Underwear
Frisk
Lizette Alvarez writes in today’s Times about the perils of the “No-Fly” list:
‘“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.”
Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled.
The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.
After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.
“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”
It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government’s “no-fly” list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500 on the larger “selectee” list, which sets off a high level of security screening.’
I’m not suggesting that people in responsible positions are clowns – probably some of them are, but that is not the point, merely I'm saying that this article is another proof of the difficulty of making a bureaucratic machinery efficient when it comes to fighting insurgents, terrorists, lunatics and other maniacs.
If I understand the “No-Fly” list correctly people on this list can buy a gun, but they cannot board a plane.
No fly
The list contains the names of people that, according to the US government, are too dangerous to ever let them fly, yet too innocent for them to be arrested. In the security community, the list is widely viewed as a complete failure. Even the TSA acknowledged this in so many words. But is has been impossible to abolish it, mostly because no one want to look weak on terrorism. This has nothing to do with the supposed incompetence of politicians and bureaucrats and everything with institutional logic.Michel
I wasn’t referring to the incompetence of officials and politicians, (“but that’s not the point”), but to the incompetence of the bureaucracy itself. You call this incompetence “institutional logic”. We are saying the same thing, but you are slightly more ironic.Careca
It’s nonsense to think: US harassment makes a terrorist. (Whatever we mean by this word.)Ten thousands of people are continually harassed and they keep groveling, even while being harassed.
If you want to end harassment terrorism is highly ineffective. If anything it provokes more harassment.
By the way profiling is nasty, but not completely illogic.
Arnon
I agree on the profiling part when you want to continue power. Sorry for my melodramatic generalistic reaction (its swines for the pearls i know) but.. in my somewhat symplistic opion, and thats an opinion that works for a majority because they understand: When you want to gain power you need profile too. Terrorists choose a profile because they first want to divide. Second step to power: Ten thousands of victims or victors are groveling because of that and even more important, did grovel before. Third and liberating step to power, there will come a messiah (or two, one on each side) that will let the grovelers rise and make them run to give him power. In my western eyes a positive example is Martin Luther King, a negative example in my opinion is Khomeini. A positive example of two messiahs is Mandela and De Klerk. I cant think of a bad example of two messiahs (so maybe there is the solution, although i think y'all already think of two, so, who?)Arnon
I wrote the comment in support of your post. While I do enjoy disagreeing with you, the sad truth is that most of the time I actually have to agree.Constitution
It may well be the case that the right of an unconvicted US citizen to own a gun is explicitly guaranteed by the US constitution, while the right to travel by airplane is not.The press also fails to relativize dangers. I am sure the average citizen is much more at risk from drunk drivers and medical errors than from the occasional kamikaze jihadi.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_operating_procedure
Standard procedure
@Bernard fDon't worry too much, besides this Law of Unintended Consequences, Murphy's Law, the Peter Principle and the SNAFU principle will surely apply to any bureaucracy as well.
Not to mention the Uncertainty Principle.
@david duinker
Juliet:
"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet."
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
Please quote correctly.
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@BERT
You are right. I am not a quoting woman but I was quoting Juliet from the Ardens Shakespeare; if you for instance prefer A concordance... by Adams, thats totally fine with me. So what's in a name - or "word" for that matter? I 'd fly Concordia if I were you;greetings from an internet - coffeeshop, place of evil,
