Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest: The Latest Breakdown of Logic at the Checkpoint
By John H Huey on May 21, 2010 at 7:15 PM in Current Affairs
Editor’s Note: John Huey, a security professional involved with aviation security issues for over 28 years, has now published several articles for NoQuarter. Learn more background details about John Huey and his constructive critiques in his first post published at NoQuarterUSA.net on January 5, 2010: “From An Insider: The Need for Risk-Analysis, High-Threat Screening Lanes & Checkpoints” and in all subsequent posts. John’s latest previous post was “Of Car Bombs and Consequences.”
My jaw literally hit the floor this week when an article from the St. Petersburg Times‘s “Body scanners take priority at Tampa International Airport,” May 19, 2010, landed on my desk.
As I have previously reported here at NoQuarter in “A Most Interesting Afternoon on The Hill: Changing the English Language and the Laws of Physics,” on March 23, 2010, it had been revealed, in congressional testimony, that TSA intended to replace walk-through metal detectors (WTMDs) with whole-body imaging devices, now referred to as AITs.
Subsequent to this, I had heard from various public sources that this was not necessarily the final position and that common sense (in terms of not eliminating a vital part of the system) might prevail.
The article regarding Tampa seemed to imply that TSA had (at least at this location) altered its CONOPS (concept of operations) to allow for the elimination of WTMDs. My initial reaction was one of profound concern, and I could hardly believe that TSA had actually taken this step. When I figured out late yesterday that they had actually done this, I knew it was time to try, in whatever way possible, to stop this lunacy at last.
The reason why this new procedure is crazy is really quite simple.
As someone who has worked extensively with both of the body imaging technologies currently used (x-ray backscatter and active millimeter wave), I have a thorough knowledge of the strengths and weakness of both technical approaches. When used properly, these are fine devices and are a vital part of any reasonable, advanced-technology, integrated/orthographic high-threat security lane.
However, they are not designed to be, and never have been used in the U.S., as a primary means of detection in the absence of a magnetometer. As always in my posts here, I have carefully double-checked my assumptions with the key technologists in the field and am 100% certain I am on solid ground.
Without getting specific in any way, these AIT screening modalities have gaps in detection that could allow metallic objects (on the current TSA list of prohibited items) to get through these systems. This is widely known and easily intuited from many public (unclassified) sources on the imaging characteristics of these units. I have a strong belief (without any direct or indirect knowledge or confirmation) that the responsible TSA authorities are aware of these gaps.
Why then, in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, would the government introduce a new technology with obvious gaps in detection without a concept of operation to fully mitigate those gaps?
There is a simple (and quite familiar) answer to this one as well.
In the absence of a robust registered traveler program and passenger profiling system, the aviation checkpoint is still designed for the “one-size-fits-all” screening regime that I have been railing about here since January.
If you introduce, across the board, a new (very useful) technology like whole-body imaging, and combine the image analysis time on the AITs with the alarm resolution protocol for the metal detectors, you are going to slow the lanes down to one degree or another. You then have a large potential public relations and airport operations problem involving longer lines, wait times, missed flights due to checkpoint delay, less time for airport shopping (and the revenue associated with that), etc.
It seems obvious to me that a very negative trade-off (from a security standpoint) is being made. That trade-off is directly related to our seeming inability to reduce our intensive screening regime to a manageable population of no more/less than 10% of total passengers. This would give us a very high probability of detection of small improvised explosive devices and weapons on a population of passengers within a large enough window of potential threats to be an extraordinary deterrent to terrorism and produce the least inconvenience and intrusion possible (for the maximum number of citizens and legitimate foreign visitors).
Force Majeure conditions (the Christmas Day bombing attempt), combined with the lack of creative thinking and rigid, formulistic mindsets, have resulted in the massive introduction of an un-integrated, stand-alone new technology to address a specific threat (small-body-borne IEDs) without the overall increase in security level needed.
I would not impute anything but good intentions to the officials involved with this, but it is obvious that the total picture in the checkpoint operational domain has not been seen and that we continue to try to reinforce an untenable concept (one-size-fits-all screening for a new generation of very small threats) without regard to the ultimate consequence of our current, failed assumptions.
John H Huey
Email: jhuey92@yahoo.com
by Ronald Scott
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