I mentioned last week that any attempts to close airport security loopholes in light of the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing also had to address overseas airport security if they are to be effective. Looks like that’s happening. At the same time, the tolerance gap between the U.S. and Europe in terms of intrusiveness vs. privacy does not look like it’s going to disappear anytime soon. And as Richard Weitz pointed out in a recent WPR column, because of qualified majority voting under the Lisbon Treaty, measures designed to constrain security intrusiveness based of those privacy concerns will be harder to veto by EU countries friendlier to the U.S. line on counterterrorism (U.K. and the Netherlands). Weitz underlined the degree to which the U.S. and Europe have successfully cooperated on counterterrorism since 2001. Since this is the first domestic U.S. incident in the post-Lisbon, post-Obama, post-GWOT-rhetoric era, it will be interesting to see which direction the current negotiations take.
