[The system did fail miserably.] And that’s why we are asking a lot of the same questions I heard you asking before this interview. How did this individual get on the plane? Why wasn’t the explosive material detected? What do we need to do to change perhaps the rules that have been in place since 2006 for moving somebody from the generic database to more elevated status. All of that is under review right now. – Janet Napolitano
Support the Blog — Buy This Book!
For Kindle and with free ePub version. Only $9.49 Great reading.
Here is what Gary Shapiro CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) said: Dvorak's writing sings with insight and clarity. Whether or not you agree with John's views, he will get you thinking and is never boring. These essays are worth the read!
Put this ad on your blog!
Syndicate
Subscribe to Main Blog feed here:
Subscribe to Comments too (below):
Junk Email Filter
Invest in boat cruises, i’d say!
#1 Pedrito..
“.. bozo measures like having taken the blanket away and told to have the hands visible at all times..”
The conservatives are totally for this. You never know what boys are doing with their hands under a blanket.
Man, I’m mad
Pedrito, when you’re mad, get yourself a blanket.
Ahh..what perfect timing, dont ya think?
-and therein lies the rub:
I think i see the plotline to the newly scripted increase in foiled, lame Airline terror attacks, -along with britain’s newly announced
“fear that 25 British-born Muslims are plotting to bomb Western airliners.”
-It’s time for congress to renew it’s vows to destroy the constitution and further trample on the privacy of the people in the name of government sponsored terror
The Patriot Act is up for “fine tuning”
And OH MY…looky there, it was conveniently delayed a week so that we could once again relive the scripted “terror” of 9/11 once again, thusly garunteeing a smattering of 5 second sound bites on the news of holiday travelers saying
“sure i don’t mind getting probed by a proctologist before boarding” or allowing complete access to my entire life’s records
with no evidence other than i look funny” -to sell the new bill.
http://wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/spy-vote-delayed/2/
How perfect is it, if there was any doubt amongst those voting, of the need to strip away the last of any constitutional constraints on government spying..
-That we have all these new “empty” threats of attack to convince those on the fence to vote in favor of the “perfect police state”?
If the vaunted Al-Qaeda or any other “organization” wanted to really blow up a plane, they would not fail. PERIOD.
This is all scripted BS so they can make the Patriot Act the *perfect* political weapon.
Any political decent against the government will make you a terror suspect. -and possibly a non-person to boot.
We should have at least one more “good” airline scare..maybe even real, before they sign the bill into law, to ensure the most intrusive bits get even better “play” into
the bill.
Lambs to the slaughter the lot of us..for allowing the thieves in congress to destroy what is left of our country’s founding principals..
WAKE UP.
-s
This would piss off the Pope if he flew commercial.
For the new year, TSA: Zero Tolerance. Of course the next bing thing will be Homeland Security: Zero Tolerance.
If it is good enough for school children then it should be good enough for everyone.
Just stay home, and you won’t get blowed up.
SOMETHING has to happen to SCARE the idiots.
SOMETHING so that they can ADD more regulations
SOMETHING so they can JUSTIFY paying out TONS of money to LOW paid persons, and the CORPS eat up the money.
Anyone who has ever done statistical process control, which what the x-ray and bag inspection really is, knows that 100% inspection is only 80% effective. We can NEVER make it 100% safe to fly. We you fly you play the odds, just like Las Vegas. I fly to the UK 5 times a year. I understand the odds. So far I’ve beat them.
#11 Agreed, but what you fail to comprehend is that security measures are also in place to keep the public at ease.
#10, #12 As usual you have nothing to add. When you do, it’s unoriginal. You’re like a parrot but with internet access.
Reminds me of the story of the guy who lost his watch in the dark woods but was instead looking for it under a street light no where near the woods… why? The light was better there.
Instead of keeping grandma from reading Good Housekeeping on the plane, maybe we should spend a bit more effort in identifying the Islamists and making them a bit more inconvenienced.
NO visas and no plane tickets to the US.
This is way overblown, with a lot of hyperbole being tossed around.
A quick reference to the National Safety Council odds of death from accident chart shows that in 2006, 655 people died in air and space transport accidents. 6,162 pedestrians died. 14,119 car occupants died, 4,787 motorcycle riders, 3,411 truck or van accident deaths.
