Last week the Transportation Safety Administration announced that they were requiring flights from ten airports in eight different nations – Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait – to prevent passengers from carrying technology larger than the standard cell phone. Medical Devices are exempt from the ban. The ban was allegedly in response to a terrorism threat, according to the Guardian, and while inquiries regarding the ban were directed to the department of homeland security, spokespeople for that department stated that they had no information on the ban, but would keep people informed as they received information.
The ban was released as an email circulating between airports in the eight affected countries, but the information in the email was later released by the affected airports as they notified their passengers of the new requirements. Later in the same week, the United Kingdom placed a ban on laptops and tablets on flights arriving from ten airports from six countries, and Canada announced that it was considering a similar ban. Skepticism that the ban is related to terrorism surfaced when it was noticed that none of the countries on the tech ban are also on the list of countries that were affected by Trump’s travel bans.
In a recent article by Business Insider, experts pointed out some potential issues with the ban, namely that laptop-bombs – in addition to being easily detectable by today’s technology – could go off in a cargo hold just as easily as they could go off in a cabin, and that the ban would not prevent hacking, as smartphones, which are still aloud by the ban, can be used just as effectively to that end as laptops can. While the exact reasons for the tech bans were originally classified, in the wake of criticism U.K. security agents disclosed that an Islamic State plot to hide bombs inside of a fake iPad had been discovered, although other details about the plot still have not been released.
These unreleased details may explain why the chosen countries were selected, although the countries on the list are not typically associated with Islamic State Activity. Many of those in favor of the ban are also uncertain about its effectiveness, as several European countries have not enacted similar bans. This means that a terrorist from one of the banned countries could conceivably bring their device onto a plane to Germany or France, and then depart from there to America or the United Kingdom.
Many of those countries on the new banned lists are countries that the United States and the United Kingdom regularly work with to combat terrorists, leading many to be concerned that valuable political relations with these countries will be unnecessarily harmed by the ban. Business analysts are also worried about potential economic complications as some of the countries affected by the ban are close business partners with the United States. Because the bans are essentially policy-decisions, they would be easy to recall should the perceived threat pass, but unlike Trump’s past travel bans, there have not yet been any challenges to the ethics or legality of the ban. The ban also has no set expiration-date, so it is uncertain when the ban may be lifted. While airlines and airports in the affected countries have expressed their concern, none of the countries governments have formally responded to the ban.
