TSA Tightens Policies -- After Bombing Suspect Slipped Through

Terrorists are creative; security agencies need to be as well

Little old ladies, families with toddlers and harried road warriors better be prepared for closer scrutiny by the Transportation Security Agency. After permitting Faisal Shahzad, who was charged with last Saturday's (fortunately) unsuccessful attempt to detonate a car bomb in New York's Times Square, screeners permitted him to pass through security at JFK International Airport on Monday evening, and Emirates Airlines let him on the plane.

Shahzad's name had been added to the no-fly list a few hours earlier, but it appears that no one (or at least no one with both responsibility and a functioning brain) at the agency or the airline had bothered to look at the list. He reportedly purchased his one-way ticket with cash in the last minute.Isn't that supposed to be brightest of all red flags? He could well have been winging his way to Dubai International Airport andthen on to Pakistan efore anyone looked at the list. Things changed fast after the close call.

Even though TSA personnel are supposed to match names on airline tickets with photo IDs before letting them proceed to the metal-detector and X-ray of carry-ons, airlines are responsible for monitoring the no-fly list. Everyone involed has gotten a wake-up call.

The government is now requiring airlines to check the no-fly list within two hours after being notified that the list had been updated. Until this new policy was instituted, airlines had had to check for updated every 24 hours. In 24 hours, a passenger boarding an international flight could be anywhere in the world. While TSA agents missed Shahzad at the security checkpoint and Emirates missed him when he checked in, Customs and Border Protection spotted his name on the passenger list and apprehended him before the plane took off for Dubai, Emirates' home base Meanwhile, since the incident,.Emirates, an enthusiastic proponent of Open Skies, does not mention a word of new alertness on its website.

According to a report in Travel Weekly, a travel trade publication, "The U.S. government's plan is to eventually take over the task of watch list matching. In 2009, the government began phasing in domestic flights. International flights aren’t covered by the government yet."

Like the Army is often accused of "fighting the last war," the TSA has been obsessed with the America's big airline incident, namely 9/11. The hijackers took over aircraft on domestic flights, so the security efforts have been directed there. A U.S.-bound Nigerian with explosives sewn into his underwear and a troubled Pakistani-American on the lam for a failed midtown Manhattan car bombing just wasn't on U.S. security's radar screen.

Good that someone was paying attention. And I hope that the TSA can keep its collective eyes and minds open, look for something else "unusual" and lay off little old ladies, families with toddlers and harried road warriors.