From An Insider: The Need for Risk-Analysis, High-Threat Screening Lanes & Checkpoints

As a security professional involved with Aviation Security issues for over 28 years as, at times, guard force supervisor, major company equipment vendor, checkpoint training developer, inventor (two U.S. checkpoint-related patents) and, for the past ten years, consultant to emerging security technology companies and international distributor of aviation security products it seems obvious to me that we may now, at long last, have a shot at a reasonably rational way forward at screening checkpoints worldwide.  

Since the late 1980s, in the wake of Pan Am 103, the vast majority of Aviation Security R&D and infrastructure development has been focused on Hold Baggage Screening while the threats themselves, Bojinka, 9/11, R.Reid, Russia 2004 and the Christmas Day incident have used checkpoints as the point of entry into the system.  

It seems that Security Checkpoints have finally gotten the attention of Presidents and Prime Ministers as well as the top Legislative levels worldwide.  

While the obvious intelligence/watch list failures have gained the greatest level of attention (as well as the preponderance of the outrage) it has still been widely recognized that there is a systematic point of failure at the checkpoint that needs to be addressed. 

My friends in Israel speak of spending 90% of available screening resources on 10% of the passengers. This seems about right considering their success record in preventing incidents aboard what had to be considered (pre 9/11) the top aviation target. The top aviation target is now US-based aviation companies but the resources required to screen these flights are exponentially higher than at Ben Gurion and other El-Al stations around the world.  

Real explosives detection screening of small IED components, as opposed to the more “theatrical” approach currently taken, requires a combination of software driven systems and technologies that will produce detection results in excess of 90% as opposed to the well documented (and far lower) detection rates currently obtainable.  

The only way to achieve these results will be to separate out the threats in a rational way while preserving the basic human rights of the traveling public. An approach to screening based on “risk analysis” and a very intensive, integrated, high-threat screening lane could, if the political system will respond, look like the following: 
 

1. The first step would be to resurrect a viable and robust Registered Traveler (RT) program that would actually give something back to the cleared, frequent business traveler. Unlike the first, failed attempts this must include give backs such as shoes on, laptops remaining in the bag and suit coats on. Ideally, such a system would be devised to clear not only US Citizens but citizens of Canada and the EU if international protocols acceptable to those governments could be established. There is enough public record, employer and Intelligence/LEO data collected to give high confidence to go along with high reward. Such a permanently established system would be wildly successful with the business traveler and would remove significant numbers from other passenger categories and could generate revenue to offset increased cost elsewhere. Most of all, someone on the political level has to make the decision to proceed in this way despite any bureaucratic constraints.
2. A Passenger Profiling System (YES I SAID PROFILING) needs to be established. A system that screens, on a domestic flight, my soon to be 93 year old father (WWII/Pearl Harbor Veteran, 46 year US Government Employee) the same way as a 22 year old foreign student (not on a watch list but, except for a visa, unknown to us) is, under these conditions, clearly dysfunctional. Race, culture and religion (per se) do not enter this equation in a world where a 20 something Dead Head from Mill Valley, CA can be caught on an Afghan Battlefield in Taliban Mufti and a young Belgian female can blow herself up at a checkpoint in Iraq while trying to kill GI’s. There is enough data out there, if properly collected, to collate arrivals and departures from places like Yemen or Sudan, and, for example, matriculation at certain Madrassas identified as subject to certain courses of study. The list goes on and on. Email and key word call filtering of international calls and messages is already done on a massive level by governments worldwide. We can separate out the possible/probable threats and should do so. In the massive US system (unlike Israel) this cannot be done by hand and needs a high degree of automation associated with it as well as a very transparent, clear and FAST procedure to redress error and possible abuse. The Government needs to have the courage to say “sue me” and let the Courts sort out any objections to such a program which, if properly constructed, will be defendable under the Constitution.
3. Once we have identified the high threat passenger we need to apply orthogonal (mutually reinforcing) technologies in an integrated system that combines passenger information/threat level data with an output from all sub-systems on a single screen (displaying a go/no do decision tree) for final review prior to the high threat passenger exiting the checkpoint.
4. This system is needed due to well known defeat scenarios that can be run on individual screening system components. The points of failure in the current system have been well documented in various GAO (Government Accountability Office) reports going back to the pre 9/11 days. Newly developed systems have points of vulnerability as well. Therefore systems need to be redundant as well as integrated. Examples of this could be improved Walk Through Trace Detectors (puffers) combined with Body Imaging Systems (backscatter or mm wave) and AT X-ray (which has yet to be perfected) with a technology such as Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance (NQR) which could compensate for some inherent weakness there. Software is available to look for multiple IED components on multiple passengers/bags on a given flight. It needs to be included in any such system. So called body imaging “privacy” filters could NOT be used due to their tendency to render body imaging systems useless when, for example, you are looking for small items in the groin area or in the head region. I have personally checked this assumption with relevant system inventors, developers and technologists and know it to be 100% valid. Once again, on the privacy issue, Government needs to stand up and be counted in the pursuit of detection at the checkpoint. In the absence of change and vision in this area true progress will not be made and un-integrated, ineffective, deficient solutions will be deployed. The success of the next “Christmas” style attack will then be more probable.             

The window of opportunity (until the next incident) is, sadly, fairly narrow and significant change will have to take place now, in 2010, in order for there to be real improvement in the near term.  
 

John H Huey

John H Huey & Associates, LLC

Cell: 202-641-3960

Email (public) jhuey92@yahoo.com

     ”John Huey has had a multi-faceted 28 year career in the Security Screening Business and has provided equipment, services and concepts to clients worldwide as a consultant since 1999. In late 2005 he founded a security equipment distribution company in Russia where he was resident for three years and was responsible for the introduction of MM Wave Body Scanning there. He is the first named inventor (two US Patents) of the Advanced Technology Screening Checkpoint (ATSC) which was the first prototype project to simultaneously deploy multi view x-ray, Nuclear Quadrupole Resonance, walk through trace/metal detection, backscatter body scanning, bottle scanning and conventional trace detection in an operational checkpoint (Orlando International Airport) in 2002. He has been actively urging the TSA to adopt high threat lane/integrated checkpoint systems since late 2001.”