Metal detectors and security checkpoints didn't stop
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, but he couldn't get past
passengers who took responsibility for their own safety.
(AP Photo/U.S. Marshal's Service)
It's worth noting that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was thwarted in his Christmas Day attempt to blow an airliner out of the sky, not by institutional security measures, but by an alert passenger and the cabin crew of the airplane in question. It's also worth noting that, rather than take inspiration from Jasper Schuringa's exercise of personal initiative, various government seatwarmers around the world plan more of sort of the sort of security measures that have long failed to do much more than make air travel an unpleasant chore.
Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian dubbed the "Fruit of the Loom bomber" by some wags, attempted to detonate a bomb he'd smuggled on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit as it approached its destination. He'd been allowed to board even though he'd been placed on one of the U.S.government's myriad lists of suspicious persons with terrorist ties after his own father, a prominent Nigerian banker, warned U.S. authorities that Abdulmutallab is dangerous.
Abdulmutallab was brought up short only when passengers on the plane noticed flames after the terrorist ignited his explosive device. They jumped the would-be-bomber and doused the fire. Dutch video director Jasper Schuringa is credited with putting Abdulmutallab in a headlock and stripping and subduing the terrorist with the assistance of flight attendants.
"We had to do something," Schuringa told reporters. Well, yes -- they did. It's very likely that the passengers and crew escaped harm because they quickly reacted to circumstances that they couldn't have foreseen as they happened.
It's difficult, really, to imagine a better defense than people willing and able to take initiative. Dutch authorities have taken a lot of flack for letting Abdulmutallab slip his explosive device through security, but terrorists have had decades to adjust their techniques to ever-tightening security measures at airports. American officials have been called on the carpet to answer for allowing Abdulmutallab to board a U.S.-bound flight when he's listed as a terrorism suspect, but the list he's on -- the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list -- reportedly contains 550,000 names.
There comes a point of diminishing returns, when you've listed so many potential threats that there's no possible way to react to them in any effective manner. I suspect that point comes somewhere before you tally up a half-million terrorism suspects.
But Abdulmutallab was stopped -- on the plane, by passengers and crew. While the fact that the terrorist plot got that far is being treated as a failure in many quarters, it may have run up against the most effective security measures that there can ever be -- people at the scene who take responsibility and initiative as a threat materializes.
That's the most effective security measure there can ever be because its really the only measure that can't be easily anticipated or evaded by plotters. After all, if they want to harm people, terrorists have to be near people. And those people have the potential to react on the spot, as needed.
That security officials appreciate the value of such flexibility is clear from the Transportation Security Administration's announcement that it will "surge resources as needed on a daily basis" and that "[p]assengers should not expect to see the same thing at every airport."
OK. Flexible is good.
But TSA officials aren't the targets. They're the people the terrorists are evading. No matter how many new checkpoints or measures they put in place -- millimeter-wave scanners, extra baggage checks at gates, behavior detection, dogs, bans on putting anything on your lap or moving around the cabin -- the most officials can do is create hurdles that terrorists must plan for, and that seriously inconvenience anybody who still chooses to travel through the police state that air travel has become.
That government officials know that they engage more in security theater than actual security is pretty clear. The Government Accountability Office has called the TSA on the carpet in the past for implementing procedures without ever bothering to investigate their effectiveness. In a 2007 report, the GAO recommended:
[T]he Secretary of Homeland Security should direct the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for TSA to develop sound evaluation methods, when possible, that can be used to assist TSA in determining whether proposed procedures would achieve their intended result...
In March 2009, the GAO followed up, finding (PDF):
TSA has taken some actions but has not fully implemented a risk management approach to inform the allocation of resources across the transportation modes (aviation, mass transit, highway, freight rail, and pipeline). ...
Without effectively implementing such controls, TSA cannot provide reasonable assurance that its resources are being used effectively and efficiently to achieve security priorities.
The latest measures will almost certainly be implemented with the same disregard for effectiveness, because they are and can only be primarily for show. Real security doesn't come from lumbering institutions, uniformed snoops and high-tech scanners, it comes from people who take responsibility for themselves.
But what bureaucrat wants to admit that there's only so much he can do? Who wants to put himself out of a job by telling scared travelers that real security comes from emulating Jasper Schuringa?
email J.D.: civilliberties (at) tuccille.com
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Comments
I saw elsewhere on the 'net that this man boarded the plane with no passport and was helped aboard by a well-dressed man.
At what point will all people just stop flying?
I stopped a few years before 2001 because of the perverts at TSA violating my basic human and Constitutional rights. I'm sure some TSA guy took some of my underwear home after a flight back from Germany to Detroit one years. Every flight seemed to get worse, more insinuations, more innuendo, more verbal and physical abuse from TSA. So, I just stopped flying. I have a panic attack if I get anywhere near an airport.
Now, it looks like the kinds of things that were happening just to me and a few of my women friends who dared to travel alone are happening to everyone. How do people deal with this level of abuse? I don't get it.
No, actually, the passengers and crew escaped because, like 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid before him, this clown (or the people who built the 'bomb' for him) didn't understand the difference between 'ignite' and 'detonate.'
