Attempted airline bombing: do new security proposals make sense?

Airline security rules in the US have historically been reactionary and rarely preventative. Only after something happens is when changes are made.  When hi-jackers took over the planes on September 11th the FAA decided it was no longer wise to allow passengers to carry box cutters and small knives on board. Do you think perhaps that should have been a standing rule long before 9/11? Come on, the Feds knew there were a bunch of terrorists out there making threats toward American air travel. Dumb! 

Only after 9/11, under the looming threat of another air travel disaster did the government start requiring that every checked and carry on bag be xrayed and screened. That system should have been in place long before 2001.

After the September 11th attacks the TSA, Transportation Security Administration, was created to toughen and regulate airline security. Now that agency gets the Dumb and Dumber award for its "new air travel prevent a bomber security proposal", which goes something like this: 

"Since the Nigerian man who attempted to blow up the Northwest Airlines Detroit bound flight on Christmas Day 2009 tried to do it during the final descent to the airport, a rule should be made that says no one can get up from their seats an hour prior to landing. Yeah ! That'll show those terrorists."

Huh? Will that really solve the problem? The bad guys will just detonate whatever they're packing during take off, or in the middle of the in-flight movie. Meantime mothers and four year olds who have to go "potty RIGHT NOW" will be tortured during the last 60 minutes of a flight.

TSA, here's some News You Can Use: This initial, knee jerk reaction is not how to fix the security problem.  Some major changes must be made. Right now if a nut with bomb parts strapped to his leg is on a flight, the system for security is "well... if there's not an air marshal on board, let's hope a bunch of angry passengers or one brave passenger takes 'em down."  That's what just happened on Christmas Day 2009. And that's what happened back in December 2001 when passengers tackled attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid. He's the guy now serving a life sentence for trying to light explosives hidden in his shoes on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami.
 

Kevin Mitchell from the Business Travel Coalition makes some good points in his column about this, hot off the presses:  

The Christmas attempt by a Nigerian man with PETN (one of the most powerful explosives known) affixed to his body to cause harm to an internationally-originated Delta Air Lines flight on approach to Detroit shone a bright light on much that is wrong with the U.S. approach to aviation system security. It is welcome news that President Obama has ordered an airline industry security review so long as it is strategic in nature.      

It makes abundant sense in the immediate aftermath of a suspected terrorist attempt to tighten security measures to ensure that there is not a wider terrorist operation underway; to guard against would-be copycats; and to adequately complete an investigation such that there is sufficient visibility to the nature and extent of the threat. The restrictions ordered by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) on passenger movement and use of personal items during the one-hour period prior to landing in the U.S. would defy logic, if they are kept in place longer than what near-term security precautions warrant. Someone wanting to terrorize would simply endeavor to do so 65 minutes prior to landing, or during the beginning or middle of a flight.

The immediate post 9/11 security priority for the U.S. was to prevent a commercial airline from ever again being used as a weapon-of-mass-destruction. Airport screening was strengthened substantially, the Air Marshall program was expanded, cabin and cockpit crews were trained in advanced anti-terrorism techniques, many pilots were armed, F-14s were placed on alert, and most importantly, cockpit doors were reinforced and passengers were forever transformed from passive participants in a time of threat to able defenders. All of this was accomplished within a relatively short period of time after the U.S. was attacked on 9/11.

From that point forward the highest and best use of each incremental security dollar spent should have been on intelligence gathering, risk-management analysis and sharing, and on fundamental police work such that terrorists would never reach an airport, much less board an airplane. What does the immediate investigation into the near-calamity on Christmas reveal?

• The father of the accused terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, informed U.S. officials months ago that he was concerned about his son’s extreme religious views. Not a friend, not a teacher, but his very own father issued the warning!

• The accused Nigerian is in the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database (550K names) maintained by the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center. While not on the selectee list (14K names) or no-fly list (4K names), should not some of our scarce security dollars have been used to ensure that he was placed on the selectee list, questioned and subjected to extra searching prior to being allowed to board the Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam?

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano appeared today on ABC’s This Week show and unabashedly steered clear of government accountability arguing that the U.S. did not have enough information to keep the accused man from boarding the flight or to add him to the selectee or no-fly list. However, his very father warned us! Moreover, the UK’s Daily Mail reports that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was banned from Britain; his last visa request refused! That the suspect did not but should have received additional questioning and physical screening is where the U.S. government’s focus should be, versus on the in-flight security illusion of restricted passenger movement, if it is intended to be more that temporary.

President Obama is right to review aviation system security. In doing so his advisers should consider that security-theater in fact also inconveniences all passengers, renders air travel less appealing for business travelers and negatively impacts our struggling economy as aviation drives commercial activity and job creation. What’s more, it is unconscionable that the U.S. has been without a TSA leader for a year and reprehensible that one Senator’s extreme political views are allowed to hold our country hostage and put our citizens in harm’s way by blocking the confirmation of President Obama’s nominee to run TSA, Erroll Southers. Politics trumping passenger security is a national disgrace! We desperately require leadership at TSA now.