There’s a theme running across the stories we’ve uploaded this week to the website: security, specifically airport security. After the Christmas Day attack, the American government is scrambling to shore up the many holes that were revealed within its airport security screening along with communication failures among intelligence outfits.
One such effort is extra screening for passengers whose flights originate from troublesome countries, such as Yemen or Saudi. It’s a good try, but the flight on December 25th originated from Amsterdam, in the heart of Europe.
Another effort is looking at other airport screening systems, such as El Al’s, as featured in our news coverage.
Meanwhile in commentary on the site, in his column, Plain Truth, Dennis Prager is skeptical of knee-jerk security tightening measures – such as preventing passengers from leaving their seats in the final hour of a flight, and instead asks why other measures – such as full body scanning – aren’t being employed by the TSA.
An IJN editorial, “What is airport security for?“, asks why the TSA is not employing a targeted screening process, using human profiling, with nuanced instead of perfunctory questions.
We’ve come across an analysis of the Christmas Day attack from George Freedman at Stratfor, a global intelligence firm out of Austin. In a concise analysis, Freedman reaches similar conclusions to those already mentioned above regarding the failure of current airport security measures. On racial profiling, he writes that by screening flights from troubled countries, the US is finally starting out on a much-needed policy of profiling. He also, however, explains that airport security is in large part simply a policy of reassurance, so that American citizens feel safe traveling. Greater inconvenience to the passenger does not automatically equal better security.
Let us know what you think. Is airport security a joke? Is airline terrorism completely preventable? Are we using the wrong tools in our screening process?
