Are We Ignoring the "Risk" in Risk Based Screening?
By Steve Wolff
n the past year, and in response to many stresses on our industry, significant efforts have been made around the world to adopt elements of the IATA Checkpoint of the Future proposal (to which the author is a contributor). Passenger traffic is increasing by roughly 6% per year; checkpoint
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throughput is only about 50% of its pre- 9/11 capacity and passenger satisfaction has similarly taken a nosedive. The pressure from increased security and restrictions is felt by regulators, airports, airlines and passengers, and the industry recognises that without significant change, we’re heading for a passenger processing crisis, as witnessed by the number of airports that have recently diverted or developed space to expand their security checkpoints. The checkpoint process we set up 40 years ago is unable to accommodate the trends, and in trying to force it, we’re hurting all air transport stakeholders. On the positive side, we’re recognising that we can’t screen everyone effectively for every possible threat and that one-size-fits-all screening won’t work. In response, there’s increasing acceptance that Risk Based Screening is a good basic approach, at least at the strategic level and ICAO, Interpol and many airports and countries are showing support. However, Risk Based Screening means different things to different people and countries, and the message is getting muddled. IATA started out pursuing a realis ti cally deployable checkpoint using available technologies, but shifted its media and political focus
towards the three “Tunnels of Truth” that
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have received extensive media and industry exposure.
This approach, while useful to
“
...checkpoint throughput is only about 50% of its pre-9/11 capacity...”
persuade regulators to get on board, by using data to sort passengers and screen them to different standards, ignored limits imposed by the laws of physics. Unless we become willing to subject travellers to higher radiation doses, there are no technologies out there or in development that are sensitive enough to detect and pinpoint a threat’s location in real time while passengers and their
bags pass by at walking speed. This allowed many in the industry to ignore the intent of the Checkpoint of the Future effectively, by just saying, “Great idea but the technology is decades away.” This had the regrettable effect of overlooking the fact that the original IATA concept can be implemented with technology that is either available today or, for certain threats, will be available within two years. The IATA Risk Based Screening process called for sorting passengers into 3 lanes: Trusted Travellers, Elevated Risk and everyone else. In response, TSA (through its PreCheck programme) and Canada (through NEXUS) have embraced and are implementing the Trusted Traveller aspects of a risk-based strategy. While
politically and tactically
valuable for improving passenger facilitation, it does not directly address the risk posed by determined terrorists.
The implications of
this strategy are that, at least within the US, the percentage of passengers considered to be of elevated risk is miniscule and that there is an assumption of almost perfect, and precise, intelligence on anyone who might be a threat. This appears to abandon the potential for “clean skin” terrorists, who would likely only be revealed by an analysis of information that resides in the Passenger Name Record. Such an analysis, Computer- Assisted Passenger Pre-screening (CAPPS) was used in the 1990s for hold baggage security and identified 11 of the 19 9/11 terrorists. However, such an analysis is less precise and casts a wider net in an attempt to ensure that anomalies or indicators in flight reservations lead to enhanced screening. If implemented, it would increase the percentage of elevated risk passengers likely to somewhere between 5 and 10% of the total passengers, possibly higher for certain flights.
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The fact that so few passengers appear to be subjected to enhanced screening by the TSA implies that neither a system like CAPPS nor the use of significant random selection of passengers (as part of a deterrence strategy) is included in the pre-screening process... at least for now.
For those of us who have worked with and tested individual devices and systems of scanners, there are no technologies or procedures currently deployed at the checkpoint that can counter the threat that terrorists have demonstrated that they pose or, by easy extension of techniques used in other crimes (e.g., drug smuggling), could adapt in order to attack commercial aircraft. Without new, carefully selected and configured technologies operated by highly trained staff, TSOs who search elevated risk passengers need to be very well trained and motivated to implement thorough and intrusive physical searches that are virtually guaranteed to be unpopular with the screeners that would have to carry them out, not to mention elected government officials and the travelling public. So, the lack of a robust pre-screening
process that accounts for pre-flight behaviour and the lack of a significant random diversion of non-suspect passengers to a high security lane is virtually guaranteed to present a large enough loophole for terrorists to exploit. When combined with the fact that existing deployed technology lacks the ability to detect the types and quantities of threats and concealment methods terrorists are likely to use, the risk of a successful attack via the checkpoint remains high. However, it seems that we are hiding behind the fact that such an event is of extremely low probability.
Based on the above, I believe the current
approach is a dangerous way of avoiding the problem, in much the same way as ignoring safety concerns leads to failures and catastrophes.
When I was studying
engineering and, in particular, failure analysis, we used a term called Mathematical Expectation (defined as “the probability of the occurrence of an event multiplied by the value associated with the event’s occurrence”) to assess the importance of various system failures. Mathematical Expectation analysis means that even if the probability of an event is low, if the
August 2012 Aviationsecurityinternational
AVSEC OPINION
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