Dennis Heidner wrote:
[interesting thought snipped]
> I am a little concerned about the extreme rules that the FAA is considering
> for the contents of the carry on.  Banning plastic forks and knives seems a
> little crazy.  And I certainly don't want the airlines using that as an
> excuse to offer only peanuts on the planes.
>

This reminds me of some thoughts on better security for America (and it's
airspace).  Sometimes reorganization can accomplish more than new rules
from the same old perspectives.

- The FAA needs to be replaced by separate agencies with different missions.
- The FBI needs to be overhauled (even before this happened).
- The NTSB needs to be expanded (take the "T" out of the name) to cover high
risk disaster situations of all types (let FEMA concentrate on responding
to them).
- High speed rail needs some serious attention instead of giving money to
the Airlines.

An agency (not the FBI) is needed that understands homeland security and
that agency should be responsible for monitoring security and setting
guidelines and rules for at all locations with a high people density or a
high potential risk.  Does it make any sense to keep truck bomb away from
small airports while many power stations, refineries, and stadiums are wide
open to attack?  Congress should require detailed justification and hold
hearings whenever a NTSB recommendation is not implemented.  Perhaps the
Coast Guard should be given this role, since they understand something about
homeland defense and law enforcement.  This agency should also be given the
task of counter espionage so that information flow isn't a problem (let the
FBI concentrate on ordinary crime), but still is it a law enforcement
agency.

Air traffic "control" needs to be integrated between commercial and military
and in the hand of the military, so there is tight integration of command
and control.   (And of course the technology behind it needs a fork life
replacement, perhaps a job for NASA.)

Technologies to make traffic "control" a meaningful term instead of oxymoron
need to be developed and applied, perhaps a job for NASA or NTSB.

New technologies need to be applied to preventing and detecting counterfeit
identification, just like they have been for currency.  Surely if it is
important enough for a 5 dollar bill, it's important enough for people.

Richard
--
Richard L Gambrell, Senior Information Technology Consultant and
Director of Computing Systems and Networks
Information Technology Division, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
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