Safety concepts and applications

Commercial Aviation Safety in the Age of Global Terrorism

The infamous terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 fundamentally changed the way of life in the United States in many respects. The post 9/11 security environment has imposed greater restrictions on the way Americans travel; it changed the manner in which we receive authorization to enter public buildings, government offices, court houses, and even ordinary commercial businesses and residential facilities.

Undoubtedly, commercial aviation is much safer than it was prior to 2001; but there are significant questions whose answers may be very troubling, including: (1) to what degree was the focus on aviation the right approach to increase national security? (2) to what degree have those efforts achieved aviation safety? (3) Have the benefits of this approach been cost effective? (4) What is the correct balance of security and legal rights? And (5) What alternative solutions could provide comparable benefits with fewer costs and complications?

In some respects, the increased focus on counterterrorism and homeland security has improved public safety in general and commercial aviation security in particular. However, in other respects, it has been a tremendous financial drain that is unjustifiably out of proportion to its actual benefits. Perhaps even more importantly, the emphasis on aviation security has highlighted several legitimate concerns over potential conflicts with fundamental civil rights and constitutional principles while simultaneously illustrating the degree to which contemporary constitutional interpretation unnecessarily handicap genuinely effective and more economical security processes.

Conceptual Issues:

Several renowned historians have commented that throughout the 20th century, nation states (including the U.S.) fell into the habit of shaping their geopolitical and future military capabilities perfectly to negotiate past crises and to fight their last wars rather than in a manner designed to deal with future developments in either respect (Evans, 2007; Scheuer, 2004). Unfortunately, this also accurately characterizes the response of the Bush administration to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in its extensive focus on commercial aviation security designed to prevent another attempt by terrorists to forcibly commandeer a passenger aircraft in order to use it as a flying missile against high-value ground targets in the U.S.

Not that commercial aviation security could not have benefited from improved security; but the most important elements of necessary improvement could have been achieved at a very small fraction of the costs actually spent on aviation security. Moreover, operational oversights and related issues have severely compromised the value of those security measures (Sperry, 2003), while excessive capitulation to political hot-button issues such as racial profiling have made it virtually impossible to achieve the ultimate objective of extremely secure air travel at a reasonable cost.(Larsen, 2007).

Ironically, at the same time that the American approach to aviation security is undermined by misapplication of constitutional principles, numerous other more serious constitutional violations were perpetrated by government authorities in the name of national security during the same time period (Huffington, 2009). Acknowledged national security experts suggest that aviation security is still far less safe than it could be (Larsen, 2007) and that achieving that objective would necessitate re-evaluating several contemporary applications of constitutional rights (Dershowitz, 2002) in conjunction with adopting some of the security measures in evidence internationally in areas with much longer and intense histories with respect to terrorism against civilian "soft targets" (Hoffman, 2003; Larsen, 2007).

In-Flight Security:

By far, the most important, effective, and economical security measures implemented after 9/11 was the reinforcement of cockpit doors on all commercial aircraft in conjunction with security protocols forbidding certain passenger movement in flight (Larsen, 2007; Sperry, 2003). Together with pilot training to maintain a sterile flight deck under all circumstances and to avoid opening the cockpit door no matter what was transpiring in the passenger cabin, the reinforced cockpit doors effectively eliminated any risk that another group of hijackers could ever commandeer a passenger aircraft for use in the same manner as the 9/11 hijackers.

With respect to that particular concern, no other measures were justified (Larsen, 2007), notwithstanding the fact that they did not address the risk of terrorists destroying an aircraft such as by the use of explosives. Specifically, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations implemented after 9/11 prohibited passengers in the vicinity of the flight deck (typically, the first-class section) from standing up anytime the cockpit door is opened, such as when pilots use the lavatory. On those occasions, an announcement is made prohibiting passengers from getting up, and members of the crew position themselves (along with food service carts) strategically in between the cockpit area and the passenger compartment until the cockpit door is resealed behind the pilots. In all likelihood, most security analysts believe that the awareness of 9/11 in the minds of passengers would result in an immediate response by dozens of passengers if any individual approached the flight deck or otherwise threatened the flight and the few instances where unruly passengers disrupted a flight in the air have documented that any repeat of a 9/11-type plot could never again succeed on an American passenger aircraft (Larsen, 2007).

In principle, the expansion of the Federal Air Marshal (FAM) program from approximately one dozen agents to a classified number undoubtedly in the thousands (Larsen, 2007) was also a legitimate approach to in-flight security. However, fundamental operational and tactical problems plagued that program from its inception and greatly reduced its potential value in improving in-flight safety. For example, agency regulations required FAMs to wear formal business attire despite the fact that in the modern age of air travel, so few passengers dress this way that it made it impossible for FAMs to blend in with the travelling public and to maintain the lowest possible profile. Before regulations were changed in 2006, any well-trained terrorist would have had no problem identifying FAMs, especially with public knowledge that the agents also board aircraft in pairs (Larsen, 2007).

