Thomas said that better explosives scanners were not needed to thwart Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, the Nigerian charged in the attack. Instead, airport workers in Amsterdam should have been aware that Abdulmutallab was on a US government watch list of people suspected of having terrorist sympathies. Armed with this knowledge, airline security workers should have singled out Abdulmutallab for a thorough pat-down search, which would probably have detected the bomb.
Thomas suspects that did not happen because airline security data systems are not completely integrated with US terrorist databases. As a result, airline workers may not be notified when some one on a watch list tries to board a plane, he said. “We need to better align the databases,’’ said Thomas. “We need to make the watch list actually mean something.’’
In addition, Thomas said that many airline workers do not know what to do when a passenger is flagged as a possible threat. He said that airlines spend “the bare minimum’’ of time and money training workers on the correct procedures. “They’re doing it just enough to say they’re doing it,’’ said Thomas.
Bruce Schneier, author of the book “Beyond Fear’’ and a longtime critic of airport security practices, said that no amount of technology will ever make airports safe. He mocked the current array of X-ray scanners and metal detectors as security theater, a way of making passengers feel safer than they are.
Buying costly new body-scanning systems will not help, said Schneier, because terrorists will find new attack methods that the scanners cannot detect. “We will waste hundreds of millions of dollars, that could be spent on investigation and intelligence, to force the terrorists to make minor changes in their tactics,’’ he said.
