the displeasure to be in contact with. God I hate airport security, or any organisation which spends 10% of it's time working and 90% of it's time providing the illusion of safety by pissing off regular flyers and wasting everyone's time.
However on the way back the super hi-tech dutch found it ok! They even had one of these full body scanners :
http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/ABC_TSA_BODY_SCAN_071010_ms.jpg
Not that i used it mind, i was in the opt-out queue.
Got to the end of the baggage xray machine and the guy starts searching through my bag, and keeps searching, my bags got so many little pockets i didnt know whether to help him, wether hed understand me or what, but he kept digging and pulled out the craft knife, turned to me and said 'im gonna have to arrest you dude' my face dropped i thought ****, said 'really?' and he just laughed and smiled, which while still feeling very shocked i pushed him for pulling such a thing and started (nervously) laughing haha.It was in hindsight that i probably shouldnt have pushed the fella as im not exactly the smallest guy and not knowing my own strength half the time it could have come accross much worse.
I was actually really suprised EMA didnt find it, its not exactly the shortest of knives, or the easiest to hide!
im personally love it, bought it when i was on holiday in the uk 9 months, ago so i got double the specs for the price i would have got hear and still got the international warranty. Great linux support as well. Dont own anything bluetooth so i wouldnt know about that
I fly quite a bit. I've ran in to more than my fair share of dumbasses all over the airport, but have never got a moron on the x-ray machine. They have always appeared to be reasonably up on what's what, as I would think they should be seeing the amount of stuff they see pass through.
Imagine if he had some kind of weapon or military themed wallpaper though? He probably would've been there a lot longer.
-Indybird
This is pretty funny, stop a man because you're to ignorant about the latest and greatest crap the average business man will be carrying onto his airline. Honestly, keep a nice little poster on what the average teen, child, concerned parent, business man/woman, and what the weird hippie has, on average, with them at an airport.
A-men
Imagine the outcry if it was a 'device' and they had ignored it to the dertriment of a plane full of passengers. Some people clearly need to think before they type.
there are hundreds of ways you could smuggle a bomb into a plane and blow it out of the air.....
p.s. i havent over thought this.... well it was a long flight from uk to NZ
Yes. You. There are hundreds of ways terrorists can do their job. They don't need to smuggle bombs onto planes, they've accomplished their jobs by getting us all to waste hours of our time in airport security every single time we fly, not to mention 20-50 quid.
But yes, there are hundreds of things you can take on a flight that are deadly, its about minimising risk though
Quite frankly though, in this case, if they weren't sure they could have just turned it on to start with (well got him to)
What security do we get? FBI surveying Mosques with Geiger counters. Looking for Iranian terrorists by checking who buys the most Tahini at their grocery store. They are now looking for "suspicious behaviour" in World of Warcraft. And that is just a few examples. Seems to me, the only people dumber than terrorists are the people trying to catch them.
I agree. a thin laptop doesn't make it more portable. A smaller screen would have a much bigger effect on portability IMO.
I could start a fire with only my cellphone if I really wanted to. Making hell on board a plane isn't really difficult if one have a bit of imagination. I'm sure someone could probably kill the pilot(s) with their bare hands if they really want to. But let's face it, a car bomb or something would probably be easier and more effective anyway.
what the hell?
Hey, don't knock the Macbook. Just look at its interface compatibility:
http://graphjam.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/funny-graphs-id4-macbooks-alien-motherships.gif