Experts: Electronics ban on flights may expand
A ban on laptops and tablet computers on flights from some countries in the Middle East and North Africa to the U.S. and the U.K. could be the start of a broad crackdown on electronics in airplane cabins, security experts say.
“It could be expanded, depending on what information we have about the threat,” said Brian Jenkins, a security analyst with RAND Corp.
Earlier this week, U.S. authorities — closely followed by their British counterparts — announced the ban on laptops and tablets in airplane cabins on nonstop flights from Cairo, Istanbul and eight other airports in the region. The move, according to reports, was sparked by specific intelligence that devices are being weaponized.
Security experts said laptops packed with explosives could still be enough to take down an airplane. Laptops and tablets make an enticing disguise for a bomb, experts said, not just because they are ubiquitous, but because electronics used to make a fuse would not look out of place.
Still, the new restrictions would not necessarily stop someone from trying to board a flight to the U.S. from an airport not on the list.
“But they still put more obstacles in the way of the bad guy,” said Rafi Ron, president of New Age Security Solutions, a transportation security consulting firm based in Dulles, Va.
Jenkins said a permanent policy could take a different form than an all-out ban. Passengers could be asked to turn on a laptop and prove it works or authorities could weigh a device and compare it to its manufacturer’s specifications to see if it has been tampered with.
“Rarely do you get this right in the first iteration,” Jenkins said.
Carey Rappaport, deputy director of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Awareness and Localization of ExplosiveRelated Threats Center, acknowledged that the restrictions present a real inconvenience for people, particularly those who use the devices to get work done during long flights.
“But if there’s credible intelligence that terrorists are threatening us with more effective means of hiding explosives, we need to keep people safe,” said Rappaport, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern University. “Checked baggage screening is more comprehensive, so you can do better at finding any threat that might exist.”