X-ray machines that screen airline passengers' shoes cannot detect explosives, according to a Homeland Security Department report on aviation screening.
Findings from the report, obtained by The Associated Press, did not stop the Transportation Security Administration from announcing Sunday that all airline passengers must remove their shoes and run them through X-ray machines before boarding commercial aircraft.
The shoe-scanning requirement was ordered as the government fine-tunes new security procedures since British police last week broke up a terrorist plot to assemble and detonate bombs aboard as many as 10 airliners crossing the Atlantic Ocean from Britain to the United States.
Among the new procedures are a ban on liquids and gels in airline passenger cabins, more hand searches of carryon luggage, and random double screening of passengers at boarding gates.
On Sunday, the TSA made it mandatory for shoes to be run through X-ray machines as passengers go through metal detectors. They were begun in late 2001, after the arrest of Richard Reid aboard a trans-Atlantic flight when he tried to ignite an explosive device hidden in his shoe. The shoe scans have been optional for several years.
In its April 2005 report, "Systems Engineering Study of Civil Aviation Security -- Phase I," the Homeland Security Department concluded that images on X-ray machines don't provide the information necessary to detect explosives.
Machines used at most airports to scan hand-held luggage, purses, briefcases and shoes have not been upgraded to detect explosives since the report was issued.
TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark said putting shoes on the X-ray machines makes the screening process more efficient and eliminates confusion. "We do not have a specific threat regarding shoes," Clark said. "In an abundance of caution we require all shoes to be removed and X-rayed to mitigate a variety of threats."
The Homeland Security report said that "even a 1/4-inch insole of sheet explosive" could create the kind of blast that reportedly brought down Pan Am flight 103, the airliner that blew up over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, killing 270 people in the air and on the ground.
"To help close this gap, the percentage of shoes subjected to explosives inspection should be significantly increased," the report said.
The Homeland Security report recommends that explosives trace detection, or ETD, be used on the shoes and hands of passengers when the screeners determine they must be checked more thoroughly.
"Within the current state of the art, they afford the only meaningful explosives detection capability at the checkpoint," the report said.
ETD involves a screener using a dry pad on the end of a wand to wipe a surface -- baggage, shoes, clothing -- and then putting the pad into a machine called an ion mobility spectrometer. The machine can detect tiny particles, or traces, of explosives.
Screeners do use ETD on passengers who have been selected to be screened a second time after going through the checkpoint.
TSA chief Kip Hawley recently acknowledged that the threat from liquid explosives isn't going away -- and new security measures designed to thwart the threat may be around for awhile.
The agency is testing equipment to detect liquid explosives at six airports, Hawley said, and he called the technology "very promising."
But, he said, "with a million and a half to 2 million passengers every day, it is not practical to think that we are going to take every bottle and scan it through these liquid scanners."
"We are not going to wait for the perfect device to be deployable," Hawley said in an interview Friday. "We're going to look for a total system to be at the level to make us comfortable."
Astounding. So let me make sure I have this right -- they're going to implement a bunch of security procedures that do NOTHING to detect explosives, but put on a good show by inconveniencing a whole bunch of passengers -- especially business travelers, who in the age of webcasting are likely to stop traveling if they have to check bags. Then they're going to pull aside my father, an 81-year-old man with an artificial hip, for special screening.
But hey -- if watching people dump their lip gloss makes you feel secure, who am I to stand in the way?
Bruce Schneier points out in this op-ed piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune that chasing tactics is NOT going to work as an anti-terrorism strategy:
None of the airplane security measures implemented because of 9/11 -- no-fly lists, secondary screening, prohibitions against pocket knives and corkscrews -- had anything to do with last week's arrests. And they wouldn't have prevented the planned attacks, had the terrorists not been arrested. A national ID card wouldn't have made a difference, either.
Instead, the arrests are a victory for old-fashioned intelligence and investigation. Details are still secret, but police in at least two countries were watching the terrorists for a long time. They followed leads, figured out who was talking to whom, and slowly pieced together both the network and the plot.
The new airplane security measures focus on that plot, because authorities believe they have not captured everyone involved.
Excuse the interruption, but I need to point out that the reason they haven't captured everyone involved is because the Bush Administration pressured the British to arrest the suspects they were monitoring a week earlier than planned. And of course the coverage of the impact of Joe Lieberman's primary loss had nothing to do with that in an administration in which EVERYTHING is about politics, right?
Carry on:
It's easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it's shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we've wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we've wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets -- stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people before airport security -- and too many ways to kill people.
Security measures that require us to guess correctly don't work, because invariably we will guess wrong. It's not security, it's security theater: measures designed to make us feel safer but not actually safer.
It was funny when Billy Crystal as "Fermando" used to say "It is better to look marvelous than to feel marvelous." It isn't funny when government policy is that "It is better to feel safe than to BE safe."
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