8-year-old boy listed as terrorist

[Amarghetta]

Meet Mikey, 8: U.S. Has Him on Watch List

Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled.

The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.

After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.

“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/nyregion/14watchlist.html?no_interstitial

[kuro808]

honestly, I think people can't use common sense to not do it but sometimes we have to do this for "National Security"

[nop]

In this case, TSA officers acted like bureaucratic robots. If US government cannot find better employees and change the red tape practices (cover their asses).     Real terrorist will find loophole and slip through another weapon of mass destruction into the plane sooner. 

[basumarsa1710]

really it is so pathetic for us..........
actually i have nothing to say about this..........
i am wordless..........
 

[shadowstar]

Most badass 8 year old ever.

[Scramasax]

... I've yet to hear of a single terrorist attempt thwarted by these security measures.  I've once heard it said that it's nearly impossible to catch someone that "isn't trying to get away with it".