Laptops before 9/11
 

As I'm reading the threads, it made me think of a question that I'm way too young to vividly remember.

I had heard stories that, before 9/11, travelers with laptops would be told, by screeners, to take the laptop out of the bag, turn it on, and show a working laptop, simply to prove to the screener that it's a laptop and not a cache of explosives cleverly packed into a gutted laptop chassis.

Did anyone here ever experience that?

I've always talked about wanting to restore airport security to 9/10, but I'm now thinking more and more that we should revert to absolutely nothing. While the term "security theater" is a post-9/11 term, wasn't pre-9/11 security just as much a show?

Yep. Had to find an outlet to plug the one into that had no battery, just the orange plasma display (old luggable Toshiba, IIRC.)

That is true. It ended approximately at the time of the release of Windows 2.0 (there was no 1.0) and the time to boot up went to about ten minutes for a fully loaded machine. The previous Dos 3.X version would usually boot to a command prompt in a few seconds, less than a minute at the worst.

(I think I may have just given away my age.)

I once had to turn on an external SCSI hard drive, around 1999, even though without a computer to hook it up to the drive is fairly useless.

Kind of like how when VP Gore spoke at my college and I was taking photos for the paper, Secret Service made us take a picture to "prove" it was a camera.

So, yes, security theater's been around for a while.

I do remember that but I never travelled with a laptop then.

I specifically remember being asked to look through the lens of my cameras though.

Heh. Some of us used to cheat and hold down the key to load the BIOS config instead of waiting for the complete boot sequence.

I had to travel with a Corvus external HD once. Same problem.

Is there anyone here on FT who would object to eliminating everything, including the WTMD?

You would not have recognized it as a laptop either. They were called portables. This definition was based on the fact that it had a handle installed that would support the mass of the machine. It contained everything necessary to be a computer, a CPU, a display, and a disk drive. There was an RS-232 interface and later parallel printer ports. Really, really nice ones had an RGB out that would drive a monitor. You did not take the monitor, you would use one on site. The portable units had mono LCD screens and the better ones had mono plasma screens. Many did not even run on battery power and had to be plugged in.

The first several luggables I worked with had mono CRTs, not LCDs. Like the Kaypro II, for example.

Being asked to turn on a laptop was pretty rare. I was going through at least 4 checkpoints a week back in the mid/late 90s, and I was probably asked to take my laptop out and turn it on dozen or so times over those years.

I was also asked to make my pager beep, and to turn on my cell phone a time or two. I did trip the metal detector all the time, but a fast once over with a wand would always show it was just the shoes on my feet and everything was cool.

But, back then, you didn't have to take anything out of your bag. I always had a Leatherman and a Swiss Army knife stuffed in my laptop bag. Along with a bottle or two of water in various amounts of ice form, a can of mousse in my shaving bag, a big tube of toothpaste, a full bottle of shampoo, a big bottle of suntan lotion, a whole variety of things that you can't carry anymore.

And there were the so called "Lunch Boxes": a computer case the size of a catalog case, in which you could mount normal-size (but not full ATX-size) motherboards, HDDs, CD-Drives, not notebook especific parts. The screen were Plasma or LCD (terrible quality, both).

The whole contraption weighted in the range of 20-25lbs.

When I worked in development in the 1980s, my NGO owned Toshiba and HP(?) portables that field managers used (almost) literally all over the world. They looked similar to today's laptops, with integral hinged monochrome screens, but were heavier and less powerful: 2mg RAM, 15-20mg hard drive, 3-1/2" (200kb) floppy drive, 1-3 hours battery life. I recall no complaints about getting them through security procedures. It would have above my pay grade to fix such issues but I would have supported contacts, communications and tracking.

When I began flying with computers myself, the open-and-start routine was requested, but rarely. Security interest would increase for a month or so after terrorist or unexplained crashes such as PanAm 103 and TWA 800.

It was done very often in the months immediately after 9/11. Security was still managed by individual airports; I carried a laptop every flight.

I don't want "no security" in air travel any more than on a city bus, but think a conversation to re-evaluate what that really means, what is possible and what is reasonable is long overdue.

The recent JetBlue incident demonstrated how generalized procedures and practice must mesh with on-the-spot adaptation to unique events to be successful. Pax who were prepared to act were an essential part of controlling that event. Security professionals have been lax in addressing that aspect, because it's so messy. Pax are not only outside line-of-command, the players change every incident! It's easier to stay with the traditional paradigm regarding pax as inert, identical placeholders. Given the essential roles of pax in the Flight 93, shoe- and underwear-bomber events, I believe integrating better understanding of group behavior is necessary to improve preparedness by those designing security policy and procedures. No small part of this is respecting passengers' rights.

Yes, of course.

Yes, I can remember more than once having a screener take my laptop out of the bag and turn it on at the checkpoint. I can also remember cringing every time they hard-crashed Windows 95 while it was still booting up. For the record, I'm younger than you might think someone remembering that would be.

To a large degree, yes, but it was a much less-invasive (and, many would argue, equally effective) show.

And here I thought I was the only one! I was taking pictures of Arizona's governor for my college paper, and one of the members of her security detail waved me over and inspected my camera. When I asked him why, he said that people were putting gunbarrels inside of camera lenses and rigging them to act as a sniper weapon. I thought he was nuts--good to know he's not the only one!

I would. Some level of security is definitely called for. I mean, I wouldn't want a guy with a six-inch knife concealed on his leg to decide that he's going to go all Chucky on the passengers around him. Likewise, I wouldn't wane a firearm sneaking through the checkpoint. Some security is definitely needed, but the hilarious, expensive, theatrical approach is not.