The passengers simply subdued a guy with a flaming crotch.
One of these days, though, some terrorist is going to read a basic book on explosives and get lucky - and some people will die.
wow Angela - you stopped BEFORE 9/11???
How incredibly prescient of you - since TSA didn't come into existence until Nov. 19, 2001.
At what point will passengers be anesthetized and stripped before being surgically examined and then loaded on planes, shipped to their destination and then re-dressed (in "travellers' gowns", of course) and re-animated?
Airport security is a lie. Otherwise they would ignore or encourage passengers carrying guns.
Yes, before 2001...
And I'm referring to whatever airport security was called before they were called TSA.
I think you know that... I'm just stating it for you.
By all means if you see a nut setting his crotch on fire then feel free to be a 'hero'.
who was his handler? how did he board the plane with no passport?
how did he get past israeli security firms in london and amsterdam? something is fishy about this story.
"something is fishy about this story."
It's a near-certainty that stinky things are afoot here. Could be this was merely a staged reminder that we still "need" the TSA. (Not like that sort of thing hasn't happened before.) Could be simply another instance of the state failing to do what it purports to do, and getting shown up by independent thinkers. Who knows?
And it doesn't really matter, does it? Because the one thing that will NOT come out of this, to the tune of one hundred percent certainty or greater, is a reduced role for the state in protecting us all from a deliberately endless parade of bogeymen.
Sure, it's pretty obvious by now that we'd all be better protected from a random assembly of a hundred individuals than by the state's gigantic untouchable bureaucracies...but what do people think this is, a free country?
Apples and pizza comparison, Angela.
Pre-TSA, there was NO federal airport security; each airport either hired its own security force or, more typically, contracted it from one of the major security companies.
And it sounds like your underwear complaint should have been directed to the German perverts; Customs may have inspected your bag when you entered the US, but they normally do that in front of you.
Snark, you are either wrong or lying. I have had my own share of trouble with airport security before 9/11. One particular incident revolved around the fact that I was allowed to board in one city with certain items, that they tried to confiscate when I went to board my return flight. I had to FedEx them home. That was my last flight also. And for the same reasons as Angela put forth.
Snark can be entertaining, but it must have a kernel of truth in it. You get a "fail" on this.
Oh, and for that matter Europe has been utilizing airport security personnel longer than have we. So everything Angela said is more likely to be true than your lame attempt at ridicule. The only one who looks ridiculous is you.
You have a reading comprehension problem, straightarrow - I didn't say there wasn't security - airports have been doing this stuff since the hijackings of the '60s.
What I said was TSA didn't exist until after 9/11 - and prior to that, airport security was only marginally under federal regulations, implemented usually by even lower-wage clowns than the TSA hires.
One of the major complaints for years was that different airports applied different standards - and most of them were terribly lax.
(For a couple decades pre-TSA, I flew with photographic film in an x-ray proof bag in my carry-on camera bag - and only once was it ever opened and inspected, despite being big enough to hold an M-10 and several magazines.)
As for Angela - damn right it was Euro security types; that's what I was pointing out. Anything stolen from her bag had to happen BEFORE she got back to the USA.
No Snark, you ridiculed her over a simple misidentification of which trash she had bad experience with. You did it in such a manner as to intimate that none of it happened.
That's a lot like dismissing the truth of gravity because the paper on it had a misspelling.
I simply called you on it. My reading comprehension is fine, your understanding of the bigger picture seems to have been cropped.
Awwwwwwww... you defending the li'l lady's honor, that's all. How inspirin'.
Sorry, but I don't suffer idiots easily - and her statement from the get-go was that of an idiot - even YOU recognized that her complaint had nothing to do with the US airport security clowns.
Some scumbag tries to blow up a plane and whe wants to whine someone stole her underwear - which, more likely than not, she forgot in the hotel when she packed her bag.
Happy Frakin' New Year.
Actually, my complaint was with airport security at the time. They WERE Federal. The incident was so bad that I was extremely upset for about 3 days. After which I contacted the organization by whatever name it was called at the time and registered a formal complaint.
I don't see how you got that the problem occurred in Europe. I've never had trouble with European security. They have some sense of decency and, in particular, regard for women.
Some years ago a black woman successfully filed a suit against the organization - again by whatever name (when they became TSA, they became even more federalized, but retained the same bunch of perverts and morons - kicking out a handful of felons) and succeeded in effecting some changes with regard to the organization's (by this time called TSA, I believe) treatment of women. Prior to that, it was customary for the agents to have a little fun, at will, with women passengers travelling alone.
SNARK must be employed by these same
Oh, I dunno... maybe the fact you were coming FROM Germany?
The only people who might be inspecting your bag upon ENTRY to the US would have been Customs (now CBP) - and they would have inspected it in your presence.
And I'll repeat, since you can't be bothered to even google-check your facts: TSA didn't exist until November 2001; prior to that, the feds set security REQUIREMENTS but didn't hire or control security AGENTS - those were hired by each airport, either on their own or from a contractor.
And none of them would have had anything to do with you RETURNING from overseas.
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