alanR

I've had it in the UK and Turkey

Wally Bird

No dispute there but as mentioned, the motivation for releasing it to the public is umm.. questionable.

I tried to find the source, but with just "Europe" and "September" there's little chance even if it was newsworthy over there. Now I'm assuming that bus luggage is not routinely searched (Israel is not Europe, yes ?) so the putative terrorist must have drawn attention to him/herself in some other way. Big deal locally maybe, but a world-wide "terror alert" ?

CessnaJock

You mean if Richard Reid hadn't been such a doofus, AA63 couldn't have disappeared over the Atlantic?

My take is that Reid's failure taught Khaled Shaikh Mohammed and his playmates how not to attack an airliner - which knowledge is almost as important as how to. Check the shoes. I can take it.

GUWonder

I also heard about this through the news in Europe and Asia soon after the smuggler -- allegedly unwitting smuggler -- was caught with them.

GUWonder

Highly unlikely.

Your take is wrong, at least with regard to KSM.

FliesWay2Much

What are they going to do -- make us take our shoes off?

GUWonder

In more countries, that is what they want.

CessnaJock

Would you care to elaborate?

Would you care to elaborate?

Spiff

It's a stupid reaction to a one time threat.

What if Reid had put his sloppy bomb in his pants? Or his butt? Could you 'take it' then?

The 'Richard Reid' excuse is the most pathetic, lamest excuse that the imbeciles in TSA have ever used to justify their disgusting shoe fetishes/perversion. I think Kip and his ilk just want to save the quarters they would be otherwise spending at the peep booths.

bocastephen

ONE individual; a clumsy, foolish, lunatic acting on his own, hides some explosive material in his shoe and here we are roughly 5 years later still forcibly disrobing our footwear at the checkpoint to send it through a device technically incapable of detecting whether or not the footwear is actually packed with explosives.

Truly pathetic.

Spiff

This is what happens when you put stupid little imbeciles like Kip Hawley "in charge" of security. Truly a pathetic little coward.

timezone_trooper

What's more pathetic than this is that these troglodytes have convinced the average American that putting footwear through the Xray is effective in detecting explosives. The sheeple are none the wiser and therefore remain mostly silent.

mmartin4600

I don't think he was smart enough to be working on his own. Somebody helped him out. But, I understand your frustration.

bocastephen

I'm not frustrated - I'm quite serious in my analysis of this threat as a non-event given the multitude of resources falsely presented to mitigate the risk (taking off shoes, x-raying shoes), while other legitimate risks go unnoticed.

It's my belief that terrorists are not going to quietly detonate a bomb on board an aircraft on which they're riding - there is no point to it. There is no dramatic show to be made by doing it that way. There won't be any telltale signs left in the wreckage that will absolutely point to someone's shoe, underpants, bra or hat being the bomb source.

It is far easier for them to detonate something remotely, then claim responsibility afterwards. As of this moment, loading something in cargo is easy enough, anyone could do it.

Of course we don't x-ray or inspect cargo. We x-ray shoes. Brilliant risk analysis by ol' Kip.

mmartin4600

Agree

The bad guys have shown they are more than ready to blow themselves up for their cause. As far as telltale signs...I'm sure there will be a line of people claiming responsibility.

Agree.