DETROIT – Now, granted, that number was meant to get your attention. That is the number of countries currently listed by Wikipedia that have less population than the current watch list that has grown to 755,000 entries.

Some of those countries include populations of a single island of 50. Still, to call a list this size unmanageable might be an understatement. The volume of appeals to get off of the Terror Watch list is over 2,000 requests a month and over 15,000 appeals since February (USA Today article).

If you are a member of Michigan Infragard, you received this piece of info along with several other media alerts from all over the world this morning. Several politicians are making nice and demanding that something be done to redress the inconvenience that citizens like John William Anderson, age 6, go through repeatedly, going so far as to introduce legislation to change the review process for DHS.

While I am the last person that would object to reducing the inconvenience at airports for travelers, I am even more concerned with another issue – safety. As long as we have such a bloated and incorrect list of people that provides a huge false positive reading to security agents all over the country, the chances of someone that should have been caught actually slipping through increases dramatically. Not only that, but that huge lag that the travelers are experiencing is the feverish working of security workers with an enormous ‘busy work’ load because of the inaccuracy of the data they are using. This reduces their effectiveness while they are scrambling to keep up.

These are the real issues that DHS and legislators should be addressing, and when they are effectively dealt with, the backlog of unhappy travelers will ‘not-so-mysteriously’ disappear, because the system will have become efficient, and therefore also effective.

But how is the Transportation Security Administration going to get this done? That is the $64,000 question, or when it comes to national security, they may need to add three or four zeros to that number. The TSA says it is currently taking them 44 days to process a complaint, while their internal goal is a slightly less onerous 30 days. I hate to say it, but I think that whoever put this policy in place and designed a process around an entire month to make a change to a list is not living in today’s world. Centralized anything can’t work any more.

We are moving at internet speed here, not stage coach speed. Not only can travelers not afford to wait an entire month for an accuracy change to a vital list of suspected bad guys, but our own security forces can’t afford to wait that long either. We have a huge group of security professionals that are processing travelers through security checkpoints all over the country right now – how about enlisting their help in the process?

If they clear someone through security by verifying for instance that they are not part of an Al Queda cell, but are 6 years old and going to DisneyWorld, perhaps they can make the adjustment to the list so the security people on the return leg of the trip won’t waste their time or delay the short guy with mouse ears any longer than necessary.

When it comes to security, we need to think strategically about solutions, and design for the infrastructure we are supporting. I don’t think 30 days is a valid length of time for anything but the normal growth of plants anymore, and most genetic plant scientists would argue with me on that one. Besides, I am taking my 7 year old to DisneyWorld in a couple of weeks and I am afraid he might be detained.

This column was written by Hans Erickson, the CIO of the Detroit Regional Chamber and a board member of Michigan InfraGard. To contact Erickson, send an email to [email protected]

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