The Last Word
A Personal View expressed by Omer Laviv
“…our policy makers seem to avoid taking responsible, justified, and necessary decisions…”
M
any of my friends and colleagues ask me whether I now feel better about
the standards of the security checks taking place at airports. "Why should I?" I respond. "Because for many years now”, the answer goes, “you aviation security guys have been preaching that metal detection gates are not suitable for passenger screening any more. It seems that, because of recent events, everybody finally agrees with you." Well, I'm sorry, but it does not make
me any happier. It actually makes me angry. The reason it grates is because I hate it when decisions regarding security issues are taken in the wrong manner. We shouldn't have to wait for something to happen in order to make a decision to implement new and effective security measures. For years, we, the aviation security
experts community, have expressed our concerns regarding the possible threats posed by different suicide bomber scenarios; in one such scenario, the terrorist is wearing the explosives on him and aims to pass through the checkpoint undetected, given that explosives themselves do not cause the metal detector to alarm. We raised the red flag some time ago, but no one was taking any notice of the need to include body scanning technology in the screening process. That ended, of course, on Christmas Day 2009, when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, and tried to destroy the aircraft by injecting
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chemicals into a package of pentrite explosive concealed in his underwear. Suddenly, everybody is rushing to
install full body scanners: Russia, The Netherlands, France, Italy, Nigeria, South Korea, Japan, Canada, the UK and, naturally, in the United States (more than 30 American airports are in the process of installing full body scanners). Suddenly, there is no devastating breach of civil rights; suddenly, the threat justifies the required budget; and suddenly, it appears that full body scanners do not necessarily violate child pornography laws in the UK (I could go on and on but I think you know what I mean). The problem is that when security
measures are put in place due to hysteria, we can expect that they will be used in a non-productive and out-of–proportion manner. For example, the terror attacks of 11 September 2001 were responded to by the installation of billions of dollars-worth of CT scanners all over the world (and especially in the US); because of Richard Reid, the notorious "Shoe Bomber", we started to take off our shoes; and, the 2006 UK mega-terror plot is the cause of the liquids, aerosols and gels restrictions on flights. If you read ASI (this journal) frequently, you know as well as I do that all those measures, whilst they represent good intentions, are enforced in a manner that can easily be described, to use a British understatement, in a "less than optimal” fashion.
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www.asi-mag.com Hastily implemented security
measures, performed in a state of frenzy, result in an inefficient and ineffective process that reduces trust, increases annoyance and causes a lack of cooperation and acceptance by the general public. Instead of taking adequate
measures, at the right time and in the right manner, our policy makers seem to avoid taking responsible, justified, and necessary decisions, which will keep our airports and airlines safe and secure, whilst also maintaining the air travel experience. This is caused by their lack of sufficient understanding of the nature of terrorism and their lack of expertise in security. It is also caused by interest groups, which succeed in becoming vocal and influential in an incommensurable magnitude to that of the voices of the aviation security experts. We aviation security experts
are also to be blamed: we should make sure that our representative organisations will be heard and will exert the necessary influence in order to make sure that the interests of the public - to be safe, secure, and receive adequate service and fly in comfort - are well maintained. I am afraid that currently, in the war on public opinion, which reflects on our policy makers' decisions, we let terror plots and terror attack do our work. In some cases it just might be too late.
The author is the CEO of Athena GS3 Security Implementations Ltd.
August 2010 Aviationsecurityinternational
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