The TSA has changed the security procedures they put into place after the Christmas Day bombing attempt of a trans-Atlantic airliner, and the changes are positive steps.
The old policy, you may remember, mandated secondary screening of everyone who was a citizen of, or flew from or through, 14 countries. The new rules, which took effect April 2, rely on intelligence to determine which categories of passengers will be subject to additional screening.
In other words, if, say, the intel points to a young male who flew from Kenya as the possible suspect, then the TSA won’t be frisking grandmas and infants, just because they flew thrugh Nairobi.
This is not just smarter intelligence. It’s smarter PR.
The earlier policy made sense if you thought that everyone from a given country was equally a threat, just because of their nationality. But “frisk Granny” was an insulting policy — both in theory and practice — to millions of people.
Related:
- Upgrades and Downgrades: Crotch-Bomber Aftermath Edition
- Upgrades and Downgrades: New security rules, airport scanners, and lousy hotel website editing
- A guy tries to blow up a plane and all I get is these dumb new rules… what stinks, and what’s next
RSS (FeedBurner)
Read with Amazon Kindle
Subscribe by E-mail
Follow on Twitter
April 6th, 2010 at 9:43 am
I’d never let a grandma and infant fly through Nirobbery.
April 7th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
I wish I could share your confidence the changes will be an improvement, but I’m unconvinced.
1) The no fly list and watchlist are notorious for errors and false positive matches. Now we’ll have another list of categories of fliers for extra security.
2) The way it has been described means the categories are incredibly broad. If say a specific English male was identified as a potential terrorist, then all English males flying to USA will get extra security.
3) While it is good they are finally admitting (indirectly) that name matches are not good enough for security, they have failed to follow up with the logical consequence of removing the whole no fly / watchlist nonsense for the millions of innocents who are impacted by them.