A man armed with a gun was able to sneak on board a Canadian aircraft headed to Cuba during its stopover in Jamaica — at which point the man hijacked the aircraft.

Regarding the incident, Jamaica Information Minister Daryl Vaz made this absurd statement to the press:

"The hijacking is that from a mentally challenged youngster and not anything that would be of concern in terms of an international incident," Vaz said.

Deputy Police Commissioner Owen Ellington told CNN that the man gained access to the plane Sunday night through the terminal in "a breach of security" that "will be investigated."

Details are thin. CNN reports that CanJet Flight 918 had 174 passengers and eight crew members on board, an unconfirmed number of which were taken hostage before "troops in Jamaica captured" the man. 

Captured?

The flight originated in Halifax, Canada, made a scheduled landing in the resort city of Montego Bay, Jamaica and was headed to Santa Clara, Cuba when it was hijacked.

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I'm not sure that I agree with the Washington Times editorial board's assessment that the Obama Administration is "quietly ending the FFDO program" — that is, without having more information. What does 'ending' mean? They don't say.

What I do know, and have written extensively about, is that the FFDO has always battled extinction because of the TSA — not because of Obama or his administration. The TSA expressly aims to keep its Federal Air Marshal Program aloft, to the tune of $350,000 per air marshal; FFDOs fly armed for free. You do the math.

Tim Sumner of 9/11 Families for America has a great recap of the FFDO's uphill battle. 

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The TSA, the agency notorious for wasting taxpayer dollars, is receiving the single largest amount of money in the stimulus package. From GovernmentExec.com:

$1 billion for the Transportation Security Administration to install explosives detection and checkpoint screening systems in airports

The second larget DHS line item was the $100 million which will go to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) and its high concept technology program called the virtual fence surveillance system, which is being constructed along the border between the United States and Mexico.

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Are airlines abusing the Patriot Act? I think not.

I tackled the controversial subject in my PJM column earlier this week and discussed it on (free) Pajamas TV with hosts Joe Hicks and Bill Whittle. 

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A Federal Air Marshal sent me this story this morning from blogger Rhona Mahony. It was written last month. It is called Carrying Gunpowder through Airport Security and is based on Mahony's personal experience of carrying gunpowder through airport security in San Francisco. Mahony used a boarding pass she created at home "in a computer art program."

This is a fascinating story. And scary in a number of ways. The fact that Mahony was able to carry components of gunpowder past TSA (components which, she writes, "can be mixed") flies in the face of all the work TSA claims to have done with regards to stopping terrorists from smuggling explosives on board airplanes which they would then mix together in the lavatory. 

There is another scary element to this tale. It is my educated guess that Ms. Mahony will likely be getting a visit from the Feds. They do this. Ask Chris Soghoian.

What remains unclear to me is why Mahony did this in the first place. Was she making a point? Is she a traveling artist? Did she need the components for some other reason? On her blog, Mahony writes, "I used to write articles for The Economist, Ms., environmental magazines, such as E and Outside, and left-wing magazines, such as Z. Before that, I was a lawyer for migrant farmworkers." 

Whatever her motivation, the outcome of this story is clear: airport security is a ticking time bomb.

Here's an excerpt:

Last Thursday, December 5, I brought five ounces (140 grams) of old-fashioned black gunpowder to San Francisco airport. I also brought along a boarding pass for United flight 720 to Denver that I had created at home, in an computer art program. TSA agents accepted the boarding pass. They also took no notice at all of the gunpowder. Accepting the boarding pass was reasonable. Boarding passes that we design and print at home look just like ones designed by the airlines that we print at home. I had thought, though, that I might elicit a short conversation about the gunpowder. Mind you, I had packed the stuff safely. It was in three separate jars: one of charcoal, one of sulphur, and one of saltpetre (potassium nitrate). Each jar was labeled: Charcoal, Sulphur, Saltpetre. I had also thoroughly wet down each powder with tap water. No ignition was possible…

But still. Here's where you might ask, "Hello TSA, is anybody home?" Which is what Mahony does:

Janet Napolitano, Are You There?
Do TSA agents learn in their training that charcoal plus sulphur plus saltpetre make gunpowder? Don’t they watch the classic Star Trek episode (”Arena”) in which Captain Kirk improvises a cannon by finding just the right minerals–guess which ones–to mix up an explosive propellant on that distant rocky planet? Sure, my constituents were packed separately. Constituents, though, can be mixed…

Mahony's conclusion?

