The Illusion of Security in US Airports

[Marc]

From the Jerusalem Post

Originally Posted by Jerusalem Post

While US Transportation Security Administration officers relentlessly made sure that my 83-year-old, wheelchair-bound mother-in-law was not smuggling a shoe bomb onto her plane recently, was anyone thwarting an attack by a real terrorist? The answer, unfortunately, is no. Living in Israel, a country where every supermarket and café has a guard with a metal detector, I looked in vain for real security at the four US airports I passed through last month. It was clear that the TSA is mostly engaged in providing an illusion of security, while ignoring real threats.

For example, TSA guards defending boarding gates unerringly target liquids in containers holding more than one ounce, for fear larger quantities might be combined in a binary explosive device. That's what their security protocol says - even though the contents of a permitted number of small containers could be lethally combined on a plane by a not very sophisticated bomber, if they in fact contained explosive liquids.

This becomes a mockery of security when TSA guards vehemently confiscate sealed bottles of mineral water under the same faulty pretext. I watched dumbfounded as one dropped my $3 half-liter bottle of water into a garbage can - and refused to let me drink it "for security reasons."

While an army of TSA officers makes a good show of securing the gates, there are no guards monitoring access to the airport itself. No matter that the only shoe bomber on record was a schlemiel who couldn't even light a match to his shoe, as if his device would have worked anyway. He is in prison, but each day millions of airline passengers throughout the world must doff their shoes and pass inspection. At least there was once a real would-be shoe bomber - the persistent liquid explosive "menace" is the result of a rumor.

The security measures at US airport gates are fearsome. The numerous guards in their spiffy uniforms are so tough, there is even an electric sign at Newark's Liberty Airport warning passengers against voicing jokes about security - on penalty of prosecution. But it is the TSA that is a joke.

ALL THOSE BILLIONS of dollars, all that high-level training in shoe and water bottle scrutiny, is invested in guarding the wrong place. No suicide bomber in his or her right mind would try to slip an explosive device past the TSA at the sensitive entrance to the boarding gates. A terrorist doesn't have to, for the TSA guards the wrong perimeter.

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[Roland Cooke]

Now this was pretty cool; a good example of real bipartisanship as well.

Can't really see something similar happening in the US though.....

April 2, 2009

Two men in baseball caps and windbreakers breached the perimeter of Pearson International Airport on Sunday. Stepping out of a van on a public roadway, then passing through doorways they spent half an hour lingering around the tarmac.

They spoke to airport workers, but faced no questions as to what credentials they had used to gain access to one of Canada's most important transportation hubs. If anyone had bothered to ask, they might have been shocked.

One of the visitors was federal Transport Minister John Baird. The other was Colin Kenny, the Liberal who chairs the Senate's national security committee. On that rainy afternoon they decided to leave their partisanship behind in Ottawa to fly to Toronto to check on airport security themselves.

What they found alarmed them.

"No one stopped us. No one asked for a pass," said Mr. Kenny in an interview. "It's not mischievous, it's due diligence."

In a separate interview, Mr. Baird declined to speak about details but was clearly perturbed. "What I saw was unacceptable," he said. "There will be changes based on what I saw."

The RCMP and the Auditor-General have recently issued warnings about criminal networks infiltrating airports.

Soon, a federal inquiry will report on how terrorists exploited Vancouver's vulnerabilities in June, 1985, to plant suitcase bombs that killed 329 Air India passengers and crew.

A host of airport-security measures have been installed since, but many vulnerabilities remain. For example, airport tarmacs are supposed to be off-limits to the public.

"Of course. That's post-security ... you have to go through a security checkpoint to get there," said a spokeswoman for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority.

But that's not what the politicians found out on their trip, which was months in the making.

In January, Senator Kenny reached out to Mr. Baird, inviting him to investigate airport security. Similar overtures have been made in the past, but the new minister "is the first one to get off his ass and take a look," said Mr. Kenny.

The minister agreed that officials like him should not sit in ivory towers, but he was initially wary of the senator's rhetoric. "I frankly didn't believe some of the things he told me before I visited," said Mr. Baird. "Now? I don't have much to challenge him on, that's for sure."

For the tour of Pearson the senator wore an orange traffic vest and made a show of carrying around a clipboard, and an array of ID cards and hotel room keys, none of which were related to airport security. He put on a baseball cap; the Transport Minister wore one, too.

Their first stop in Toronto was an RCMP detachment a couple of kilometres from the airport. The Mounties briefed the politicians on drug seizures and security problems, and GTAA officials stopped by to give the visitors passes. Then Mr. Baird and Mr. Kenny headed to the airport in a police van.

Though shadowed by plainclothes RCMP, they were never told where - or where not - to go.

Driving around the airport perimeter, the politicians searched for places they could get in. "I pointed out to him a number of places where you could go straight off the road," said Mr. Kenny, keeping precise details secret. "I simply got out, tried a couple of doors ... The second door I tried opened."

After the senator waved from inside the airport fence, the Transport Minister followed.

"I don't know how he got in," Mr. Kenny said. "There were multiple options."

Mr. Baird was followed by the Mounties, he said.

Mr. Kenny said the passes the GTAA gave them went unchecked. "The pass was irrelevant to getting on the tarmac," he said.

The politicians chatted up fuellers and baggage handlers. No one ushered them from the tarmac. A pilot did ask the senator to stop taking photos of his plane.

Scott Armstrong, a spokesman for the airport authority, said last night the law permits the Transport Minister unfettered access to airports and since Mr. Kenny was an RCMP guest, the Mounties had an obligation to keep tabs on him.

By Monday, the politicians were back in their suits on Parliament Hill, drawing attention to security through more conventional means.

Yesterday, Mr. Baird expressed exasperation.

"Look at the expense, time and energy we've put into shaking down passengers for their toothpaste and hair gel," he said. "I think we have to look at other priorities as well."