Put your shoes on, clip your nails, and let's get serious about anti-terror

A counter terrorism expert just wrote a piece on Wired saying that for all the crazy safety stuff we've attempted, the two things making air travel safer these days are not bomb-detection machines or banning nail clippers. Instead, its those reinforced cockpit doors the FAA and airlines had resisted for years on financial grounds and the simple awareness of civilian passengers that they might want to fight hijackers.

Preventing terrorist attacks is a tricky business and few solutions are ever simple. But the United States isn't notable for its strategy in anti-terrorism. For example, we could arguably prevent more terrorism if we took all the money for the Iraq War and put it into homeland security. Or more directly, perhaps the money spent making Americans remove nail clippers and shoes before entering airplanes could have gone to better intelligence gathering (on terrorism or on WMD in Iraq), pick your fav.

So says Bruce Schneier, who worked with the federal government to design better air travel safety measures. Basically, instead of continually being reactive (checking all shoes after the attempted shoe bomber), safety has to be smarter. The way he puts it, we have to stop trying to prevent the latest movie plot terrorist and start thinking strategically about reacting effectively (by having good first responders) and planning ahead (by improving intelligence gathering). Hard to argue with that, unless you need to run for office this year.