Editorial: Start scanning and profiling

Posted

Issue of January 1, 2010/ 15 Tevet 5770
Since Sept. 11, 2001, "only two things have made flying safer: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers," security expert Bruce Schneier said this week. His widely quoted words are clearly correct and incredibly frustrating.

It's hard to know where to begin with assessing the blame and the incompetence and the extent to which politics has played a role in the events leading to the near destruction of Northwest Flight 253 last Friday.

On Tuesday afternoon President Obama said that a combination of "human and systemic failures" contributed to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's attempt to murder nearly 300 people as the plane approached Detroit. The President said there had been warning signs, and "had this critical information been shared ... the suspect never would have been allowed to board a plane" bound for the United States.

Perhaps the first “human and systemic failure” in this case took place in 2007 when, ABC News reports, two of the Al Qaeda operatives believed to be behind the plot were released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. They were released into the custody of a Saudi Arabian art therapy rehabilitation program — no, we are not making that up — and then set free.

The Transportation Safety Administration, frankly, lacks common sense, above all else. TSA has become reliable at always fighting "the last war" — reacting to past attempts to bomb aircraft instead of correctly assessing what could happen next. It has confiscated hundreds of thousands of water bottles, toothpaste tubes and deodorant cans, and millions of travelers each day must step out of their shoes to pass through metal detectors. Yet, somehow, the baby-faced Abdulmutallab got onto a US-bound plane last Friday with a bomb sewn into his shorts.

No one asked questions about his purchase of a one-way ticket with cash, about his failure to check luggage — or about the fact that his own father had reported him to security authorities as having been “radicalized” — a euphemism for falling under the sway or radical Islam.

It is a “human and systemic failure” that the United States refuses to profile for extra screening Muslim men who wish to fly to here. No one likes the idea of racial or ethnic profiling — certainly Jews ought not be fond of the idea — but, seriously, what choice is there? Something has to change.

More than a few young Muslim men have been “radicalized” in recent years. Unless extra care is taken to question them before they get onto a plane bound for the US, one of them is bound to succeed in bringing one down.

A third “human and systemic failure” is the failure to widely deploy what may be the most powerful technology we currently have — the full-body image scanner.

The so-called "naked scanners" use radio waves to scan and provide a full 3D image of a person. Privacy concerns have been sufficiently addressed by slightly blurring the body image and by removing the person looking at the scanner from the immediate vicinity of the person in the machine.

The TSA has already installed 19 of these machines. Ironically, according to the New York Times, the Amsterdam airport from which Flight 253 departed has 15 of these machines but it is prohibited from scanning passengers on flight bound for America. Placing these scanners across the United States and in airports that fly to America — and requiring their use — would largely make attempts like Abdullmutallab's a thing of the past.