The ban on electronic devices has a security flaw that renders rigorous checks futile, UK daily ‘The Independent’ reports.
After going through six separate security checks at Istanbul airport, passengers bound for London Heathrow mixed in the gate area, with newly arrived travellers who been through no extra checks, ‘The Independent’ has discovered.
Beginning at the weekend, the UK Department for Transport made it mandatory for airlines flying from Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon and Tunisia to the UK to remove laptop computers, tablets and e-readers from passengers’ cabin baggage. They must be transported in the hold.
Professor Anthony Glees, director of the centre for security and intelligence studies at the University of Buckingham, told The Independent that the ban “defies logic.”
“If security is lax in any airports – which we know it to be in some more than others – then the answer is not to let anybody take anything electronic, not simply to single out laptops,” he said.
“If you are going to keep your house safe you have got to lock it up, you cannot lock it up sometimes and sometimes not.
“Terrorists will always go for the weakest link in the chain and this demonstrates a non existent link in Istanbul, which means that the idea that this policy makes sense is thrown into the waste-paper basket.”
The Independent