Anonymous wrote:
So I fly home Friday from San Jose. Probably because I was in a hurry, after walking through the magnetometer and x-raying my stuff, a security dude grabbed my laptop and said he wanted to 'analyze' it. Yeah sure whatever, I decided not to protest I was late for my flight.
This analysis, it turned out, was wiping a coffee filter over the strap of its bag, and sticking the coffee filter into a slot on a machine. No solvent even. The machine had columns labelled TNT RDX NITRO PETN HMX. I recognized the first four as high explosives. Later, I wondered if people with angina (who take nitro orally) ever set this off. Most of them, of course, are not bearded eastern-european/semetic guys in their 30's who look worried and in a hurry.
Anyway, that was it, and I made my flight. Didn't even open the laptop's case.
The machine name was ION-something; I wonder whether it sucked vapors from the fiber disk or whether it was a neutron-spectrometer (?) device.
(Had this been a UK Customs 'inspection' of the contents of the disk, I might have had to explain the half-gig of "noise" I have on the disk. Only, it really is noise. Really.)
Anyway, the moral of the story:
Don't store your laptop with your explosives :-)
Just wait until you've had a cavity search and been grilled for four hours because you fed Miracle-Gro to your prize peonies just before leaving on your trip. It's pretend security. Feel-good stuff. Better to do NMR of any large-volume object although the magnetic field migh fuck up your drive.