[hrothgar]

JoAnneM, on Jan 4 2010, 07:09 PM, said:

Imagine how I would feel if one of them ended up on a plane with a terrorist. Think about it.

I suspect that you'd have an entirely irrational over-reaction. (For that matter, I be quite surprised if any of us didn't have an irrational over-reaction if we were directly effected by this type of incident)

This, of course, is why you don't want policy decisions made by people who are directly involved. You don't want people reacting based on emotion...

[Gerben42]

Quote

   As a parent whose children and grandchildren fly frequently I am all for whatever security they want to put in place. If I sat here and said the measures are too much or not worth the money, etc imagine how I would feel if one of them ended up on a plane with a terrorist. Think about it.

Subjectively, there might be no such thing as too much security. Objectively, there can be. If every attack or attempted attack leads to tougher security with high cost, they have the feeling the attack will accomplish something. The foiled attempt last week is leading to millions upon millions of extra costs and longer waiting lines. Even though unsuccessful in creating a disaster, he will feel he has accomplished a lot.

This is why the only solution is to agree on a sensible set of measures - the ones before 9/11 with some tiny non-intrusive adjustments - and get rid of the leaks in the current system like the one I experienced - and do the rest by spending more money on police work.

My response to all these terrorist threats would have been to send specialists to all major airports with the objective to get past security and then deal with the hundreds of security weak spots that they will find rather than the current strategy to introduces random visible measures.

[ggwhiz]

This seems to be part of the process and I'm all for it.

At one time, baggage handlers and screeners were unmotivated minimum wage clock punchers, many of whom should never have passed a background security check.

Better tools and training might lead to If "A" or "B" call a supervisor. If "A" AND "B" call the guy with the gun. Makes the last (least?) line of defence more effective but improvements at the intelligence level come in tandem and we won't be hearing about them.

An immediate overreaction is understandable until the overall package is tweaked and tested.

[kenberg]

To add on to Gerben's recent post a little:

Maybe it was two years ago that we went down to Peru to visit Machu Picchu and such things. We came back through the Atlanta airport and had to go through customs and then the regular US check. Well, Atlanta is at the top of the world's busiest airports and it's a zoo. When we saw how many people had to be processed we could not imagine making the connection (we had been up all nigt because of a bad connection in Lima but that's another story). But we were herded here, herded there, all very fast, there were checkpoints but damn little checking. If a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, they have some work to do at a far more elementary level than body scanning.

I sympathize with JoAnn's comments but I guess I don't share her views. My older daughter travels for work and visits places I would prefer that she didn't. But she also rides the subway in Washington DC. She in fact worries more about the subway than the flights or even the visits to the not such great locales. The subway is daily, or rather it used to be, I think she has made other arrangements.

If someone shouts death to America, or death to Ken Berg, I take him seriously. That's different from saying that every advertised security measure is worth the money. Maybe the body scanners are, maybe they aren't, but at some point we will have reached a limit on what can be expected of technology.

Btw, is it really true that "they do that now in holland when you want to go to the USA . airport security are to be found fighting over shifts when university students have their flights planned "? There isn't much to laugh about in all of this, but I find the thought of guys (we are talking of guys, not gals, here?) fighting over who gets to do the body scans amusing. It's an ill wind that blows no good! I can imagine this for the first couple of times but my guess is that the job gets pretty boring after a while regardless of who is being scanned.

[helene_t]

kenberg, on Jan 4 2010, 05:49 PM, said:

Btw, is it really true that "they do that now in holland when you want to go to the USA . airport security are to be found fighting over shifts when university students have their flights planned "? There isn't much to laugh about in all of this, but I find the thought of guys (we are talking of guys, not gals, here?) fighting over who gets to do the body scans amusing. It's an ill wind that blows no good! I can imagine this for the first couple of times but my guess is that the job gets pretty boring after a while regardless of who is being scanned.

In Amsterdam (as in most places I have visited), male security officers will search male travelers, and females will search females.

Maybe it's a great job to be a homosexual airport security officer but I doubt it.

[gwnn]

I've seen women thoroughly searched by men on more than 1 airport. They never apologized or offered any explanations. Admittedly, the women didn't seem to mind either. I've never been searched by women, though

[jdonn]

gwnn, on Jan 4 2010, 01:14 PM, said:

I've seen women thoroughly searched by men on more than 1 airport. They never apologized or offered any explanations. Admittedly, the women didn't seem to mind either. I've never been searched by women, though

I don't think those are the women I want searching me!

[hrothgar]

jdonn, on Jan 4 2010, 09:34 PM, said:

gwnn, on Jan 4 2010, 01:14 PM, said:

I've seen women thoroughly searched by men on more than 1 airport. They never apologized or offered any explanations. Admittedly, the women didn't seem to mind either. I've never been searched by women, though

I don't think those are the women I want searching me!

Bruce Schneier raised a very interesting point:

What happened on December 25th is an example of security measures that worked. The would-be bomber was forced to adopt

1. A high explosive that is relatively hard to detonate
2. A method of detonating said explosive that was extremely unreliable

I very much agree that a hell of a lot of things could have gone better on the security front. At the same time, we should all be very grateful that security measures have improved so much in the past few years.

