Homeland Security officials hope that new airport security rules that use timely terror threat information as well as other criteria to screen U.S. bound passengers will be an improvement over emergency procedures installed after the thwarted bombing of a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day. They should. The rules are an outgrowth of a review of the nation’s counter-terrorism policies ordered by President Barack Obama following that incident, and they are a positive shift in anti-terrorism policy and strategy.
The regulations, announced late last week by the Homeland Security Department, supplant required extra screening of every passenger from 14 nations called “countries of concern” that have had ties to known terrorists. As experts were quick to point out, there’s no guarantee that would-be terrorists are limited to a handful of nations. More importantly, there is little evidence that the emergency regulations significantly improved the nation’s safety.
The same was true of the system in place before Dec. 25. Regular screening plus the use of no-fly lists to identify possible terrorists were of somewhat dubious value. Screenings, arguably, fail to detect some would-be terrorists and there is no guarantee that an individual with mayhem on the mind will turn up on a no-fly list. Indeed, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged Christmas Day bomber, was not on the U.S. terror watch list. Thus, he was able to board a plane in the Netherlands and fly to the United States with a bomb in his underwear. That was despite a warning to U.S. officials from his father about the son’s suspicious activities and despite creditable information from Yemeni officials that suggested that a male that fit Mr. Abdulmutallab’s general description was training for a special mission. Clearly, the old system was an imperfect way to enhance the safety of U.S.-bound air travel.
The new regulations, by contrast, should help promote air safety for most travelers. Under them, fragmentary but still specific intelligence information of the type associated with the December incident likely would have triggered a secondary search — including questioning, pat-downs and body scans — in Amsterdam, where the would-be Christmas Day bomber boarded his flight. In Mr. Abdulmutallab’s case, such action hopefully would have prompted discovery of the incendiary device he allegedly was transporting and his arrest.
Rules that employ the latest intelligence information available and that look more closely at individuals and not their nationality, ethnicity or religion should prove more effective in the war against terrorism in the air than rigid, sometimes exploitable regulations. The new rules allow broader use of intelligence gathered here and abroad and more flexibility in the effort to improve air safety. They do not resolve all issues, though.