“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
— Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Within our entire national security landscape, airport security is perhaps the most visible and high profile manifestation of our collective will to defend ourselves against terrorism and is a component of our over-all matrix of National Security.
Notwithstanding the efforts society has taken to defend itself, we have every reason to be deeply concerned at what happened on a Northwest Flight 253 in-bound to Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009 (where Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up the aircraft over southwestern Ontario). This was a very close call. It was only by luck and the quick actions of the in-flight crew and passengers that another tragedy was averted. If the bomb had detonated, we would be having an entirely different national debate today.
For the purposes of a discussion on aviation security, let us think as if the attack had succeeded because nothing in our normal security screening process detected this bomber or prevented him from boarding Flight 253. The bomb comprised 3 grams of PETN in a plastic bag inside Abdulmutallab’s underwear and he tried to detonate it by injecting the bag with a strong acid. The bomb was not detectable by most existing pre-flight inspections. In short, the system failed completely once again.
We can’t afford to depend on the ineptitude of aspiring suicide attackers and their bomb makers nor on the alertness of overworked in-flight crews and long suffering passengers to protect us in the air. It is high time the public and the airline industry pushed aside the bureaucrats and jumped into this debate before another attack succeeds.
The hard truth is that the present approach to airline and transportation security has not worked and sooner or later it will have to change. The only question is whether this change will happen before or after the next tragedy.
It is in the best interests of our security apparatus and the enormous complex that has developed since 9/11 to pretend the present system is working. After all, they have a huge vested interest in its continuance. Like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain, the security apparatus keeps the public awed by spewing out smoke, whistles, loud voices and flashy noises, all of which is intended for show.
The frightening truth is that the present system, despite being awash in public and private funding, is utterly ineffective. It provides only the illusion of security. Innocent people are forced to line up, strip down, take off their shoes and hand over tweezers, scissors, pens and dangerous looking shampoos and, to what end?
Do we really feel safer when an 85 year old World War II veteran and his equally old and fragile wife are pulled aside for a fatuous random or secondary search? Such a spectacle offends both my intelligence and my sense of dignity. If we keep focusing all our energies on innocent people, sooner or later bad guys are bound to get through. Meanwhile, helpless passengers are inconvenienced every day, flights are missed and the public increasingly views air travel with unease. The courts are on record that strip searches are only legal when there is reasonable and probable grounds that a crime has been committed or is about to be committed and is incident to an arrest.
The Maginot Line Mentality
The French built the Maginot Line after World War I to prevent another invasion of France by Germany and to reassure the public they were safe. In large measure they built the Maginot Line to re-fight the last war rather than to prepare for the next. The parallels with 9/11 and post 9/11 security precautions are eerily similar. The Maginot Line did indeed make the French public feel safer but this feeling of security was nothing more than an anodyne, masking their growing exposure in the face of German rearmament.
The presence of this supposedly impregnable Line caused the French to under-invest in new armored doctrines and equipment which they would badly need in 1940. At the beginning of the war, their aircraft manufacturing workers even went out on strike! In short, the Maginot Line, with all of its showy strength, induced a deadly hubris.
The Line was strongest around the industrial regions of Alsace and Lorraine while other areas to the north were weakly defended. In 1940, the storm broke and the Germans, who spent less on fortification than they had on Blitzkrieg doctrines and equipment, swept around the Maginot Line and conquered France and the Low Countries in a matter of weeks. The blow was so sudden and violent that it nearly knocked the United Kingdom out of the war. If London had negotiated, as many urged her to do, World War II would have ended in German victory in 1941.
Can something as dramatic happen today? Terrorism can change governments — consider the effect the Madrid bombings had on Spain.
Trusted Traveler Doctrine
We must stop throwing 99 % of our security resources at 99.9% of the traveling public who are innocent and indeed on our side. Instead of a No Fly List how about a “Can Fly” List?
This sort of trusted passenger system is already in place and working today as part the United States and Canada’s Canpass and Nexus Programs. Biometric supported identification through palm prints and iris scans are quick and certainly beat quasi strip searches at the airport. Such a transition in focus and mindset would take time and resources but is certainly doable. Those who say it would be too expensive should ask how much it cost to strip search Uncle Gord and Aunt Martha a thousand times a day at Canadian airports.
Instead of the politically correct approach of one size fits all, we need to change to a threat and trust based system of security. As we begin to identify and remove the trusted members of our flight crews and our traveling public from our’ suspicions lists’ and begin to unburden and streamline our system, two things will begin to happen: First, the entire system will become more efficient and more cost effective. Second, this new strategy will not only make aviation safer and more secure, it will produce a long-awaited financial advantage that this industry desperately needs to survive and move forward.
Consider that the SS Queen Mary appears sold out for this summer’s Atlantic crossings. Fifty years after the jet liner drove the last great passenger ships from the North Atlantic, the Atlantic crossing business is booming: More than just nostalgia is at work here.
Personally, I found crossing on the Queen was not just luxurious; it was painless from a security point of view. Yes, bags were screened and so were passengers but the process was quick and efficient, with no lines, yelling, or random pat downs. Why? Because Cunard’s security measures are based on knowing who will be sailing days or even weeks in advance. No stranger can get on the ship. By the time the great ship lands in New York, Homeland Security knows exactly who is on the vessel. Thus it is hard for bad people to get onto the ship in the first place and nigh impossible for them to get off in New York without being identified and questioned.
Israeli Model
Israel is recognized as the world’s leader in all aspects of aviation security and it is insightful to note the simple but effective security matrix and philosophy they have successfully employed since 1972. They design their security for airports as a series of concentric circles which focuses as many resources and attention on the outer rings as it does on the inner core. If there is to be trouble, they want it to occur as far away, in time and space, from the center of security as possible.
Better to ID a problem passenger in the parking lot based on behaviors than at the terminal checkpoint. Better still, identify him or her days before the flight takes place based on knowledge of the person and their background. Our system, in contrast, focuses almost all of its resources protecting the center point only. This is not only dangerous but ineffective as it results in huge line-ups which themselves impede security by the very chaos they create. It is time to push our thinking about security out beyond the passenger screening booths.
In Conclusion
Last year CATSA reported it had confiscated over 700,000 items from mostly honest, descent passengers and crew and had captured not one terrorist. The knee jerk over-reaction by our security apparatus, precipitated by the botched terrorist attack on Christmas Day should be a big wakeup call that new thinking is required. Technology is useful but it is not a silver bullet.
Like the Maginot Line, technology can lull us into a false sense of security. It is unclear whether even the latest technologies could have prevented the “underwear bomber” last December. What could have interdicted this terrorist was better coordination of intelligence and better inter-government communications. After all, the attacker’s own father was begging authorities to do something to prevent his son from committing a terrorist attack. At the very least, a lone male buying a one way trans-ocean ticket with cash and checking no luggage should have triggered an immediate alert.
The reality is that no system can be 100% secure and there are limited and finite resources to support it. We cannot continue to add more and more barriers and ever more intrusive and demeaning screening at check points. At some point the burden will become unsustainable both for the public and the airline industry.
The essential question is this: do you believe the existing system is working? If you do, then keep on doing the same things and let’s see what happens. If you do not believe our current system is working, then it’s time for some new thinking and new approaches. Albert Einstein is said to have stated that “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
