A close call on Christmas Day. An attempt to blow up an airplane in flight over a major American city. Thank God for the passengers (especiallyJasper Schuringa, the civilian hero of the day). The screening process failed, the electronic tracking (databases, watch lists, no fly lists) failed, and human intelligence failed. The suspect’s own father called authorities to warn he might be a threat!

 And the government officials are out trying to calm the masses.

Here’s how you can calm us. Anyone that is on any list (other than the no fly list of course.  If they get on an airplane, then we are all sunk anyway), or in any watch database gets intensive screening, Israeli style. Pat downs, put through the “puffer” machine, interrogate them, let the dogs have a sniff…the whole nine yards. I guess the argument would be that there are ~1 million people on the various lists. The counter to that is how many at any one time are attempting to fly? 1%? 5%? Put the mechanism and people in place to make sure anyone who is deemed a threat at least gets properly screened.

Who knows, you might even get enough information to take them off the list.

“Massive” databases and lists shouldn’t be the excuse. My PC can sort through a million records in a couple of seconds. The key is the proper management of the information, and the execution of the plan once one of these folks try to get on a plane.

It’s time to meet the airliner terrorist threat with overwhelming force.

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