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and Associate Editor for the Journal of Transportation Security, suggests that here still lies one of the real vulnerabilities of the elaborate safety system put into place to secure both the mail, and all cargo being loaded onto passenger aircraft worldwide. “It is very hard to catch someone tampering with cargo while it is being loaded onto or off an aircraft,” he says. There are cameras on the ramp, but not in the cargo holds of the aircraft. “Who is that person, too?” Harrison remarks. “From the known shipper through to the ground worker at the airport. Have we closed the problem of sleeper insurgents in the system? No, I say, we haven't closed that loop. If a sleeper is good at what he is doing, you are not going to be able to detect him. We know it is a huge problem and that criminal factions have exploited it in the past.” Harrison asks, “How do you do a
background check that is effective? Here in south-east Asia we see it a lot - many companies both don't have the technology and general interest to do it well. And frankly, background checks that might detect a sleeper would be a civil liberties nightmare in most western countries. We just can't detect random radicalisation in a person today. We might be able to
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see the issue coming, but we can't see the person coming who might do us serious harm,” he says. TSA and USPS spend a lot of time
and energy touting the thoroughness of each entity's respective programme for background checking those who are engaged in handling both cargo and airmail destined to be carried
“...opening packages or envelopes that are sealed for
mailing...is forbidden...”
on passenger aircraft, but say little about the background checking that the airlines and airport authorities are required to do on those who work closest to the aircraft, in the baggage and cargo handling areas and on the departure ramps of thousands of airports. There are certainly several places along the ‘chain of custody’ where the security of airmail could be challenged, however, it is most likely to happen where it is most difficult to see someone break open a mailbag and add ‘a little something’ that could wreak havoc on a flight, be it incendiary or biological or chemical in nature.
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www.asi-mag.com Harrison cautions us that al-Qaeda
is merely regrouping, and all of our intelligence gathering research in the arena suggests that the organisation has not given up on using aircraft or airports to terrorise populations around the globe. For the moment, TSA has testified
to the Congress of the United States that at best, only 65% of cargo in the holds of international flights coming into the U.S is expected to have been screened before departure this year. That's a huge gap in the system, and within that gap is airmail coming inbound, and transiting airports throughout the world. But that's probably not the threat
that will get us. Harrison fears it will be something much simpler. A low paid employee working close to the cargo hold on a busy ramp, someone who could be relatively easily lured into a radical mindset by his environmental conditions, is far more of a threat to the security of a few bags of mail tossed into the dark underbelly of a vulnerable aircraft swarmed by workers preparing it for departure.
The author is a freelance journalist who also happens to be an airline transport rated pilot and certificated flight instructor.
August 2010 Aviationsecurityinternational
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