The weekend news about the Nigerian who tried to blow up a Delta/Northwest flight poses and interesting set of circumstances. The guy had no passport, bought a one way ticket with cash, and his own father reported him as a possible terrorist and he was on a "watch list" of possible suspects. In spite of all this he managed to get on an airplane bound for the USA. What happened here?
The short answer is most of us are very trusting of our fellow humans and want to be helpful. The most often heard question in security queues is ...DO I LOOK LIKE A CRIMINAL? Usually this question is proffered by annoyed and ignorant people who have no appreciation of what is going on around them. The people charged with security check points have a very difficult job of trying to get people through the check point quickly and efficiently. We need a reminder like what happened this weekend that there are people out there who wish us all harm. We need to facilitate TSA and other security people in their task to keep us all safe.
Back to the question. We don't know what bad people look like and living in a free society it is a difficult task to balance freedom, the Constitution and individual rights guaranteed to all residents. I am just happy I don't have to decide what is right and wrong with respect to balancing our rights.
Many thanks to the passengers and crew who reacted quickly to this guy as it sent a message to the people who dreamed this plot up. The message is we won't sit by and let stuff like this go down unchallenged. The story of the people who took quick and decisive action will be a good one once the details emerge. I hope this bad guy has more than a few bruises and burns for this efforts and that he provides some valuable intel when he gets run through the intellegence mill for some answers.
Next time you go through a security check point try to be as cooperative as you can and be thankful these people are there for all of us. This incident will likely cause us all more inconvenience as we travel and go through security check points. We got complacent with security checks and it almost ended in disaster. I'll take safety over inconvenice any day of the week.
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