There has been some reporting recently that the name of the Underwear Bomber was missed in the database search because it was misspelled.
That is not possible. Arabic names are meant to be written in the Arabic language using the Arabic phonetic alphabet. When they are transliterated into the Roman/English alphabet, there is often considerable variation in the spelling. The most common name in Arabic and among Muslims is Muhammad, and there are something like twenty different ways to spell that name in the Roman/English script. None of them are "correct" or "wrong."
This is an issue that has been recognized by American intelligence services, both military and civilian. It is especially difficult because many of the reports coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan are written by young military personnel who are not that familiar with the Arabic language or the relevant culture, and do not have access to a standard lexicon of name spellings -- because one does not exist -- and so make up the spelling as they go along.
To deal with this problem, the intelligence community has developed (I know this because I worked for the contractors who were doing this several years ago) a matrix of Arabic names and variant spellings, and attempted to integrate this into name searches.
This is but one example of the complexity of the intelligence problem, and the misleading nature of those who say that the solution to our intelligence problem is to "connect the dots." Even what we would think would be simple procedures, such as name searches, are not binary, linear, algorhythmic activities.
Thus, the people revealing this scandal to you are not telling you the complete story, and should be scrutinized for their own agendas.
The people who tell you that the solution to our war against al-Qa'ida (sp. var.) and Osama (or Usammma) bin Ladin is better intelligence are also telling you perhaps the truth, but an incomplete story.
Our conflict with fundamentalist Islam is neither military, law enforcement, nor intelligence based. It is a conflict of ideologies and ideas. For the period of the Bush administration, this was ignored because at root the Bush ideology was the same as al-Qa'ida's, only the names were changed. One would have hoped that now we can recognize this error and start addressing the real conflict through public information and educational efforts.
I see no signs that this is even being contemplated, and that is the real scandal, far more than name spelling or body scanners.