The headline “New U.S. Airport Security Measures To Use ‘Real-Time’ Intelligence” caused a chuckle when I saw it on the RFE/RL Twitter feed.  Not to overly disparage the TSA’s screeners, intelligence agents they ain’t.  But a description of the program makes it sound like a step in the right direction. The U.S. Department of Homeland [...]

President Obama is setting a bad example for the country by getting expensive, unnecessary medical tests, at least two critics charge. NPR’s Scott Hensley reports: For starters, take the whiz-bang CT scan that looked for traces of calcium in his coronary arteries, a screening test for heart disease. Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist at the [...]

AP’s Harry Weber offers some tips to “speed through airline security.”  For the most part, they’re rather dubious. Consider bringing your laptop in a sleeve. Skooba Design sells a laptop sleeve for $19.95 that you can carry on your own with a removable shoulder strap and can unfold to lie flat on the airport X-ray [...]

One refrain we’ve heard lots of since the 9/11 attacks, with an uptick every time there’s a new incidents, is that the United States should get serious about airport security and be more like the Israelis. FP’s Annie Lowrey recounts a personal trip through the security at Ben Gurion. Once inside, a team of pleasant [...]

The Obama administration has announced that citizens traveling to the United States from 14 countries will undergo more intensive airport security screening.   Eric Lipton for NYT: Citizens of 14 nations, including Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria, who are flying to the United States will be subjected indefinitely to the intense screening at airports worldwide that [...]

An aside in my post this morning defending President Obama from charges he took inadequate measures to prevent the attempted Detroit bombing has caused John Cole some distress. I observed that, “There’s room to criticize the administration’s response to the crisis, most notably DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano’s idiotic insistence that “the system worked.” John retorts: [...]

There’s quite a bit of chatter this morning about the fact that two travel bloggers of whom I’d never previously heard have  had their computers confiscated pursuant to subpoenas after publishing unclassified but sensitive TSA screening procedures.  AP’s Eileen Sullivan has the rundown: As the government reviews how an alleged terrorist was able to bring [...]

It now appears that the thwarted failed Detroit terror plot was more sophisticated than initially thought.  The first reports — that the device was “incendiary rather than explosive” — appear to be mistaken. And we now think we know how the explosives got aboard the plane:  They were sewn into the terrorist’s underwear. Richard Esposito [...]

The botched attempt by one Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, allegedly somehow connected to al Qaeda, attempting to blow up a passenger jet as it made its descent into Detroit quite naturally has the blogosphere buzzing. Richard Fernandez and Josh Marshall have good roundups of the news as  it was developing throughout the evening, along with the [...]

Are you a terrorist who would like to blow up an airliner but confused about how best to elude screening?  Well, luckily for you, the Transportation Security Administration has published a How To manual to answer all your questions. In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted online its airport screening [...]

One of my commenters brought to my attention an issue that’s not receiving much attention:  Residents of several U.S. states could have to show their passports for domestic travel — or to enter a federal government building — starting January 1 because of the REAL ID Act.  Chris Strohm for Congress Daily: More than half [...]

The two pranksters who crashed the White House party the other night managed to meet President Obama. The photographic proof is on the White House Flickr page: I love the legal disclaimer that comes with the release: This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal [...]

Chris Battle is surprised how often he hears the question “How many terrorists has the Department of Homeland Security caught?” He argues that DHS’ job is prevention, not apprehension; that’s what the FBI does. The implication of the question — usually the questioner already knows the answer — is that the failure to catch members [...]

The Clear Card program whereby pre-screened passengers are expedited through airport security is no more.  I received this email overnight: Ensuring that this wasn’t some sort of odd email fraud scheme, I did a quick news search and, sure enough, it’s true: Clear began in 2005 with the potential to make airport security quicker and [...]

I’ve argued in the past that health care outcomes like infant mortality and life expectancies are not really very good measures of a country’s health care services since such outcomes are also a function of variables that are outside the control of health care services. A person who is morbidly obese and refuses to change [...]

ABC’s Ann Compton answers the question that many of us had about the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush:  Where was the Secret Service? U.S. Secret Service officials in Washington say they are satisfied their agents responded with “the appropriate level of reaction” when an Iraqi journalist hurled two shoes directly at [...]

The company that’s contracted to provide Clear Card, the TSA’s handy-dandy system for screening out terrorists (or, at least, providing people willing to shell out 150 bucks slightly shorter lines) has managed to lose its customers’ sensitive data and compromise the entire system. The company that runs the Clear system, which speeds customers through airport [...]