ID Cards for `Trusted Travelers' Run Into Some Thorny Questions. The idea seemed simple: figure out who the good guys are, give them easy-to-recognize and hard-to-counterfeit ID cards and let them breeze past airport security. It wasn't. By Matthew L. Wald. [New York Times: Technology]

Any system can be broken, any security can be bypassed. The problem is we lack good metrics that we can use to ID/profile terrorists. I still think that terrorists used the Daffy Duck method of attacking, in that "It's a neat trick, but you can only do it once."

So how do we establish who the likely terrorists are on the plane? Some of them had flight training in the past few years, but that alone is hardly a qualifier. Multiple people at the same address? Ditto. But their drivers licences were faked. Should the airports have the same books that nightclubs have that show what valid licences look like? That would only slow air travel. While some states have adopted "smart" licences, not all have and there is a blacklash against the idea of such databases already. No easy solution here.

10:49:05 AM