Leading Edge Strategies

You can’t go your own way

2011 October 18 by leadingedgestrategies

Let’s Make a Deal – behind door number one is a no-hassle trip to your airplane, with no guarantee it will be hijacked or bombed. You’ll be flying old school.

Behind door number 2 is a body imager, whereupon your saturated fat bursting self will be viewed in all its unglamorous glory by people you don’t know – there’s even chance your unsexy image will be on YouTube before you are able to get to your plane, have your laptop crushed by the seat back of the insensitive jerk in front of you and the flight attendant gives you your peanut ration. But, your flight probably won’t be hijacked or bombed, that is unless some guy working at the airport, who is able to bypass security, decides to join al Qaeda.

Behind door number 3 is someone you’ve never met asking you intimate details about your travel plans, your personal life, and whether or not you still beat your wife.

Regardless, if you want to fly, you’re not getting out of here without choosing a door

So you choose door number 1, and behind it is a goat. Door number 1 means you’re not flying.

What’s next? If you choose door #2 the electric privacy rights groups will protest that your image is being displayed for all to see. If you choose door #3, the ACLU will protest that your intimate travel plans are “nunya,” as in none ya business.

As the old man in the third installment of Indiana Jones said, “you must choose.”

In a recent USAToday article, the TSA revealed their first major attempt at risk based security. Click here for the article. Whereas passengers have complained about the body imaging devices, now some are complaining about the allegedly intrusive questions that the new TSA assessor program is testing at Boston/Logan. It’s as close a mirror as you can reasonably get to how the Israelis conduct their operation and it’s too early to tell if it’s going to work.

Frankly, if this is done right, it should work. Even special operations personnel and undercover officers will tell you, the last thing you want to do when you’re trying to hide, is talk to someone.

As an upgrade from the TSA’s passive observation program, assessor puts security personnel before the screening process to engage in casual conversation to try to determine if an individual has something to hide. The process itself is time tested (when done correctly). It stopped the bombing of an El Al flight in 1986 out of London/Heathrow; security questioning is still used in airports throughout the European Union, like at the Leonardo DaVinci International Airport in Rome, and was widely used internationally prior to 9/11.

I have an old video clip that shows people being interviewed back in the early 70s, when passenger and carry-on bag screening first started. Back in the day, a plane was just as likely to take a weather delay as it was to get hijacked. We decided we needed to screen passengers for the safety and security of the flight – we used existing technologies and processes at the time. Today, we have another imminent threat and the technologies of the 1970′s are no longer adequate. We need to use the new technologies and processes  - so do you want door number 2 or 3?

If you really object to being questioned about your travel plans, then decide to head for the body imager. Otherwise, if you don’t mind sharing a few travel details, you have the potential to maybe undergo some lesser screening (someday). Regardless, you’re not getting on the plane without one form of screening or another. And frankly, I want you screened if I’m on your flight.

I applaud TSA for putting their money where their mouth is and making an attempt at testing this process to see if a proven technique is really scalable to our aviation system and to see whether it works.

TSA wants to talk to you

2011 August 29 by leadingedgestrategies

It’s too early to tell if TSA’s new approach to behavior detection will work. Click here for full story.

Unfortunately, the United States has a history of taking something that works really well, adapts it, but not without taking out the thing that made it effective in the first place. Hopefully, this will not be the story with TSA’s new approach.

TSA rolled out the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) a couple of years ago. This was largely an observation based process where the TSA looked for people exhibiting suspicious behavior. This advanced to the more formalized Behavior Detection Officers (BDO’s) program. This program trained Transportation Security Officers (TSO’s, more commonly known as screeners), for a couple of weeks, whereby the TSO was trained to spot eight different types of emotions – this process has been well covered by Paul Eckman’s research and in fact, it was Eckman’s microexpressions upon which the BDO program is based.

However, passive observation can only go so far. People at airports can display a variety of emotions, none of which have anything to do with criminal behavior. Anger or resentment? Maybe it’s todays friendly airline experience, not the willingness to do something bad.

This is a good example of taking something that works somewhere else, in this case Israel, the United Kingdom and many of the countries of the European Union, defanging it, then still telling everyone it’s a vicious dog. We’ve done this before in fact. In 1986, when Israeli security personnel stopped Anne Marie Murphy from getting a bomb on an El Al flight, U.S. FAA officials thought it sounded like a pretty good idea and implemented it here in the States. However, instead of using trained security personnel to do the questioning, they tasked airline ticket agent personnel and provided them zero training in identifying suspicious behavior. These questions would continue to be used until after 9/11/01 and to date, I don’t think any terrorist was caught using this technique.

Based on Administrator Pistole’s general approach to security, I would guess that the new program more closely emulates the Israeli model. What is difficult to determine is whether the program will actually catch anyone? My guess? Probably not at first. Well, it may grab up some morons with outstanding warrants, a few illegal immigrants and your local gentry who are already in trouble with the law. But a terrorist? Don’t count on it.

