Security's Post 12/25 World

THE ATTEMPTED CHRISTMAS DAY bombing of a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines A330 led to a great deal of hand-wringing at the highest levels of the US government. "When a suspected terrorist is able to board a plane with explosives . . . the system has failed in a potentially disastrous way," President Barack Obama said, pointing to "a failure to understand the intelligence we already had."

The primary focus of the President's concern was the lack of proper analysis and sharing of intelligence; after all, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's father had gone directly to US authorities to warn of Abdulmutallab's radicalization more than a month before his son was subdued by passengers aboard Flight 253 with explosives hidden in his underwear.

While Obama issued a stern warning to intelligence officials to get their act together, it will be difficult to gauge changes in that secretive arena. But what is readily apparent to anyone who has flown since the Christmas incident, particularly on an international flight to the US, is that airport security is being revamped yet again. Some US Transportation Security Administration officials are using the term "post-12/25" to describe the emerging security apparatus, an acknowledgement that the threat presented by the so-called "undie bomber" was not one that the "post-9/11" system was prepared to handle.

Already Underway

In truth, the 12/25 incident was not altogether unexpected, leaving aside the specifics of Abdulmutallab's case. It long has been understood that metal detectors are inadequate for detecting many types of explosives, hence the requirement to remove shoes following Richard Reid's shoe-bombing attack in December 2001 and restrictions on carrying liquids and gels through checkpoints imposed after exposure of the transatlantic bomb plot in August 2006. Immediately after 12/25, TSA convened an internal group comprising a wide array of agency officials to figure out how to move forward and quickly determined that it already was heading in the right direction but needed to move faster.

"Much of what we are now doing we already had in process, but we were able to accelerate it," TSA Assistant Administrator-Security Operations Lee Kair tells ATW. It already was conducting a pilot program with 40 Advance Imaging Technology body-scanning machines spread across 19 airports; it decided to push forward with widespread implementation and now has plans to install 490 machines at checkpoints across the US this year. It was also already planning to roll out next-generation carryon luggage screening devices in 2010. Explosive trace detection technology, already used at many airports, will "significantly increase" this year.

The highest-profile and most controversial reaction to the 12/25 incident has been TSA's decision to deploy body-scanning machines widely at US airports and to strongly encourage foreign airports with significant numbers of US-bound flights to do likewise. There are two TSA-approved systems: L-3's ProVision machines that have been installed at US airports in trial programs and also are used on a limited basis at seven airports around the world, and Rapiscan Systems' Secure 1000 Single Pose equipment, of which TSA procured 150 last fall to begin rolling out this year. In fact, on 12/25 there were ProVision machines at Amsterdam Schiphol, where Abdulmutallab boarded the NWA flight to Detroit, but not one at the checkpoint where he was screened.

Following 12/25, "you either have to pat down everybody or you have to have some kind of detection," L-3 Security and Detection Systems President Thomas Ripp tells this magazine. "Metal detection is just that. It was good in its day, but there is now a need to detect all types of materials . . . [ProVision] simply transmits a radio frequency that bounces off the body and we detect anomalies . . . Because the system is looking for objects on the body that shouldn't be there, it detects any kind of threat."

Rapiscan VP-Global Government Affairs Peter Kant tells ATW that the company's Secure 1000 Single Pose machines have "a much higher level of detection and lower false alarm rate than a pat-down. The Christmas attack was very artfully executed to take advantage of a certain reluctance to use pat-downs, particularly where it could be seen as groping a sensitive part of the body."

Not everyone is so sanguine about the devices. Asked European Commissioner-designate for Transport Siim Kallas during a recent speech to the European Parliament: "But how big is the added value of these machines to airport security and what are the consequences for health and privacy?"

An IATA official points to three concerns the organization has:

1. The technology is not new and has been available since before 9/11. "How come they haven't been rolled out previously?" he asks, suggesting that governments have blanched at the privacy issues the technology raises.

2. What will the impact be on passenger flow, particularly if detection has to be followed up by a pat-down? IATA says security requirements ordered by TSA for US-bound flights in the aftermath of 12/25, understood to be a mandate to either use body-scanners where available or conduct widespread pat-downs (TSA will neither confirm nor deny specifics), had "a dramatic impact on traffic between Canada and the US and similarly affected traffic between Europe and the US." Delayed US-bound flights owing to extensive pat-downs became commonplace in the weeks after 12/25, it says.

3. Who is going to pay for the machines? So far, TSA appears willing to make the investment, thanks in part to $1 billion for airport security included in the US government's $787 billion stimulus enacted last year, but will it continue footing the bill as they are deployed more broadly? According to the US Government Accountability Office, each unit costs $130,000-$170,000 and training costs are estimated at $50,000 per machine. What about other governments, particularly in countries where privatized management of airports is the norm? And will the cost be worth it? "The body-scanner can look under [a passenger's clothes] but it doesn't tell you what an object is," the IATA official says. "If the passenger then has to get patted down anyway, what are the machines buying you?"

