27 deemed as threats still hold FAA licenses
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43932289...ew_york_times/

The Transportation Security Administration cannot determine the real identity of thousands of the people to whom the Federal Aviation Administration has issued licenses as pilots and aircraft mechanics, but has located an additional 27 who should not have held them because of terrorist connections, according to an internal report by the Department of Homeland Security.

The TSA failed at something else again?! :rolleyes:

Wonder how many of those are really NOT connected to terrorists and will have to spend a LOT of money to try and "prove" the TSA has it wrong?

A good percentage of past, present, and future US-based terrorists (and criminals in general) hold driver's licenses. Where's the outrage about that? More than a million convicted criminals hold US driver's licenses (maybe it's only a few hundred thousand, maybe it's over 10 million: the level of "outrage" should be high regardless).

Is there a single case where the issuance of a US pilot's license has aided a terrorist? Perhaps the feds should be searching for terrorists, not mining lists of people certified to do XYZ for "suspicious" people.

Typically pilots' licenses require that the licencee provide an address, records of training (with certified instructors), records of medical certification, etc. If the TSA must find out the identity of such people, perhaps they should... talk to the dozen or more people involved in certifying a pilot.

Of course that would involve work beyond paying a contractor to do a database search, which would most likely be a waste of time and money (personal experience seems to indicate that that's part of the TSA's mission).

Lesson: the so-called "Terrorist Screening Data Base" is useful for terrorizing innocent people, but not particularly useful at identifying actual threats to transportation security.

Well they're quite good at terrorizing innocent US persons.