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A comment on The Day US Customs Found A Bullet In My Pocket. Parent comment

Re:The Day US Customs Found A Bullet In My Pocket by aperiodic on Monday November 01, 2010 @04:09PM (#1858007)
The Christmas Day Bomber was an 18-24 unaccompanied male without baggage who purchased a ticket, in cash, to Detroit, without wearing any kind of winter clothing. I don't know how many more "obvious red flags" you can raise, and yet he still managed to get onto a plane with explosives. You can't discount any obvious signals on the presumption that the real threats are too smart to send them.
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Re:The Day US Customs Found A Bullet In My Pocket by jdietrich on Monday November 01, 2010 @04:45PM (#1858156)
Not only did we miss all those "obvious red flags", but we missed the much bigger ones. His own father had reported him to the CIA. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was banned from entering the UK. British intelligence had informed the US authorities that an Umar Farouk had consorted with a known extremist and that he was intent on jihad.

The fact that he didn't have a warm coat is absolutely irrelevant. We had high-quality intelligence against him but failed to act upon it in any way. We need to worry less about whether someone looks shifty at an airport and worry more about keeping tabs on people who we have strong intelligence on.

It is also worth stating that his attack failed and he was unable to damage anything other than his own groin.

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Re:The Day US Customs Found A Bullet In My Pocket by mrtron on Monday November 01, 2010 @05:07PM (#1858230)
That should be the most enraging part about the 'airline security'.

The recent cargo bomb was missed despite multiple tips about that specific item as well!

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Re:The Day US Customs Found A Bullet In My Pocket by mcantelon on Monday November 01, 2010 @07:39PM (#1858672)
US intelligence knew he was an Al Quaeda operative, yet allowed him to fly:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umar_Farouk_Abdulmutallab#The_a...

Terrorist attacks increase the funding of the intel and security institutions, so they have a vested interest in them occurring (and a state willing to kill tens of thousands of civilians in Iraq to advance its objectives likely has little problem sacrificing the odd planeload of its own citizens to maintain public support for its ambitions).

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Re:The Day US Customs Found A Bullet In My Pocket by lsc on Monday November 01, 2010 @04:30PM (#1858097)
Aside from the 'buying tickets in cash' that sounds like me. A couple changes of underwear in the laptop bag and I'm good to go. quite often I get somewhere and end up needing to buy a jacket or something.
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Re:The Day US Customs Found A Bullet In My Pocket by achompas on Monday November 01, 2010 @05:05PM (#1858218)
A couple changes of underwear in the laptop bag and I'm good to go

Right, you're carrying something. It seems like the Christmas Day bomber wasn't carrying anything (aside from his bomb).

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Re:The Day US Customs Found A Bullet In My Pocket by corin_ on Monday November 01, 2010 @09:06PM (#1858899)
Admitedly I've never done it on a long haul flight like Europe to America, but I have done that on 1-3 hour flights around Europe, just flying out for a meeting with nothing but a wallet, passport and phone.
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Re:The Day US Customs Found A Bullet In My Pocket by MartinCron on Tuesday November 02, 2010 @01:09AM (#1859347)
The one time I (30-ish unaccompanied male) bought a ticket at the airport on the day of flight and flew without checked bags, I actually did get some extra scrutiny.

So, the red flags are noticed at least sometimes.

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