Originally Posted by
law dawg
I can't speak to the number of incidents, etc. but one thing I would point out is - is it in the airlines best interest to have such information in the media? Would this help or hurt them?
I can't imagine it would actually hurt the airlines to have published the stats on real, honest-to-god "bad guys" who have been stopped from boarding planes via the asine no-fly list.
"Look how much safer you are, thanks in large part to our cooperation in helping the feds screen passengers against the no-fly list!"
The problem is, the "several a week being a low-ball" figure Kip spouted is either (1) an outright lie; or (2) a deliberate misrepresentation, meaning several a week are stopped, but are clearly not a real threat. As Bruce asked, why are these guys, if they're so dangerous, not being arrested or charged with anything?
And ongoing investigation doesn't cut it as an explanation; we've been told previously that the most dangerous potential terrorists aren't even on the list, because we don't want to tip them off to the fact that we're watching them. The guys who are "legitimately" on the list but who aren't arrested are allowed to probe the system to see how they can get past it (by trying different variations of their names, getting fake IDs, etc.)