Commercial aviation security after September 11 and homeland protection costs

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).

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).

Under current interpretation of constitutional law, this is absolutely prohibited (Dershowitz, 2002), but in principle, there is nothing "prejudicial" or "discriminatory" about eliminating the randomness requirement in airline passenger screening scenarios. In that regard, it is especially ironic that bona fide civil rights were routinely, systematically, and purposely violated by federal authorities throughout the second term of the Bush administration without any comparable justification instead of seeking judicial review of ridiculous randomness criteria imposed on airport passenger screening procedures (Larsen, 2007).

For one of the most glaring examples, Russell Tice, then an analyst at the National Security Agency (NSA) came forward as a whistle blower immediately after the expiration of the Bush presidency to publicize egregious constitutional privacy and search and seizure violations committed by that agency under the guise of national security (Huffington, 2009).Instead of addressing legit issues where circumstances justified different applications of constitutional law, the NSA was busily illegally retrieving telephone records of newspaper reporters who had criticized federal policy, such as those of New York Times reporter James Risen: "What I know for a fact is that the Bush administration got my phone records ... we know for a fact that they showed my phone records to other people in the federal grand jury, and we have asked the court to investigate that" (Huffington, 2009).

Recommendations and Conclusion:

Lessons from Israel

Israeli Mossad agents trained to recognize suspicious behavior routinely conduct spontaneous interviews with airline passengers. Instead of doing so randomly, they scrutinize Arabs more intensely than Israelis, and they do so unapologetically in view of the realities of the circumstances (Hoffman, 2003; Larsen, 2007). The parallel in the U.S. is the importance of developing appropriate exceptions to traditional concepts of civil rights in the narrow area of specific threats that are tremendously more likely to be associated with young Saudi Arabian or Syrian males with student visas than elderly Midwestern females in wheelchairs. Certainly, Islamic passengers are equally entitled to all other presumptions of innocence and all other constitutional rights; on the other hand, there is no constitutional right against reasonable security screening motivated exclusively by the need to maximize screening effectiveness rather than any ethnic or cultural bias.

Until now, the federal government has demonstrated a schizophrenic approach to aviation security, undermining genuinely effective security measures out of concern with the political consequences of applying common sense to passenger screening protocols while ignoring more significant vulnerabilities. Instead of a purposely random element imposed on airport passenger screening, what is required to protect domestic aviation is implementation of the techniques used for decades by the Israeli security services to protect El-Al, the national airline of Israel, a nation profoundly at risk of terrorism since the 1960s.