Security Roundup

Date Incident 29 Jan An undercover agent wearing part of a fake bomb passed through security at Tampa International Airport. The agent told the screener he had a metal knee after he set off a metal detector. "It becomes a learning experience and it's part of our program to raise the bar on...

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Date	Incident
29 Jan	An undercover agent wearing part of a fake bomb passed through security at Tampa International Airport. The agent told the screener he had a metal knee after he set off a metal detector. "It becomes a learning experience and it's part of our program to raise the bar on training," a TSA spokeswoman said. "If we had easy tests, we wouldn't be learning from them." Which all serves to bring up the question of surgically implanted IED's - prosthetics that look like the real McCoy - but contain high explosives. Where should our collective (and institutionalized) paranoia end? Veterans with such prostheses are becoming increasingly common, courtesy of the War on Terror. Profiling the disabled or requiring them to be registered or listed? Not going to happen. That WOULD be the last straw.
29 Jan	Measures taken to assuage Congress and ameliorate the process for getting off lists that unfairly or mistakenly include your name are proving to be not worth the paper they're not printed on. The online lists are fluid and regularly updated. The government's no-fly list continues to inconvenience travelers whose names are on the list by mistake, the Wall Street Journal's Scott McCartney writes. A program created to remove innocent people from the list, which includes many common names, is ineffective (he says). Travelers told that they have been cleared often run into additional security problems. These can include being de-listed and then later re-listed.... for whatever reason. As we say further below: "Jails in Europe and the US continue to be fertile ground for sowing dissent and even for training new recruits for dissident groups." Jails may be only first ranking on that list of misanthropic institutions. Lists themselves would be a close second. One of the Unabomber's reasons for turning against society was that he hated lists and classifications. He may have been the first graduate of the disaffected (and fairly) paranoid under-class of the 70's and 80's fringe society. The fringe-dwellers of the new Millenium are the condemned outcasts of the "lists". Persons who have never flown in their lives can still be secret denizens of "the lists"..... unbeknownst to them.
29 Jan	By the end of January, Bulgaria should have received their report card from the European Aviation Safety Agency on the inspected condition of Bulgarian aviation. Depending on the report's recommendations, a decision will be made whether to remove safeguard clauses for Bulgarian aviation. This was disclosed in an interview of Zahari Alexiyev, chief of the "Civil aviation" directorate of the Ministry of transport by Darik radio. The measure was imposed because of weaknesses in aviation administration (licencing and regulatory paperwork) and the dearth of trained experts in Bulgaria. The safeguard clause bans some flights by Bulgarian airplanes between national airports and those of the EU member states. The Bulgarian airplanes are allowed only to fly direct from Bulgaria to the nominated European airports. Bulgarians would be able to fly cheaply if the restrictions were to be removed, explained Zahari Alexiyev.
28 Jan	More than six years after the attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people, "there continues to be a focus on air travel as a target," The Chief of Homeland Security said, adding that the threat level was unlikely to change in the near future. US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the orange, or high, threat level assigned to the airline sector, at one level higher than the overall alert level for the United States, was based on a general assessment rather than a specific threat. "We've seen again and again interest in this sector," he said, pointing to an alleged British-based plot to blow up transatlantic flights using liquid explosives in 2006 and an attempted car bomb attack on Glasgow Airport last year. "So people think of aviation not only in terms of the aircraft but the whole infrastructure including the airports," Chertoff said. Over the last year Chertoff and his European counterparts had broadly agreed on what measures needed to be put in place including exchange of information about potential attackers and greater border security. In an effort to stem militant recruitment, they had sought to understand the process of radicalization which could lead towards militancy, Chertoff said. He said US authorities were now paying particular attention to the potential for militant recruiting inside US jails. Jails in Europe and the US continue to be fertile ground for sowing dissent and even for training new recruits for dissident groups.
