What Kip Hawley Doesn't Understand About Terrorism
Former TSA Administrator Kip Hawley was on NPR a few minutes ago, opining on the 2nd panty bomber. He said two remarkable things. First, that the operators of nudatrons, who see thousands of naked people per day, would notice the bomb. Second, he didn’t understand why Al Qaeda would continue to focus on underwear bombs.
Once again, Kip’s wrong.
First, Kip is wrong, and ought to know he’s wrong about those operators. Those operators are likely to get bored and be unable to focus on the images after a while. That’s why the TSA inserts fake images of weapons in its XRays. Detecting these anomalies is hard. (Perhaps TSA inserts fake images in the nudatron images, but I didn’t see any mention of such functionality in the system requirements that EPIC forced TSA to release.
Second, he doesn’t understand why Al Qaeda would focus on underwear bombs. Really? You don’t get that for a failed attempt, millions of people will be photographed naked, groped and humiliated? They focus on the things that make the bureaucracy that Hawley built convulse. That bomb didn’t even make it onto the plane, and we’re all expecting the next shoe to drop.