TSA To Ban Printer Cartridges Next Week : SD 1554-10-05

If one was a clever terrorist, you might eventually come to the conclusion that you could do more economic and psychological harm by examining the things people want and need to be able to fly with and then running terror plots that use those items. Things like shoes, underwear, liquids, and electronics come to mind.<p>But of course, we'd never be so stupid as to play into the terrorists hands this way. I'm sure they don't laugh at us running around like idiots throwing away toiletries, getting strip-searched, and shuffling through security barefoot while someone ogles our naked bodies in another room. We sure showed <i>them</i>!

I was impressed by the concealment method used in the bomb, since the explosive has a similar consistancy to ink/toner - but this is just ridiculous.<p>Responding to each terrorist threat, post-threat, by banning any method they used in their attack is a bad way to secure the western world.<p>The terrorists will just adapt and find other methods, as they have proven time and time again. In the interim, millions of travelers take their shoes off at airports, can no longer carry liquids on planes and have perfumes and aftershaves confiscated.<p>With all the different ways our lives have been adjusted because of each attack attempt I have to ask myself if we are not letting them win.

This is emphasized in the article, but it bears repeating:<p>"Organized terrorists are long term planners and they do not play the same cards more than once."

This could have been an article in The Onion. If we keep up this strategy, it will be impossible to travel with anything.

I believe a summary is best stated as "See, we're doing something!" Doing something, and doing the right thing, are very different things, but one is simple, and the other requires thought and risk management.<p>You can imagine which is rewarded and which is punished. Not just by politicians and bureaucrats, but by the public as well. The general public is also responsible for this absurdity by not being willing to accept some risk as being unavoidable.

Next up suitcases, clothes and hair. Forcibly shaven-bald travelers trudging naked through security carrying their belongings in see through polythene bags will be a common sight.<p>Invest in barbershop stocks.

The airline situation seems more and more analogous to the email spam problem. Right now the government is still in the blacklist phase. Hopefully soon they'll come up with something more like a bayesean approach -- training people to recognize terrorists and bombs on a case by case basis instead of blocking broad categories.

<i>...however prohibiting printer cartridges poses a few challenges … mainly that generally printer cartridges do not have their ink or toner volume readily listed on the cartridge its self.</i><p>Not a problem. I'm sure people can buy/make stickers that say "15 ounces" and stick them on the cartridges.

If it makes printer cartridge vendors display the tiny quantity of ink / toner that you're buying for $100, then maybe not such a bad thing after all ...

why are they overfitting the data?<p>wouldn't it be better to have expected volumes and masses for various items, and where items defer from these expectations, they get inspected fully?<p>many customs sheets include a declaration of the package contents.

I for one am waiting for the breast implant bomber.

was it scott adams who said this last time - "we're one more step closer to flying nude"