Airport Security:

Passenger Screening

Despite the fact that reinforced cockpit doors, crew training, and security protocols restricting passenger movement are sufficient to have eliminated any reasonable threat of a hijacking, the federal government spent enormous sums of money on passenger screening designed primarily to prevent passengers from bringing weapons on board commercial aircraft. The passenger screening function was federalized in conjunction with the hiring of more than 60,000 federal security screeners by the newly-formed Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and rules imposed that severely restricted what items passengers could bring on board the passenger compartment.

First, the emphasis on identifying and interdicting harmless objects such as small scissors and nail files was a tremendous inconvenience that slowed down passenger movement throughout airport terminals without a legitimate purpose. movement employees. Second, numerous tests conducted by federal authorities have repeatedly demonstrated the inability of TSA screening procedures to prevent bona fide weapons (such as knives, firearms, and simulated explosive devices) from being sneaked past security screeners. Third, while passengers are being unnecessarily inconvenienced by relatively ineffective methods of preventing the type of attack that is unlikely ever to be attempted again in the first place, glaring security oversights in other areas of airport and aircraft security continue to represent significantly greater threats to aviation safety (Larsen, 2007; Sperry, 2003).

Airport Employees and Contracted Support Service Employees

While federal authorities devoted their largest efforts to passenger screening, they did so instead of addressing the most dangerous oversights in airport and aircraft security: namely, the vulnerabilities inherent in the insufficient employment and background screening of the individuals employed by airports and the various support services contracted out to cleaning services and food vendors (Larsen, 2007; Sperry, 2003). Specifically, aviation security expert Charles Slepian, formerly of TWA and now head of the Foreseeable Risk Analysis Center in New York explains that the employees of the outside firms who provide aircraft cleaning and food vendor services hire unskilled workers who are more likely to have criminal backgrounds than aircraft passengers (Sperry, 2003).

This vulnerability should have been of far greater concern to federal officials from the outset than most of the types of "contraband" that so much of passenger screening efforts were designed to interdict. In fact, the comparative threat of passengers commandeering an aircraft is miniscule compared to the threat that individuals with a connection to terrorists could, quite conceivably, simply apply for unskilled, low-paid employment with a commercial cleaning service or food vendor and then exploit the access to parked aircraft provided for the purposes of performing their jobs for terrorist purposes (Larsen, 2007; Sperry, 2003).

While federal regulations do require background checks and criminal history reports for these workers, numerous instances of identity falsification have occurred precipitating high profile arrests, particularly in 2006 at several new York airports. The basic problem is that by the time some of the information that should preclude certain individuals from access to aircraft comes back, those individuals have already been hired and granted security credentials. According to Slepian:

" & #8230; ramp workers more often than not are issued a Security Identification

Display Area pass long before their fingerprints are processed & #8230; That SIDA

badge, along with door security access cards or pass codes, allow them to bypass the passenger screening process at the front of the terminal and go through locked doors in the back of the terminal -- gaining largely unsupervised access to baggage, cargo and planes. The background checks can take months and months, so they're walking around with a card in the meantime & #8230;That's why so many of these airport employees are arrested so long after the fact, and are continuing to be arrested in sweeps by the Justice Department. When the information finally

does come back, they see they've got somebody out there that has a felony and lied on his application, or has a warrant out, or is in the country illegally"

(Sperry, 2003).

Civil Rights Issues in Passenger Screening

While the security protocols in relation to typical potential "weapons" in the possession of passengers are fundamentally flawed, federal authorities working with British security services did identify a specific threat in 2006 that precipitated necessary precautions against more than a certain amount of liquid allowed per passenger. Unlike the other senseless concern over nail files and cosmetic scissors, this precaution was justified by virtue of a specific threat in connection with liquid explosives that British authorities discovered within the intentions of several terrorists apprehended in 2006 (Dyer, McCoy, Rodriguez, et al., 2007; Evans, 2007; Larsen, 2007).

However, to the extent more general passenger screening is justified by circumstances (i.e. not for the purpose of interdicting nail files and scissors), one of the most difficult aspects of implementing effective security procedures within the U.S. constitutional framework is the political hot button issue of racial or ethnic profiling (Dershowitz, 2002; Larsen, 2007). Many security experts and legal authorities alike believe that oversensitivity to this issue hampers effective security screening beyond what is necessary to protect fundamental constitutional rights. They point out that the contemporary terrorist threat from radical Islamic operatives justifies differential scrutiny of Muslims in specific circumstances.

Consider, for example, the situation of a public threat against federal buildings issued by an all-male white supremacist group, or alternatively, by a modern all-female incarnation of the Black Panthers who announced their intention to blow up courthouses. In these circumstances, reasonable security protocols would require increased scrutiny of Caucasian males seeking entrance into federal facilities and of African-American females seeking entrance into courthouses. Likewise, in the face of a terrorist threat against the U.S. homeland whose source is primarily radical Islamic extremists (Evans, 2007; Williams, 2004), it is perfectly reasonable to increase scrutiny of certain individuals based on their national or ethnic origin (Larsen, 2007).