Sunday, December 27, 2009

The Problem With Lists

Blogs like Ann Althouse and Powerline are suggesting problems in the Obama administration's handling of terrorism as a result of the Detroit incident.  Maybe, maybe not. 

I do want to comment on one aspect: according to the Post today Abdulmutallab's father grew worried about his radicalism and notified authorities a month or two ago.  However, he may have applied for his tourist visa to the US in 2008.  All of the following is tentative, based on assumptions: assume the various lists, the "no-fly list" and the broader "Terrorist Identities" list really are "lists", that is static databases which are updated with adds and deletes periodically. So the person processing the visa request checks the appropriate lists, gets no hits, and goes ahead and approves the request. 

Ideally, of course, one would like two-way communication, if not in real-time, at least daily, between the various lists/  If visa requests are checked by matching against the terrorist list, any changes to the terrorist list should be matched back to the approved visa list.  So when Abdulmutallab is added to the list of possible terrorists, a process is triggered that results in putting his previously approved visa into question.

Achieving that sort of two-way communication is probably about 10 times more bureaucratically difficult than the one-way communication.

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