To the Editor:
Re “New Restrictions Quickly Added for Travelers” (front page, Dec. 27):
The new restrictions on airline passengers are yet another smokescreen designed to obscure the ineptitude of national governments in preventing terrorist attacks.
In both the current case of the Nigerian passenger as well as in the case of the plane that was prevented from reaching its target on 9/11, it was the passengers who prevented the terrorists from carrying out their mission. Not the airplane crew, not the Transportation Security Administration, not the F.B.I. or any other agency involved in national security.
Since even the most sophisticated security system is no better than the people who operate it, hiring and training qualified and effective personnel to detect and prevent terrorists before they reach the airplane should be given higher priority than inflicting mindless rules on the traveling public.
Hannah Rothstein
Teaneck, N.J., Dec. 27, 2009
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 