Here, let me help.
December 27, 2009
If a person is on a terrorist watch list, don’t let him (or her) get on a plane. Ever.
Abdulmutallab was added to the 550,000 suspects on a watch list kept by the US National Counterterrorism Center in November and had been on government radar for months. Yet there wasn’t enough negative information about him to put him on the no-fly list.
You see, if you are on a terrist watch list, that should constitute sufficient “negative information” to put someone on a no-fly list. Why are the no-fly lists and terrorist watch lists separate?
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11 Comments
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YEAH! So nasty people like Maher Arar can’t get on a plane…or no wait…people like the estimated 35% of innocents listed on the American terror watch list with no explanation for the listing by their names.
Abdulmutallab should have been flagged for other reasons but terror watch lists are generally riddled with errors that affect large blocks of individuals. Telling an innocent person that they can’t fly because they’re on a list for no good reason is ridiculous.
So I take it that you are on the list…
Definitely. Or at least on a list of those who are at risk of snatching chocolate away from innocent toddlers.
the trick is being able to run faster than their mothers.
Me too!
The no-fly list is just not sufficient. Too many duplicate names and too much reliance on iffy data. This man could have easily obtained a fake passport in Nigeria or Yemen if he needed one.
Security screening obviously needs to include explosives detectors. While I don’t personally enjoy the thought of the x-ray vision body scanner, it would have been useful in this case.
I personally have no problem with naked pictures of myself being broadcast to some future mental ward patient in a small badly lit room. Actually, being screened heavily at the airport is fine so long as it’s the airline requiring it and not the government.
That under the clothes picture thingy some pretty cool technology if you ask me and if an airline wants me to go through intensive screening in order to board a flight, I always have the choice of not boarding the flight right?
Not necessarily – the “materials” were hidden near or under his testicles…probably would have been missed with a scanning device.
Also, the explosives sniffer requires swabbing. It would be tough to swab every person.
If they did more profiling as they do in Israel, they could probably be more efficient and thoroughly check the most suspicious people.
I dunno, could it be hidden? The machine can apparently detect breast enlargements. I wonder what the exact capacity of the machine’s detection capabilities are.
There is an explosives detection device which blows air past people. Unfortunately, I don’t think that very many are in use.
http://www.tsa.gov/approach/tech/trace_portals.shtm
They have those in the CN tower. PUFF PUFF PUFF. Quite neat.
maybe the airports should stock up on the puffers…AND start profiling…