No-fly list shenanigans
 

Brought to you again by LHR.

I had heard about this from a relative but thought that they were talking about an old story. Apparently she brought me news before the news did. :o

No security threat, and no danger to the flight, yet still this nonsense. :td:

Bit harsh to blame this on Heathrow. According to BBC:Abundance of caution. Hmmm. Not surprised she wants to remain anonymous - clearly this was a thwarted terrist attack in DHSspeak.

Appropriate tattoo for DHS and TSA "leadership":
 

STUPID!!!! :mad:

Duplicate. Sorry.

Then what's the point of the two interviews that every passenger must undergo prior to boarding a US Airline in London?

If they can't bother checking the idiot no-fly list, why do they bother asking to see your hotel room service receipt to prove that you stayed at the Sheraton? Why do they bother putting your name into some PDA and asking if you've had your laptop repaired?

If this person on the no fly list, "Is who he says he is" (as the TSA always puts it,) and succesfully answered two interviews worth of profiling questions, why is this individual on the no fly list at all?

This type of nonsense underscores the painful ineptitude of airport security... the TSA and ICTS.

Don't you just love how CNN sugar coates the purpose of the list:
If it is meant to prevent people from boarding, maybe they should have something in the list that can actually pinpoint people and not just names?

If the guy had been properly screened why not let him and the passengers continue. Notice his mom and sisters were not questioned. If he was really a terrorist couldn't he have given the contraband to them?

Would it be better to hijack a plane over London or Boston? Oh wait he had no way to do that.

If they could let Cat Stevens and Jose Pedilla land in the US why not this guy?

So any FTers on that flight that can share what happened?

No security interview
 

Maybe things are getting less formal there. I flew back LHR-LAX (AA) about a little over a week ago and had no security interview (other than "Did you pack your bags?" at the ticket counter - but only the standard 2 questions).

For the last five years or so, LHR has been the European airport where passengers flying on US airlines to the US were less likely to be "interrogated" (i.e., more than 2 or 3 object-oriented questions) by so-called security contractors than at other major European airports. Things at LHR are no more or less formal today than I've experienced for most all of my flights between LHR and the US on US carriers over the past five years.

The problem I've got with 'security interviews' as well as polygraphs, is that any liar worth their salt can beat them, while the average joe or jane will naturally get nervous when talking to authorities. A well planned attack is going to fill in all the holes and cover all the bases that a security person might ask, especially after conducting a dry run to figure out the security measures.

A real story (i.e., real personal experience from years ago) with little more than the dates (and perhaps individuals names) changed (i.e., even if a decades-old story) would work rather well -- especially if the prior purpose of a trip to the same or a similiar place was more "typical". The nitwit questioning will routinely fail to catch such. And if a terrorist has resolved his/her moral qualms (if any) about killing people, I doubt they'd have any more serious moral qualms about lying.

Once?
 

In the whole history of the thousands of man hours spent asking "did you pack your bags or get any gifts from strangers" has an interviewer once been told anything like "As I was getting out of the taxi, this guy in a white robe and checked head scarf came up and asked if I would take this box to his brother Abdul in Chicago. He said it was a birthday present, but he did not have money to mail it. He said it was an antique Arabian time measuring device, and the ticking sound was normal. As a random act of kindness I said I would take the box to Chicago with me."

Even once? Anywhere in the world?

I wasn't blaming LHR directly, it just seems that almost every no-fly list incident comes from LHR. Given its high number of flights to the US, that's going to happen.

The biggest :rolleyes: goes to DHS on this, naturally.