Hrothgar

(Whose ex-girlfriend's sister's ex-girlfriend was seated nine rows in front of the would be bombed)

[Winstonm]

hrothgar, on Jan 4 2010, 01:45 PM, said:

jdonn, on Jan 4 2010, 09:34 PM, said:

gwnn, on Jan 4 2010, 01:14 PM, said:

I've seen women thoroughly searched by men on more than 1 airport. They never apologized or offered any explanations. Admittedly, the women didn't seem to mind either. I've never been searched by women, though

I don't think those are the women I want searching me!

Bruce Schneier raised a very interesting point:

What happened on December 25th is an example of security measures that worked. The would-be bomber was forced to adopt

1. A high explosive that is relatively hard to detonate
2. A method of detonating said explosive that was extremely unreliable

I very much agree that a hell of a lot of things could have gone better on the security front. At the same time, we should all be very grateful that security measures have improved so much in the past few years.

Hrothgar

(Whose ex-girlfriend's sister's ex-girlfriend was seated nine rows in front of the would be bombed)

Yes,

And this is one more reason that Dick Cheney's response on Meet the Press was so loathsome. The security measures worked, we got a bad guy off the streets and into a U.S. jail where he can be prosecuted for the CRIME of terrorism and sent away for life - WITHOUT TORTURING HIM OR VIOLATING HIS RIGHTS.

Our system works if we are only brave enough to let it work - the likes of Dick Cheney are the cowards.

[Lobowolf]

Britain's system worked, anyway - he was prohibited from returning to the UK by its Border Agency. That he obtained and retained a Visa is a sign that our "system" didn't work. It was nice of him not to go to the bathroom and rip it out of his underwear. The device (apparently) COULD have worked, but sometimes you get lucky.


***
The revelation of Abdulmutallab's background has confounded terror experts. Dr Magnus Ranstorp of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies at the Swedish National Defence College said that the attempted bombing "didn't square".

"On the one hand, it seems he's been on the terror watch list but not on the no-fly list," he said. "That doesn't square because the American Department for Homeland Security has pretty stringent data-mining capability. I don't understand how he had a valid visa if he was known on the terror watch list.

"Why didn't he go to the toilets to detonate the bomb? Why would he try to set it off 20 minutes before he's going to land? It could probably have been successful had the person not been amateurish. I think this is a sign that it's much more difficult now for al-Qa'ida to pull off something serious."

Chaim Koppel, a security consultant, added: "I think the explosive was supposed to go bang rather than just start a fire. The terrorists probably didn't mix it well enough. Maybe they didn't do enough practice runs, but the more the guy is trained, the more exposed he is to MI5, MI6, the FBI and other security agencies, so he probably didn't receive enough training."
***


Sometimes you get lucky, though. But when you drop a singleton king for no apparent reason in an 8-card fit, you shouldn't take too much credit when it works. When a guy on a terror watch list, whose own father reported his concerns, gets to keep his Visa and get on an inbound flight with incendiary devices, the fact that the plane stayed in the air isn't enough to support a statement like "the system worked" - a position even Janet Napolitano has backed away from.

[jdonn]

Lobowolf, on Jan 4 2010, 08:25 PM, said:

Britain's system worked, anyway - he was prohibited from returning to the UK by its Border Agency.  That he obtained and retained a Visa is a sign that our "system" didn't work.

I saw someone state on CNN yesterday that his British Visa was revoked for some reason totally unrelated to the threat of terrorism and that it was just a coincidence. I can't remember what the reason was or who said it.

Also I remember hearing he tried to detonate the bomb in his seat because it was directly over the wing and the bathroom wasn't. Again I can't really verify that, or in the case of that claim maybe no one can.

[Winstonm]

Quote

Sometimes you get lucky, though. But when you drop a singleton king for no apparent reason in an 8-card fit, you shouldn't take too much credit when it works

For your king-dropping analogy to be correct, a drunk passenger would have had to have been jostled by turbulence just at the right moment and drop his Jim Beam onto the just lit fuse of the bomb, putting it out.

It may not be much, but there was a reason this plot failed. It wasn't simply blind luck.

I don't know if you got a chance to read the link I posted from Cato, but I thought the author made several excellent points concerning our "system" of security.

First, he made it clear that there is no single "system" - the system itself is made of layer upon layer. The last layer is public awareness and participation, and it appears this final layer worked well enough for other passengers to subdue al-Skivvies Haut "N Crotch.

So in this sense the system did work - al-Skivvies burned off his dick, and the plane landed safely - but it did not work particularly well or even as well as we should expect.

Maybe it was table feel.

[Lobowolf]

Winstonm, on Jan 4 2010, 08:51 PM, said:

Quote

Sometimes you get lucky, though. But when you drop a singleton king for no apparent reason in an 8-card fit, you shouldn't take too much credit when it works

For your king-dropping analogy to be correct, a drunk passenger would have had to have been jostled by turbulence just at the right moment and drop his Jim Beam onto the just lit fuse of the bomb, putting it out.

