You would think so, at the same time we live in a world where the £80 million Louvre heist was made possible by the fact that their surveillance system's password was "Louvre" [0].
That was an unrelated issue from an audit that had been done before the heist.
One of the theories right after the heist was that the thieves where former security guards. France had just laid of most of the museums security, the alarm triggered just fine, there just wasn't anyone left to respond.
My girlfriend and I were staying at her sisters apartment one Christmas (while the sister and her partner were away). They made homemade kombucha which gave the apartment an overpowering smell. You couldn't escape it anywhere in the apartment, particularly the kitchen. On the first night of arriving while lying in bed my girlfriend wanted to connect to the wifi but we didn't know the password. I guessed it first attempt, and yes it was kombucha
I completely agree from a logical perspective. However if the plane blew up and it came out that some passengers had posted online that there was a “bomb” blue tooth device and they didn’t turn around… the court of public opinion would be pretty harsh. This was more or less their only choice from a liability perspective.
The court of public opinion would probably be upset an actual bomb made it through the security theatre while their water bottle did not. If there was actually someone intending to actually bomb the plane, giving them the entire flight back to the origin airport decide to go through with it or head back to the waiting authorities would not go over well in the court of popular opinion either.
> if the plane blew up and it came out that some passengers had posted online that there was a “bomb” blue tooth device and they didn’t turn around
This story is just stupid. If you actually think you have a bomb onboard, you divert to the nearest airport. (And if you think you discovered a bomb accidentally left discoverable, you don’t ask for it to be please turned off.)
The pilots and crew knew they were being idiots. Whether due to power tripping or CYA, who knows, but I’m not surprised this happened on United.
You can't really turn off most BLE devices with internal batteries, off means low power mode nowadays. Some of them are still discoverable on wireshark when they are 'off'.
It could've been in checked luggage and turned itself on from the movement. No way for the passengers to get to it. Unfortunately it didn't turn itself off (although if it did, and then later turned on again, that would've been even worse.)
I don't think it's as silly as people are making out. It at least proves a passenger is in control of the device, rather than it being stashed / hidden in the cabin. A device in the cabin not owned by any passenger broadcasting a signal is definitively more suspicious than one with a passenger in control. We don't know what their next step would have been - they might have asked everyone from row X to Y to turn their bluetooth back on to narrow down the search etc. They probably didn't expect that anybody would fail to respond to the first instruction.
Not being able to ignore the speech/writing/transmission of a passenger is reasonable. Not being able to ignore the speech/writing/transmission of the manufacturer of a device on the plane is unreasonable.
Wifi SSID? Passenger speech, since those are typically changed by the user. Bluetooth GAP/GATT device name? Manufacturer speech, since those are often not changeable by the user.
> Nope. Look at the flight track. They went all the way back.
Good point, I was thinking they were over the ocean and that was naturally the closest airport, but it looks like they could have landed in e.g. Nova Scotia in a shorter time period.
I expect pilots called company, and risk assessment made the decision. Pilots can and do make flight safety decisions, but operational control is an airline decision.
