TSA and the "New Normal" mode of flying...

[n2doc]

Bomb plot spurs a 'new normal' for flying
Although new airport security measures are in place, some analysts call for a broad rethinking of strategy.

By Alexandra Marks | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
NEWARK, N.J. – Fly the jittery skies.
A week after British intelligence foiled a plot to blow up multiple planes with liquid explosives, security at American airports remains at a heightened level. Passengers and crews are extra vigilant. Even the slightest disturbance is cause for a security alert. In just one 24-hour period, two planes - one from London to Washington, the other from Fiji to Australia - were diverted for what turned out to be false security alarms. It's all part of what could be called yet another "new normal" in US aviation.

In the five years since 9/11, the airline industry has implemented a wide range of added security measures, and more are in the works. But many analysts contend the vulnerabilities exposed by the foiled plot require the nation to take a step back and reassess the whole manner in which America's skies are guarded. The reason: The terrorists are what one security expert calls "thinking predators." "Here we are with a problem five years after 9/11 that will not be solved by more screeners or more technology - the liquid problem - and even if it hypothetically were, the terrorists would move to some other form," says Kevin Mitchell, chairman of the Business Travel Coalition in Radnor, Pa. "We reacted after 9/11. We put a lot of things into motion that are now law, but we never had any kind of meaningful debate about the nature of the problem. We have to do that now."

snip:

"The entire Department of Homeland Security has been inept and inert in finding new technology, some of which already exists. It's on the shelf," says Michael Greenberger, director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. But some security analysts note that even if such liquid explosive-detection technology were available at every airport, it may not have thwarted the British plot because the perpetrators allegedly planned to use liquids that were innocuous in isolation and only lethal when mixed on the plane.

"A well-trained workforce that has instinct, experience ... and good gut is just as, if not more important, than the technology," says Frank Cilluffo, head of the Homeland Security Policy Institute at George Washington University. "But it's not an either-or proposition. You need both, and to some extent you're always going to be reactive unless you can get in the minds of the terrorists."

Even critics who say that DHS has been slow in exploiting new technologies point to Congress as a large part of the problem. It gave DHS a huge mandate - in some cases even dictating the exact number of employees it could hire and the specifics of what they were to do. Then it began cutting funds. For instance, in 2003, the TSA had authority and funds to hire 50,000 screeners. Next year, Congress had authorized only 42,000. "By Congress making the screening tasks more important, it probably prevented from going in the direction most of us think they should have, which is focusing on behavioral profiling, looking for suspicious behavior, the way many Europeans and the Israelis do," says Gregory Treverton, a senior analyst at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif.

more:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0818/p01s01-ussc.html

Comment: The real point of all these changes is to make people uncomfortable and scared, not to stop "terrorists".

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. The terror plot is "alleged", so far nobody has been charged

and nothing has been proved.

"A week after British intelligence foiled a plot to blow up multiple planes with liquid explosives"

[MrModerate]

2. 99 out of 100 of the people involved are sincerely . . .

Doing their professional best to stop terrorism. Their bosses, too, are genuinely trying to do the right thing. Unfortunately, the "right thing" also includes manipulating fear for political effect, playing games with budgeting, avoiding the costs of two-way labor relations by regularly waving the bloody sheet of 9/11, and -- perhaps more than anything -- fucking over Democrats.

In between incompetence, the very real difficulties in establishing effective systems, and political game-playing, the overall effectiveness of any anti-terrorist system is going to be compromised.