And that’s why the TSA agents usually rotely follow the rules of their pantomime, rather than using educated judgment. Educated judgment is too tiring, too expensive, and needed elsewhere

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Bogdan sent me this, noting it's $240,000 tax dollars down the toilet. Iraqi Gets $240,000 Settlement in T-Shirt Incident at U.S. Airport

So the question one has to ask is, which is worse? That the TSA treats some t-shirts as a security threat (in Arabic the shirt read, 'we will not be silent') or that TSA officials can't defend themselves against frivolous lawsuits like this one.

$240,000 for hurt feelings, anyone?

An Iraqi-born resident of the United States who was ordered to cover a T-shirt with Arabic script before boarding a plane in New York has received $240,000 in a settlement with two officials of the Transportation Safety Administration and JetBlue Airways.

The Iraqi, Raed Jarrar, was headed for a JetBlue flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Oakland, Calif., in August 2006 when, according to court papers, he was told at a security checkpoint that his T-shirt, which said “We will not be silent” in Arabic and English, would have to go. One federal employee, according to Mr. Jarrar’s account, told him that wearing a shirt with Arabic script to an airport was like going to the bank in a shirt that said “I am a robber.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Jarrar said he is 'dissapointed' that the TSA did not apologize. They payment was not an admission of guilt. Original story is here: ACLU Sues TSA and JetBlue over Arabic T-Shirt (August 2007).

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Here's a fascinating story out of Japan. A woman tricks airport security fingerprint biometrics by covering her own fingerprint with a thin layer of tape that has another person's fingerprint on it.

The website Cruchgear.com says the "Japanese government said it’s now forced to review its antiterrorism measures at airports."

Japanese media are today reporting that a South Korean woman entered Nippon last April passing through the biometric immigration screening despite her previous deportation records.

Her trick: She went through the screening by placing her index fingers over a fingerprint reader after putting a special tape on the fingers. The woman claims she received the tape and a fake passport from a “broker” back in South Korea where she was deported to in July 2007 after working in Japan as a bar hostess.

Following the US, Japan began the biometric immigration screening in November 2007 as part of an antiterrorism measure.  All foreigners aged 16 and up have to undergo fingerprinting and photographing at airports nationwide to see if their data match those of deported or wanted foreigners and terrorists.

This is the first time that such an incident was reported.

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I was on Frank Beckmann's radio show this morning, discussing the Muslim family of nine — men in beards, wives in headscarves — kicked off an AirTran flight out of Reagan National Airport yesterday. The family, called the Irfans, said they were headed to a "religious conference" in Orlando, Florida. 

The last high-profile incident of this kind was a little over a year ago, in November of 2006. In that similar incident, a group of Muslim clerics were removed from a flight for saying and doing things that scared other passengers. The men had just been to a "religious conference" in the mid-west; the Irfans were on route to one. The 2006 incident, and subsequent lawsuit, garnered international attention and came to be known as The Case of the Flying Imams. 

In yesterday's incident, Fox News reports that one AirTran passenger said "they overheard one member of the [Irfan] family talking about the safest place to sit on a plane if a bomb was on board."

The family denies ever having used the word 'bomb.' 

"We're very careful about what we even say on the plane," Atif Irfan, who was kicked off the flight, told MyFOXDC.com. "Even if we were to say that's the bomb, we wouldn't even say that on the plane because we know to avoid certain buzz words, and we're very careful about this kind of stuff so, I don't know where they would have thought this whole incident even started from, quite frankly, what words we used."

Ultimately, even with the FBI advocating on the Irfan's behalf, AirTran refused to let the family fly. They refunded them the price of their tickets and referred them to a different carrier. The airline says it stands by its position.

AirTran spokesman Tad Hutcheson agreed that the incident amounted to a misunderstanding, and he speculated that it probably began because of the passengers' appearance. But he defended AirTran's handling of the incident, which he said strictly followed federal rules. And he denied any wrongdoing on the airline's part.

The TSA is also standing behind the decisions of its two federal air marshals who happened to be on board the flight. According to the Washington Post, the air marshals reported the situation to airport police, which led to a police report on the incident.

As a result of that report, federal officials made the decision to order all 104 passengers from the plane and re-screen them and their luggage before allowing the flight to take off for Orlando — two hours late and without the nine passengers. 

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