Last night, I was watching Janet Napolitano discussing the "pants bomber", and how he was allowed to board a plane to the U.S. Apparently, his father had expressed concerns to the State Department about his son, and this resulted in Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab being placed on a "persons of interest" list that exceeds 500K names.
The no-fly list is 5K or so.
The media keeps decrying the fact that this Mr Abdulmutallab's status as a person of interest did not keep him from flying.
That is just so not the point!!!
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I just read broklynnbadboy's rant about how flying is just not a pleasure anymore. I read it with an open mind and without judgement. And I found myself wondering if increased TSA screening really helps at all.
Does TSA screening help? It is clearly a reactionary measure to an incident or intelligence. In most cases, it's effectiveness is only as good as 1) available intelligence, and 2) the easy and fast dissemination of the information.
But why didn't the fact that he was on a "person of interest" list single him out for increased searching? We had the intelligence on him, so clearly there is a problem with information flow to the TSA on the ground.
Without this proper flow of intelligence information, we will always be forced to rely on the "needle in the haystack" method of TSA random checks and long lines.
Usually this doesn't end well.
At least now US citizens can enjoy a badass reputation...we stopped a terrorist attack, don't fuck with us.
However, the explosives should have been found during a detailed personal check of any "person of interest" that tries to board a plane.
Too bad we don't have any sort of technology that allows rapid sharing of data among airports and government intelligence...oh wait.
Of course, that technology can be hacked. And if that is what happened here, we may be in bigger trouble.