Opinion: A ban on laptops in airline cabins could actually kill people

The laptop ban is coming soon.
Can anyone doubt this? Chris Wallace spoke to John Kerry, head of Homeland Security for President Donald Trump, and Fox News sent the latest signal on Sunday.
\"Are you going to ban laptops in the cabin on all international flights entering and leaving the United States? S. Asked Wallace.
\"I may,\" Kelly replied, with a satisfied smile on his face from someone enjoying power.
\"There are many threats to aviation\" because terrorists are obsessed with blowing up planes full of \"American Airlines\"S. folks.
When asked about the schedule, Kelly just said: \"In general, we will raise the standard for aviation safety.
It will be much higher than it is now.
The Trump administration has imposed a laptop ban on flights at 10 airports in eight Middle East countries.
On these flights, the laptop must not only be placed in checked baggage, but any computing device larger than the mobile phone must also be placed in checked baggage.
Next, Washington is expected to extend the ban, including flights arriving from Europe.
As Kelly hinted in an interview with Wallace, the final laptop ban could also be imposed on upcoming flights.
While the Department of Homeland Security declined to say why the ban was necessary
You know, this is confidential information.
Intelligence sources told the New York Times and others that Islamic State jihadist fighters now have explosives to hide in laptop batteries, X-
The ray machine deployed by the transport safety authority at the passenger safety checkpoint.
Obviously the government\'s point is
No one said, though-
It is more difficult for terrorists to detonate laptop bombs in the cargo compartment than in the cabin.
In addition, in theory, the laptop bomb in the cargo hold needs to be fitted with a timer, which the scanner can detect more easily.
Even if we put aside the most obvious flaws in this logic
The package being checked is randomly scanned, not fully scanned
There are so many issues with the proposed laptop ban that there are so many questions raised that it is difficult to know where to start.
Why does the Department of Homeland Security Think laptop bombs will only be smuggled into international flights, not domestic flights? Why not insist on having people turn on their laptops to go through airport security, so agents can see that they are computers, not bombs. If people don\'t have a laptop, would it be a problem to steal a laptop from checked baggagea-year TSA pre-
Exemption inspection procedure
If this is the case, wouldn\'t this intensify the disgraceful disagreement between the rich and the rich?
Security expert Bruce Schnell recently pointed out that passengers on flights do not object to passengers \"not accepting the delays and confusion caused by the introduction of this rule \".
\"Unhappy passengers fly less.
\"Joe Brancatelli, who runs Joe Sent Me, a business traveler website, says the disruption of global business will cost airlines billions of dollars.
But there is a problem that stands out more than others, or should at least do so.
Does the laptop ban increase the chance that a plane full of passengers will explode
Not because of terrorism, but because of lithium.
The ion batteries that power modern computers, while not sure 100, seem to answer: yes. Lithium-
Ion batteries are not benign devices;
This is well known among computer engineers and aviation experts.
The liquid inside the battery is flammable and a short circuit can cause a fire.
In rare cases, short circuit is the result of a design error, as the company recalled.
But sometimes this happens because the equipment is pushed or overheated.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, there have been 160 \"incidents\" involving lithium\"
Ion batteries in cargo hold since 1991.
2010 2011 contains battery tray of cargo fire and crashed on unit personnel death.
On January 2016, the Federal Bureau of InvestigationA. A.
Warnings were issued about transporting batteries in the cargo hold, noting that \"a lithium battery fire could lead to a catastrophic explosion.
\"When the battery inside the cabin spews smoke or explodes into flames --
According to Forbes aviation blogger Christine negoyne, the incident happened on Tuesday\'s JetBlue flight, about 19 more in the past five years.
It was soon discovered and extinguished.
But the fire in the cargo compartment will not be noticed, and experts say the heat generated by this fire will soon become too high to be extinguished by fire fighting equipment in the cargo compartment.
That\'s why US post stopped shipping lithium battery products overseas.
That\'s why FedEx classified lithium.
Ion batteries act as \"dangerous goods\" and impose strict regulations on how to pack them.
That is why the Airline Pilots Association has called for \"full supervision\" of the transportation of lithium battery goods \".
\"When I asked why F. A. A.
There was no sacred condemnation of Kelly\'s laptop ban, warning about the danger of batteries, and I was told that transporting lithium batteries in bulk was different from shipping laptops and iPads in checked baggage.
But the agency will also test to assess the potential dangers that the laptop ban may pose.
These tests are now in the planning phase.
Considering the speed of government action --
And the need to deal with the problem correctly.
The work is unlikely to be completed soon.
But consider this: on a flight carrying 200 passengers, the lithium content may be as high as 400.
Ion batteries in the cargo compartment
Yes, they are not packed together.
But if a person is on fire in a suitcase, it is not hard to imagine that the flame will spread and that one battery after another will explode.
If, like Samsung, another manufacturer has introduced defective products, this will greatly increase the chances of disaster after the ban is implemented.
When I asked Schneier if he thought, as I did, that the chances of a cargo tank battery fire causing a crash were higher than a terrorist attack using a laptop bomb, he replied, \"there is no way to compare numbers at all.
But he added, \"My intuition matches yours . \"
In his blog, Schneier called the laptop ban \"safe theater,\" what he called \"security measures that make people feel safer without actually improving their security.
\"At the very least, you would think that Kelly and the Department of Homeland Security would stop and consult other government departments about the dangers they would pose by insisting on putting devices with lithium-ion batteries into the cargo hold.
After all, it doesn\'t matter if you were killed by a terrorist or if you were killed by a battery explosion authorized by the government.
You\'re dead anyway.