It’s been in the news this whole weekend: on Friday, a man attempted but failed to detonate pentaerythritol tetranitrate, an incendiary powder, on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit. Thankfully, the panic of the passengers drove them to extinguish the fire before the detonation continued, but the issue still remains: how was this Nigerian man able to get these chemicals on board?
Since the September 11 attacks in 2001, U.S. airline security has been tightened. Policies have been enacted dictating how everyone must be screened, using walk-thru metal detectors, x-ray machines, and more.
If we have such a strong arsenal of technology, why was Mr. Abdulmutallab able to get through this screening? This exposes two major issues:
First of all, our screening protocols are very limited. The U.S. currently has random screening for ordinary individuals, and mandatory secondary screening for people on watch-lists. Yet, this random screening isn’t enough – we need to make sure that everybody is safe from this sort of threat. If this means that we have to have secondary screening for everyone, there will, of course, be delays, but in the long run, we need to find a way to make this fast and efficient. The TSA’s current strategy for that is remarkably insecure.
Next, it was mentioned in numerous press articles that the Nigerian man was not on any watch-lists, while his father had specifically reported his growing extremism to American officials. Yes, the man was put on a list of suspected terrorists, but why aren’t the 500,000 people on that list subject to normal watch-list protocols? Let’s have all those 500,000 people be put on the watch-list, so this sort of thing can be prevented.
Now, those two issues expose glaring problems in the U.S’s approach to aerospace security. But while we can put suspected terrorists on the watch-list and improve screening for everybody else, this is not enough – we need a system of sharing information about everybody. And not just a system for the U.S, no, we need to somehow (through the U.N, perhaps?) create an international agreement for sharing data about everyone.
Furthermore, there is a mention in the book SuperFreakonomics about how , after the London Underground attacks, an engineer developed a profile of an average terrorist. The engineer then created a program to go through bank records in London to find possible terrorists. So, what if we were to not only have a shared-info system, but also a system that goes through everyone’s information, highlights those who may be terrorists, and puts them on watch-lists.
Now, if we had that, this situation could be avoided in the future. After all, that is our main goal.