At 872 more people died from choking on food than flying. 3,109 people died from choking on objects other than food.
I am with #11, I’ll take my chances flying. I wear comfortable clothes with slip on shoes and keep a good attitude about it all, instead of pissing and moaning about shit that doesn’t matter and over which I have no control.
1. YOU TAKE OUR PROPERTY RIGHTS.
2. YOu limit our guns and personal defending ourselves, protections so that YOU can administer them.
3. you Spy on us so our freedom of speech is restricted.
4. you take the National guard away so the states cant HELP defend its people.
5. you LISTEN to corps and idiots with there OWN agendas, and NOT the people you are SUPPOSED to be listening to.
6. you take AWAY the power of the people to REGULATE those that we elected.
7. Proposed treaties that are held in private with CORPS that are only in it to make things WORSE, and have no PUBLIC representation.. Treaties that would make LAWS that NO ONE asked for.
MORE??
Tom Ridge, who was Secretary of Homeland Security under Bush and understands a thing or two, agreed with Napolitano.
While I’ll sympathize for the air travelers, having to go thru this security theater crap, the TSA thinks up to nullify safety concerns. I can’t help but believe this may finally lead to the US taking High Speed Rail travel more seriously. Up until now, it’s been an economic matter. Or should I say, a profitable one. All the money went into Air Travel, after WW2. Because the same factories that tooled up to build fighters and bombers. Turned around and made civilian airliners. The UK and Japan, didn’t have that going for them. So they maintained and improved their railway systems. As did Germany and France, after the war. But during WW2, men and equipment were moved across land, almost exclusively by rail. Even though it took days. And from the coast, by ships. And most returned that way, afterward. It was then that major investors got in on the ground floor of the newest transportation stock going. And naturally, in order to make its value soar. They pressured more airports be built near cities, over railroad stations. The same way General Motors killed the light transit rail systems, in major cities. And replaced them with GM built transit buses.
It was Wall Street economics that made the US so heavily dependent on air travel. And now one can’t travel across one’s own state, without resorting to a jet plane. But factor in all the airport security screening time. And rail travels is probably starting to look pretty good. I’m sure a lot of people would take the train, for shorter than coast to coast travel, if they could. But rail travel isn’t as subsidized as air travel is. So it remains under-developed and generally more costly. Or so the air travel propagandists say.
But the impossibility of making all air travel, terrorist proof, will doubtlessly start the public thinking of switching to trains. And maybe the politicians will start to listen to them. When they’re not being wined and dined by the air travel lobby.
The No Fly List seems to have a fuzzy number of people on it. Michael Chertoff says it only has 2,500 people on it. Only 10% of which are Americans. Another 16,000 are `selectees’ for additional scrutiny. But can still fly. The ACLU says it’s over a million on the list. The FBI says its 400,000. And ABC news recently said it was only 4,000. But the terrorists watch list was in the hundreds of thousands. I think ABC news got that backwards. I’d sooner believe the suspected and confirmed terrorists number only a few thousand. And the No Fly list was the biggie. If they were several hundred thousand terrorists out there, civilization would be finished. Because that would be something like one terrorist, for every 20 people. So they better not plan for more than 19 people, living on the Moon.
Sure this is Bush’s fault. The guy was reported after Bush left office and I assume the Democrats had taken office. Well they were the highest elected and appointed officials and were setting policy or at least they were supposed to be.
I can’t actually be sure the Dems weren’t mainly interested in other issues like cap and trade and health care and were ignoring this one. If Dems didn’t change the policy then it must have been because they thought the policy was okay or wasn’t that important.
On the other hand Bush would have nailed somebody to wall if they let this happen and everybody knows it so I’m thinking that most of this PC nonsense has happened after the PC nonsense crowd took office. These people can’t even bring themselves to say Islamic terrorist. It doesn’t match with their world view.
Unfortunately the PC world view doesn’t seem to match up with the world views of many devote Muslims who think a good infidel is a dead infidel.
Anybody in favor of higher security around Easter? No day is a safe day but any holiday is going to have an added attraction.