Carry-on restrictions

Canada's transport minister says the federal government is taking a close look at the circumstances behind efforts in the United States and the U.K. to ban certain electronic devices from carry-on baggage.

But Marc Garneau is stopping short of saying whether Canada will follow the lead of the two countries in banning the devices from flights originating in six countries in the Middle East and Africa.

The U.K. government says it is imposing the new aviation security measures on all inbound direct flights from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia.

That follows a similar U.S. ban on "any phones, laptops or tablets larger than a normal-sized mobile or smartphone" inside the aircraft cabin.

What type of intel led to this specific ban? Off the top of my head: Batteries, in phones, tablets, and laptops, can be punctured to start fires. Perhaps, there was chatter about this sort of thing among Muslims.

Update
It's worse than I thought. A bomb could be hidden inside the shell of a simple electronic device.

Reuters reported on Monday that the move had been under consideration since the U.S. government learned of a threat several weeks ago.

U.S. authorities believe there is a threat from plots similar to an incident a year ago in Somalia, where a bomb hidden in a laptop blew a hole in the side of a plane although failed to down it, another source said.