28 Jan	An airliner that was the subject of a threatening telephone call was moved to a remote part of Los Angeles International Airport. FBI spokeswoman Laura Eimiller said the move Monday afternoon was strictly precautionary and that the person who made the call to a law enforcement agency is under investigation. The threat involved United Flight 23 from New York's John F. Kennedy Airport to Los Angeles. The plane landed safely and the 71 people aboard were taken off at the airport's west end.
28 Jan	Despite last year's disclosure of gun-and-drug smuggling by airport workers prompting the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority to spend $5 million on security upgrades, guns and drugs continue to pass through undetected. Most of the funding for security upgrades paid for about 150 subcontract workers to take over baggage handling from TSA workers. Workers are also being trained to screen bags in vans equipped with X-ray units. Orlando is the country's 13th-busiest airport, handling nearly 1,000 flights daily and about 36million passengers last year. Five mobile X-ray units costing over $616,000 are intended to screen packages and bags carried by employees into secure areas outside the terminals at the 15,000-acre facility. They will begin screening sometime this year. However Orlando and Puerto Rico officials conceded during a meeting last week that they still need "to resolve the problem of arms and drugs that are being bought and sent through Orlando airport to Puerto Rico," Pedro Toledo, the island's police superintendent, said Wednesday. They are liaising with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Miami International Airport is the only other U.S. airport that screens all workers every day. Miami started the practice in 1998 after airline and airport workers were busted in a major drug-smuggling case.
27 Jan	A "large" US spy satellite has gone out of control and is expected to crash to Earth some time in late February or March, government sources say. Officials speaking on condition of anonymity said the misguided satellite had lost power and propulsion, and could contain hazardous materials. The White House said it was monitoring the situation. Normally, when US spy satellites reach the end of their lives, they are disposed of through a controlled re-entry and dumped in the Pacific Ocean, so that no-one can learn their secrets. But, says Dr Ruediger Jehn, a space debris analyst at the European Space Agency (ESA), "older satellites are often more difficult to de-orbit properly". No doubt inert unguided spy satellites that are as big as a bus would fall into an even lesser category.... than "more difficult". We can't wait to see the wording on the international Notice to Airmen. Undoubtedly it won't say anything along the lines of "you'll just have to learn to take your lumps". Perhaps pilots should be told to tune into a special frequency so that they can hear the Pentagon duty officer's call of "fore" or "timber" - when he's alerted to the aberrant bus's imminent arrival back on terra firma.
27 Jan	A Spicejet Captain was grounded for smoking in the cockpit. His F/O had complained in the past, but this time he took some Marlboro Man style pics and showed them to management. He also threatened to sell the piccies to media if no action was taken by them. The co-pilot had planned to sell the footage to TV channels, which the SpiceJet management found even more objectionable. Result was that the F/O was also "smoked". A smoking hole ...and yet no passengers were injured in the making of this fiasco.
26 Jan	In an apparent total travesty, Clarence (Clancy) Prevost, a former US Navy pilot, was given a $5 million dollar reward under the "Rewards for Justice" program at a closed ceremony in Washington, DC with Justice Department and FBI officials present. The US State Department thought it was rewarding the flight instructor of Al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui for tipping off the FBI to prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks. The anomaly is allegedly that it was fellow CFIs Hugh Sims and Tim Nelson who contacted the FBI in August 2001 - but received nixpence. Both are questioning why they weren't recognized along with Prevost. Nelson and Sims both phoned the FBI independently when Moussaoui signed up for advanced jet training when he was clearly unfit for the course. Instead, the money went to Moussaoui's instructor, who said he was suspicious of his student but didn't actually make the call. It was, however, Prevost who was interviewed by the FBI and subsequently testified at Moussaoui's trial. "He was certainly there but he didn't call the FBI. I have no idea why he received the reward," Sims says. The Senate recognized the pair in 2005 in a resolution that commended their initiative. During the 2006 trial, Moussaoui confessed to being the "20th hijacker" whose role was to command the hijacking of a fifth airliner to be flown into the White House. It's understood that the selectee/recipient was an FBI choice.
