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How Error Metastasizes: Europeans Take a Page Out of Our Playbook at the Checkpoint

By John H Huey on June 21, 2010 at 7:30 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.”

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It’s been a rough couple of months for our European friends what with the financial meltdown in Greece and the BP oil disaster in the Gulf being presided over by a Swede and a Brit.

While watching the public flogging of BP CEO Tony Hayward on the Hill this afternoon it occurred to me that the simplest principles of risk management and threat mitigation could have spared us this entire sad spectacle.

Pouring the right cement down a hole, using the correct gauge of steel in a pipe and providing a redundant blow out preventer along with proper procedures for testing these things seems to be something they, with all their billions, could have worked out in advance.

It appears that, in an analogous move, the European Commission is about to enter into a regulatory process that may result in the European Parliament and Council approving so called “enhancements” to their aviation checkpoints similar to the newly announced TSA procedures for whole body imagers that I blogged about here recently “Dumb, Dumber, Dumbest: The Latest Breakdown of Logic at the Checkpoint,” No Quarter, May 21, 2010.

In a document that was published and widely publicized this week, ““Communication from The Commission to the European Parliament and The Council on the Use of Security Scanners at EU Airports (EC Report Body Scanners 6-10 [PDF]),” there were some sensible statements such as “adding new layers of methods and technologies after each incident proves more and more inefficient”. This, along with calls for “a more holistic approach” involving “enhanced intelligence sharing and human factor analysis” seemed to point toward a future where such things as registered traveler and true passenger profiling might get a full hearing at the top European political level where such changes would have to take place.

Sadly, for the short-term future of security checkpoint upgrades in Europe, it seems that the Commission tends to be looking for a “short cut” to the institution of yet another “layer” of security involving important (but inherently limited) body scanning technologies. 

After stating, incorrectly, that “Security Scanners could replace walk through metal detectors” they concluded that “In aviation security, Security Scanners may, therefore, fully substitute walk-through metal detectors”.

I don’t know of a single U.S.-based aviation security expert whose judgment I respect (see “New concerns arise over body scanners” By Ken Dilanian, Chicago Tribune, June 12, 2010) who agrees with this. Just yesterday, I checked this out with one of my European colleagues (with vast experience with the regulators in Brussels and the individual countries and airport operators involved) who knows that system inside out. I was told that it looked like “commercial interests” (read airport authorities and airlines) primarily motivated by throughput and perception rather than true security had played the tune here. In his eyes it was obvious that it will probably take yet another incident to swing the balance back in a more rational, security oriented, direction.

So, why should we care about the abstractions of the European regulatory process over here?

Well, for openers all of the post-9/11 threats to US aviation have originated in Europe and involved European gateway airports and US carriers. The “Shoe Bomber” in 2001, the 2006 London liquid bombers and the 2009 “Christmas Day Bomber”  were all either on or headed to our flights.

Instead of opting for a truly comprehensive approach (at the very least for the U.S.-bound flights) the Europeans have opted more for the “feel good” approach instituted over here where the method seems to be to quiet things down and keep them (that means YOU) pacified with the perception of security and in your narrow and uncomfortable seats.

The errors in the implementation of the next generation of systems seem, therefore, to have metastasized from this side of the ocean to Europe where, empirically, the greatest threats to US Aviation currently exist.