Legal Commentary

Systemic Failure

By Big Tent Democrat

From a NYTimes editorial:

[. . .] Either the National Counterterrorism Center didn’t get all of the information it was supposed to get — or it utterly failed to do its job, which is to correlate data so any pattern emerges. No doubt sorting through heaps of information and determining what is urgent or even worthy of follow-up is daunting. Still, it is incredible, and frightening, that the government cannot do at least as good a job at swiftly updating and correlating information as Google. Long before Mr. Abdulmutallab was allowed to board that flight to Detroit, some analyst should have punched “Nigerian, Abdulmutallab, Yemen, visa, plot” into the system. We are still waiting to find out whether Britain told Washington that it had revoked the suspect’s visa. Shouldn’t that have been on file?

We will reserve judgment about whether anyone should be fired for what President Obama has rightly called a “systemic failure.” [. . .] The United States cannot be enclosed in an impermeable bubble. But Mr. Abdulmutallab never should have been allowed to board that plane.

Can someone explain to me why this is wrong?

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 02, 2010 (boomark / email).