Airport Security and Canada's No Fly List

From Margaret Wente’s column in the June 19/07 Globe and Mail on airport security and Canada’s no-fly list:

“As Canada's very own no-fly list goes into effect, I'm glad my name isn't Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad. For that matter, I'm also glad my name isn't Patrick Martin…That's because there is, or was, another suspicious character named Patrick Martin. There also are, or were, suspicious Kennedys, Thompsons and Williamses.

The American no-fly list has 44,000 names on it, many of them common Anglo-Saxon ones. It includes everyone who was ever connected to the IRA and a lot of people who are dead. But it does not include the would-be terrorists who were rounded up in Britain last August, even though they'd been under surveillance for a year. That's because putting their names on the list could have tipped off the wrong people.

Thankfully, our made-in-Canada no-fly list will be much, much better than the American one, the authorities say. For example, many of the names on it will come from the RCMP, which, as we know, is among the most reliable and best-run security forces in the world. If you're on the list by mistake, you can even appeal to something called the Office of Reconsideration (although not in time to make your flight).

No doubt, our no-fly list will deter terrorists as effectively as our long-gun registry deters criminals. It will work especially well in intercepting terrorists who forgot to acquire fake IDs and are travelling under their own names, just as the long-gun registry has helped catch thousands of criminals who shoot other people with their own legally registered firearms.

Going through airport security today is like going to the theatre of the absurd. None of it makes sense, but everyone takes it seriously….As far as I know, there are no Margaret Wentes on the no-fly list. But my metal hips mean that I'm always pulled aside for the full pat-down. What happens when every aging boomer has a beeping artificial part is a question without an answer.

Sometimes I ask my sister, who's in the airport-security business, if all of these precautions make us safer now. She always laughs and tells me how easy it is to get access to a plane. Drug smugglers have no problem; they just hire airport workers who handle cargo…

But the nature of bureaucracy is to be literal and dumb. It can't imagine an event that's never happened.”

Exactly.