TSA, L-3 and Rapiscan say these concerns are overblown. In particular, they all strongly reject that the machines may be harmful or unsafe. "We've done a tremendous amount of work . . . to validate that there is no health concern with this equipment," Kair says, claiming that the US Food and Drug Administration and Johns Hopkins University have done tests to "validate there are no health concerns" from a "very small amount of radiation."

'Privacy Mitigation'

The agency also has taken a series of "privacy mitigation" steps. While a screener watches the passenger walk through the machine and another screener views the image, neither sees both the person and the image. "The person looking at the image [is in an area with no sightline into the checkpoint] and never actually sees the passenger," Kair says, adding that "the function to store the images has been disabled and once the image is reviewed it is deleted."

Countering charges by some, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, that the machines conduct "a virtual strip search," Kair and Ripp say it is a misnomer that the images provide detailed views of "naked" passengers. "It does not look like a photograph, it looks like a chalk image," Kair says. Ripp adds that the image appears as "a Gumby-type figure." He says L-3 is developing software for the machines that will provide the "ultimate answer to privacy concerns" by allowing the devices automatically to detect anomalies on bodies and "eliminate the need for anyone to look at the image."

TSA currently is deploying the machines side-by-side with metal detectors and gives passengers the choice to "opt-out" of the body scan and go through the older machines, but those opting out are subject to pat-downs. Kant says that at checkpoints where Rapiscan's machines are in use, "93%-94% of passengers chose body scanners over pat-downs." He adds that the machines are "designed to fully replace metal detectors . . . whether TSA does so is up to them."

As far as throughput, L-3 and Rapiscan claim there will be little-to-no difference compared to walking through metal detectors. "It doesn't do us any good to deploy a technology that creates long lines," Ripp says, noting that the ProVision machines will take 2 sec. to scan the passenger while the image can be reviewed in 7-10 sec., allowing an average of 300 passengers per hr. to be processed by each machine and as many as 360-400 to pass through a single machine in an hour. He adds that the devices will allow for detection of an object in a specific part of the body, meaning a follow-up pat-down can be quick and focused.

Kant observes that most delays in passenger screening result from issues related to carryon baggage scanning, specifically limitations in legacy x-ray machines that force passengers to carry liquids and gels in small plastic bags and remove laptops from their luggage, and often require screeners to stop and start the conveyor belt to get a better look. This year TSA is undertaking a massive effort, planned before the Christmas incident, to replace x-ray machines at "every major [US] airport" with next-generation "advanced-technology" equipment that will "provide clear, high-definition x-ray images." The devices are being paid for through the stimulus.

Rapiscan is one of the primary suppliers of the technology, which Kant says will allow passengers to pack liquids and gels without restriction in the near future. Rather than "a single, top-down" view provided by the legacy machines, the new equipment employs "multiple x-ray angles" and "high-definition zoom," according to TSA. "The x-rays attenuate, bend, diffract, bounce around and are descriptive of the materials they are bouncing off of," Kant explains. "The [new] system can now read information and give a differentiation between benign and nonbenign objects. It will allow liquids and gels back on the plane." While TSA's Kair is not willing to make any guarantee regarding loosening restrictions on liquids and gels, the new x-ray machines are "definitely trending in that direction."

Beyond providing much better images of bags' contents, the machines are designed to be upgraded without any physical alteration or new requirements on passengers. "The system can constantly be programmed to detect newer and different materials," Kant explains. "So as TSA learns through intelligence or science about new materials, the system can be adjusted."

Another security measure that TSA believes will improve detection without slowing the system is the expansion of explosive trace detection whereby swabs of passengers' baggage or hands are placed in machines that detect explosive material residue. Kair says TSA agents are more frequently swabbing bags and hands while passengers are standing in line at checkpoints and doing ETD tests with portable devices.

University of Southern California Aviation Safety and Security Program Director Thomas Anthony, a former federal security director at three US airports, says that even with the changes, TSA is still too focused on searching for malign objects rather than malign passengers. "We have created a mindset where we treat everyone equally as unknown at the checkpoint," he tells ATW. "But if [former US Supreme Court Justice] Sandra Day O'Conner comes through a checkpoint, she is not unknown. She has . . . a demonstrated track record of identity and trustworthiness. It doesn't make sense to treat her the same as someone who shows up at a checkpoint unknown with no demonstrated track record of trustworthiness."

Only unknown passengers should go through body-scanners, he says: "The body-scanner in my view is a very good alternative to a full pat-down, but it should be a second-, third-level screening device, not a primary method at all." Drawing on his experience as an airport FSD, he notes that it is not easy to accommodate new technology at checkpoints.

"The most difficult thing to acquire in an airport is not new technology, or money for new technology, but space," he explains. "Space is as precious as gold in an airport . . . The body-scanners take up a lot of space and then the area [where the screeners are viewing the images] takes up more space." Rather than automatically infusing airports with large amounts of new technology, TSA needs to "think more creatively [and not become overly focused on preventing identical repeats of past attacks] . . . There is no shield that is going to stop everything. It's always a moving target in terms of what the enemy is going to do. We need to essentially institutionalize a system that recognizes that dynamic of the security equation."