Who's The Security Risk?-Part 3

Ah, the continuing saga of the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) inability to distinguish between al-Qaida operatives and 8 year old kids from New Jersey.  The NY Times article tells the story of Mikey Hicks, who has spent countless hours of his young life getting frisked at various airports, starting when he was about 2 years old.   Yes, two years old.

Why are our security systems so rigid?   Any system, security-related or other, that is so rigid that it does not allow for judgment and adjustment, is so brittle that it will break and fail when it's most needed.   

The underlying problem may be that the people implementing our security systems are unwilling to make risk assessments and make decisions accordingly.   That is, we should expect that someone at the airport can look at an 8 year old kid and make a judgment that this is not the same person whose name is on the watch list or whatever damn list TSA is using (after the near disaster in Detroit on Christmas Day, we learned that our government has a number of "lists," only one of which actually prohibits alleged "bad" people from getting on commercial airliners).   The multitude of such "lists" is also part of the problem with our security.

Someone at TSA ought to be able to take a chance on determining that an 8 year old kid from NJ, or an 80 year old grandmother from wherever, is not a security threat.  I doubt you'd see the Israelis spending so much time frisking Cub Scouts.