It may not be much, but there was a reason this plot failed. It wasn't simply blind luck.

I don't know if you got a chance to read the link I posted from Cato, but I thought the author made several excellent points concerning our "system" of security.

First, he made it clear that there is no single "system" - the system itself is made of layer upon layer. The last layer is public awareness and participation, and it appears this final layer worked well enough for other passengers to subdue al-Skivvies Haut "N Crotch.

So in this sense the system did work - al-Skivvies burned off his dick, and the plane landed safely - but it did not work particularly well or even as well as we should expect.

Maybe it was table feel.

Yeah, the bridge analogy was a bad one. Maybe it's more like bidding a slam that worked because a finesse was on and a side-suit split 3-3. Great that worked, but it's hardly a system victory.

[mike777]

He was denied a UK visa because he said he was going to attend a nonexistant university. In the UK this is very common and they have alot of practice in denying this type of application.


More interesting is the fact that so many want to deny him Miranda rights. Many seem to argue that the USA had the option too deny but many others say the USA did not.

[Lobowolf]

jdonn, on Jan 4 2010, 08:27 PM, said:

Lobowolf, on Jan 4 2010, 08:25 PM, said:

Britain's system worked, anyway - he was prohibited from returning to the UK by its Border Agency.  That he obtained and retained a Visa is a sign that our "system" didn't work.

I saw someone state on CNN yesterday that his British Visa was revoked for some reason totally unrelated to the threat of terrorism and that it was just a coincidence. I can't remember what the reason was or who said it.

Also I remember hearing he tried to detonate the bomb in his seat because it was directly over the wing and the bathroom wasn't. Again I can't really verify that, or in the case of that claim maybe no one can.

“He was refused entry on grounds that he was applying to study at an educational establishment that we didn’t consider to be genuine,” a Whitehall official said.

[Winstonm]

Lobowolf, on Jan 4 2010, 09:26 PM, said:

Winstonm, on Jan 4 2010, 08:51 PM, said:

Quote

Sometimes you get lucky, though. But when you drop a singleton king for no apparent reason in an 8-card fit, you shouldn't take too much credit when it works

For your king-dropping analogy to be correct, a drunk passenger would have had to have been jostled by turbulence just at the right moment and drop his Jim Beam onto the just lit fuse of the bomb, putting it out.

It may not be much, but there was a reason this plot failed. It wasn't simply blind luck.

I don't know if you got a chance to read the link I posted from Cato, but I thought the author made several excellent points concerning our "system" of security.

First, he made it clear that there is no single "system" - the system itself is made of layer upon layer. The last layer is public awareness and participation, and it appears this final layer worked well enough for other passengers to subdue al-Skivvies Haut "N Crotch.

So in this sense the system did work - al-Skivvies burned off his dick, and the plane landed safely - but it did not work particularly well or even as well as we should expect.

Maybe it was table feel.

Yeah, the bridge analogy was a bad one. Maybe it's more like bidding a slam that worked because a finesse was on and a side-suit split 3-3. Great that worked, but it's hardly a system victory.

Much better analogy. I wouldn't put too much stock in Napolitano backing away from her claim the system worked - too difficult politically to explain what you mean, even if right.

However, I agree the system only worked partially - fortunately, the important part: the plane landed safely. Still, there is much room for improvement in the future - hopefully we can at least reach 8-card trump fits.

[Lobowolf]

Winstonm, on Jan 4 2010, 09:44 PM, said:

Much better analogy. I wouldn't put too much stock in Napolitano backing away from her claim the system worked

I don't put much stock in political soundbites in general, either the claim that it worked, or the backing off of the original claim. I think that most people would view the fortunate outcome more as being in spite of the system than because of it (and I think they'd be right). Regardless, it was a good outcome and hopefully a good learning experience.

[blackshoe]

STRATFOR pointed out that there are still a lot of holes in the system, one of them being the time it takes for intel to get from those who have it to those who need to act on it. STRATFOR also suggests that the way forward is to plug these holes rather than engage in showy but futile moves designed, really, to show John Q. Public that we are Doing Something. (My characterization, but I think it makes their point).

[Winstonm]

The one thing we must all realize is that there is no perfect safety system. It is possible that some time another terrorist will succeed. If that happens, I think it important for the U.S. to respond in a manner that best protects against future attacks.

As I said earlier, IMO, the best ways to address terrorist attempts is to trivialize and ridicule the terrorist, make him and his act seem little and small and insignificant - painting a picture to prospective terrorists that there is no mystical hero status to be gained by attacking a country that refuses to be terrorized.

In the event of success, I think it is better to emphasize the sadness of human loss rather than galvanize on threats and armed reaction. By making the victims human and innocent the entire episode is shown to be an act of brutal thugs creating sadness and loss - and not a picture of freedom fighter heroes engaging in acts of war.

Again, one of the layers of fighting terrorism is to thwart the recruitment of potential future actors - and I believe our response to any attempt or successful attack should have an organized and planned method of response.

[mike777]

Our response so far

1) Make air travel insane and difficult
2) shut down embassy