TSA Airport Security Alert for Toys With Remote Controls
October 1, 2007
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Citing “credible specific information” about terror tactics Monday, Transportation Security Administration officers stepped up scrutiny of passengers carrying remote control toys aboard airplanes.
The action was not motivated by a specific terror plot, said Kip Hawley, the assistant secretary in charge of aviation security at the Department of Homeland Security. But both in the United States, and internationally, there is concern that common remote control toys could be used to detonate terrorists’ bombs.
The aviation authorities decided against banning the devices in carry-on bags. But passengers carrying remote control toys “including children” could be subject to more intense searches, like having their bags checked by hand and the passengers subject to pat-downs, officials said.
The new policy was established just days after the federal authorities in South Carolina disclosed that a college student being held on terrorism-related charges had made a video that he posted on YouTube, showing how to use a remote controlled toy as a detonator.
Hawley acknowledged in an interview Monday that the video had affected the new policy. But it was just one piece of intelligence that led to the change, he said.
In the South Carolina case, the authorities found a 12-minute Arabic-language videotape on the computer of Ahmed Abdellatif Sherif Mohamed, a student at University of South Florida, that had been uploaded to YouTube. In it, a narrator explains how to convert a toy car into a detonator, an affidavit filed in federal court Thursday says.
Mohamed is also charged with a terror related offense for allegedly posting a YouTube video showing how to turn a radio controlled toy car into a remote bomb detonator.
Court documents show searches in the USF case found remote control cars and a boat, along with dissembled watches and fuses.
Experts say Middle Eastern terrorists are using the toys to counter US jamming of cell phone detonators, because the toys operate on a lower, harder to jam frequency.
Read our related posts covering the arrest and investigation of the two University of Florida students whose activities triggered this alert HERE
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2 Responses to “TSA Airport Security Alert for Toys With Remote Controls”
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I find it funny that the “jamming of cell phone detonators” is allowed. Since the FCC made it illegal to use a cell phone because the signals are damaging to the cockpit instruments, and could cause the plane to fall out of the air and crash. Oh just 2 weeks ago I was on a Southwest flight and the guy next to me forgot to shut of his cell phone and it rang at 6,000 ft, so “what” are they jamming? Also why do they still allow PC’s with WifI to be used on flights, computers are real efficient at controlling things. This again is false security to make the masses feel safe, the old “We’re doing stuff to make you safer, but please don’t really analyse it because then you might figure out that it’s not really helping.”
I have never heard of cell phone jamming technology being used on commercial flights. If someone uses their phone while in flight it will almost certainly work just fine -and the plane will not crash.
The jamming problems mentioned are related to the use of IEDS in Afghanistan, Iraq and other places -not used in commercial airplanes. The cell jammers work over a different frequency spectrum and so they are less effective on the lower frequency transmitters like those used in toys.
We are safer than before, but many people want the government to protect against perceived threats that are actually a lower risk than other threats that the government knows to be more significant. The government sometimes does not announce their countermeasure strategies against the more significant threats for operational security reasons.