24 Jan	An illegal Burmese immigrant was discovered sitting in the cabin of a Turkish Airlines Airbus A330 when an engineer was checking the jet on stand 508 at Bangkok International prior to it departing back to Istanbul. Usually the Turkish Airlines flight arrives at Bangkok mid-afternoon and after unloading, the airplane is re- positioned to a remote stand until its departure around midnight. The Airports of Thailand (AOT) have promised to review security (as you'd expect). It was alleged the intruder entered the airport over a fence west of runway 01L, crossed the runway and taxiways undetected and entered the Turkish Airbus via a maintenance ladder. The report went on to state the intruder had escaped from prison in Malaysia and entered Thailand illegally. Alarm bells are ringing for placement of IED's onboard airplanes at holding points or in taxiway queues...especially under cloak of night. Which brings up our next parallel topic...randomized security patrols.
20 Jan	Drunkenness and dementia aside, on long or short flights there's often a fine line between onboard dissidence, indiscipline and disobedience (flaunting of authority). Some passengers don't seem to want to concede that cabin or flight crew have any authority over them or even that they have the ability to exert it. On board a Munich to Johannesburg flight on 20 Jan, a male passenger flagrantly disregarded the no smoking rule, not once but twice. The German man was arrested at O R Tambo Airport in Kempton Park on Monday morning after reportedly smoking twice on a flight from Munchen, Germany. Confronted about smoking in a toilet, he ignored the reproof. The smoke alarm started flashing red at the same toilet later that evening. Members of the cabin crew rushed over with a fire extinguisher. Shortly before landing the crew told the culprit that he was not allowed the leave the plane. He had to wait for the South African police to arrest him." Buying another ticket home because of automatic blacklisting will likely cost him as much (if not more) than the smoking fine. Meanwhile three passengers were arrested on Alitalia's Milan-Bari flight last Saturday for using their cell phones when the plane was about to take off. The pilot returned to the gate, and the three were arrested.
20 Jan	Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) has implemented a clever advance in premises security. It may safely be assumed that terrorists scout out planned attack sites ahead of any assault, therefore security patrols by armed officers would be much less useful if they followed anyways predictable patterns. Just like bank- robbers, scoping out those patterns is just a matter of patient observation and record-keeping by low-level operatives. So the ideal cheat template would be a jig-saw puzzle with missing (and additional pieces) of purely random patrolling. Yet this is something humans are not at all good at. Additional pieces? Now and again a false start and restart, a second patrol following close upon the heels of a regular clockworked patrol - or even an out and return via same route (in lieu of a perimeter circumnavigation of the airfield). One such security program at the University of Southern California, funded by the Department of Homeland Security, is called CREATE. Having heard of a software program developed at USC's engineering school that could do something like that and learning that the Los Angeles World Airports police department was seeking such a product, a team at the USC's engineering school went innovative. Starting from Praveen Paruchuri's PhD dissertation on modeling work in game theory, the team developed a system called ARMOR, incorporating indepth data about the airport's facilities and operations. After field-testing last summer and fall, ARMOR went into routine operation at LAX in November, generating randomized patrol schedules for the police officers. Initial plans are to expand its use to the airport's bomb-sniffing dog patrols.
19 Jan	In 2000, congressional investigators reported they were able to breach airport security using phony police IDs. Four years later, Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., told the House Aviation Subcommittee that the report had been found in a cave in Afghanistan. "It has been 2 1/2 years since 9-11," he said at the time. "We need to address this issue without delay." Nearly four years later, federal regulations require passengers only to show an airline representative their photo identification and a letter from their boss stating they have a need to fly armed. TSA officials are not required to verify the passenger's identity. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is looking at "numerous threats of government and law enforcement equipment," including counterfeit and stolen badges and credentials that could be used to breach security - particularly at the Super Bowl. The threat assessment notes that "such thefts ... are common in large metropolitan areas" and that counterfeit badges and IDs purchased online are "difficult to differentiate from legitimate credentials." However there is also evidence that credentials have received cursory inspection in airports. DHS Inspector General Richard Skinner noted that sign-in logs at Jackson-Evers International Airport often did not contain information such as the armed officer's badge number, agency affiliation or flight number.