Airport security design principles and implementation

Airport Security Issues

Coordination of the Airport Security Mission

The Aviation Transportation System Security Plan of 2007 outlines important principles for the effective inter-agency and intra-agency coordination as a fundamental component of ensuring the safety and security of domestic aviation in the United States and of international aviation destined for American airports. In principle, that document presents sound ideas and breakdown of agency-specific responsibilities among and between the principal agencies and their components responsible for aviation security, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Department of Justice (DOJ), the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Defense (DOD), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the U.S. State Department.

Unfortunately, several high-profile events that have occurred since the 2007 publication of that document demonstrate that, to a large extent, the most fundamental aspects of both intra-agency and inter-agency coordination and sharing of crucial information has still not been achieved more than three years later. Specifically, the prior to the Christmas Day 2009 attempt by Abdul Farouk Mutallab to detonate explosives in on board a Delta Airlines flight to Detroit from Amsterdam, his father had communicated specific concerns about his son to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria (Kelly, 2009).

Those concerns were not communicated to the National Counterterrorism Center or cross-linked with information in the possession of the CIA about a Nigerian being prepared for a terrorist attack on U.S. aviation (Kelly, 2009). That incident alone illustrates the relative meaninglessness of the principles outlined in the 2007 Aviation Transportation System Security Plan by virtue of continuing failures in the efficient analysis and dissemination of the most basic information related to counterterrorism concerns. Moreover, Mutallab was issued a U.S. student visa despite the fact that he had been listed on the U.K. Terrorist Watch List in May 2008 and never placed on the U.S. No-Fly List (Kelly, 2009).

Future Changes in U.S. Aviation Security

It is not necessarily clear that the U.S. is prepared to make the necessary changes in its counterterrorism policies in relation counterterrorism at all. In principle, that is simply because, to date, the application of constitutional rights interpretations conflicts directly with the types of investigations that are likely necessary to protect aviation (Hoffman, 2003; Larsen, 2007). Specifically, current definitions and limitations in the area of profiling make it impossible to implement the types of policies and precautions such as those that have proven successful in Israel. According to acknowledged U.S. (Larsen, 2007) and international experts (Hoffman, 2003) in aviation security, the entire approach of screening passengers (1) randomly and (2) only after they set foot onto airport property is not an effective way of preventing terrorism against aviation. By contrast, in Israel, Mossad agents have the authority to question any passenger scheduled for departure on El-Al, Israel's national airline that was once the world's most targeted airline for terrorists (Hoffman, 2003).