Monday, December 28, 2009

Have a Nice Flight.

How can a Muslim student,
- whose name appears on a US law enforcement database of terrorists,
- whose father notified US law enforcement that he was "over the edge" and likely to become a violent Jihadi,
- who was denied re-admittance into the UK because he was too high a risk,
- who was traveling from Yemen, probably having trained with an al-Queda group,
- who had an explosive device sewn into his underwear yet still get past a number of security checks,
- and be granted a visa to travel to America?

There's also word that a fellow passenger was videotaping him for the entire flight. No one commented on this? "I'm taking a video of this other man doing nothing for 1.5 hours. Isn't that normal behavior for you, too?"

Instead of addressing the problem at hand and correcting the mistakes that were made, administration decided to head off on a tangent and make new rules for everyone: Folks who are not identified as terrorists can't visit the head for the first or last hour of the flight, can't have a laptop on the lap (or anything else), must strip off shoes and clothing at whim, and stand in lines for hours waiting for low-grade morons to stare woodenly at screens until their eyes defocus and they overlook everything.

That tactic worked so well this time, TSA are doing more of it.

Have we forgotten the cardinal rule of minimum-wage humans? They get bored easily. When you increase the size of the haystack, you won't find more needles so you can't improve your security by adding stupid procedures and paperwork. What's needed is to reduce the size of the haystack, to ignore the obviously innocuous and focus on those who are holding up signs declaring themselves dangerous.

Why does this remind me of a Highly Ineffective Principal?

1 comment:

  1. Aha!! You have discovered where HIP really train!! I knew there was a secret place where they learned their craft.

    ReplyDelete