Think for a moment. If you were a terrorist, would you try to go through the airport where they are testing new security techniques, particularly those that are very difficult to bypass? No. The thinking terrorist will avoid this airport and others, and wait until the Court of Public Opinion weighs in. Let GAO publish a report saying that the TSA hasn’t caught anything, then maybe toss in a local lawsuit from someone who thinks they’ve been unfairly profiled. Then maybe public pressure and a lack of measurable results will push the TSA away.

What should happen is that the program is fairly assessed – as fairly as you can assess a program that’s designed to both deter and detect criminal activity, and the program should be expanded and implemented as part of the normal security process. Maybe one day it catches the next Anne Marie Murphy – or maybe it just deters the bad guys in which case, it’s effective, we just don’t know it.

Eat, drink, especially drink, and be merry

2011 February 26 by leadingedgestrategies

The country that kicked off the liquid ban seems like it’s ready to end it, at least partially. At the end of April, the European Union will allow passengers passing through Europe from a third country to carry liquids, aerosols and gels purchased either at an airport duty-free shop or on board a non-European airline. Unfortunately, the technology to scan liquids is still far from perfect. However, this reaction is not entirely surprising.

While terrorism is still a relatively new concept to American’s, 9/11 was our initiation, and nods to  the Ft. Hood attack and a few failed attempts, most of us still walk the streets feeling relatively safe from terrorist attacks. However, the nations that comprise the EU, have been dealing with this issue for a long time, and they tend to approach it differently.

When the Madrid train bombings and the London bus and subway bombings occurred, the EU didn’t spend billions of dollars implementing screening checkpoints at all rail stations and subway stops. They stepped up law enforcement patrols and intensified their intelligence gathering and interdiction in the field. Then Europeans went about their business with the realization that there are risks in this world and being killed in a terrorist attack is one of many.

I’m not saying that you just accept terrorist threats as a risk of life and do nothing. However, part of any balanced approach to security is realizing that the elimination of all risk is impossible, and attempting to make anything 100% secure, achieves the very objectives of the people that are attacking us.

As George Friedman discusses in his newest book, The Next Decade (Doubleday 2011), terrorism generates fear, helplessness and rage, and transforms public opinion, which then demands a response from the government (p.77). In the past decade, this has cost a lot of money and steadily eroded a civil right here or there.

“The terrorist’s goal is to be treated as a significant threat when in fact he isn’t one…his ultimate goal is to be taken as an enormous, indeed singular threat. This creates the foundation for the political process the terrorist wants to initiate,” (Friedman, p73).

The ongoing terrorist attacks throughout the world and the continued targeting of the U.S. and particularly aviation, must be addressed with a measure of temperance so that we don’t end up destroying the industry ourselves.

The partial raising of the liquid ban, seems to be an attempt to regain some of the lost economic ground the resulted after the 2006 liquid bomb plot. Understandably, the trade associations have been active in pushing the ban, despite heavy opposition from numerous airports throughout the EU, and the U.S. TSA.

One major challenge the ban faces is the lack of harmony between the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) worldwide aviation security standards, and the U.S. aviation security standards. In ten years, we still aren’t in sync with each other, with some practices throughout the world being significantly more invasive than in the U.S., and in other areas, significantly weaker.

It’s time for the U.S. and ICAO to get back on the same page. It’s too early to entirely lift the liquid ban, but based on the fact that this reduction seems to only affect liquids purchased at the airport (or an airport) reduces the risk that the liquids contain explosives, save for the ever present risk of a hole in the employee screening and vendor and catering screening processes, which could allow an insider to smuggle a liquid explosive through anyway. But we’re not talking about those layers of security – here.

Body imager fails to detect firearm

2011 February 22 by leadingedgestrategies

Is Twitter to be blamed for the failure of screeners to detect a gun, five times through a TSA checkpoint?

A TSA employee testing the Advanced Imaging Technology (i.e. body scanner) at DFW was able to smuggle a firearm through the AIT’s on five separate occasions without being detected.

Click here for NBC story.

It’s still too early to tell what went wrong. It has not been made public just what element of the system failed. Did the technology fail to present the image properly? Did the technology fail to identify the threat item and highlight it, or did the screener miss it? We don’t know but these are all valid questions that must be asked and answered.

Possibly, the TSA tester wanted to try a new method of concealment – a method that was not previously attempted during the initial testing the imager went through at the TSA’s System Integration Facility (TSIF), before being deployed. Again, another important question to answer.

One issue is that individuals who go through the body imager do not usually go through the metal detector, which would have likely been triggered by the gun. It’s ironical that the technology that is supposed to replace the old school metal detector failed to detect the very thing it’s predecessor was designed to detect.

It’s too early to say that technology failed us. And it’s too early to say that screener training failed us. What it’s not to early to say is that aviation security needs to remain a system of layers, that is not 100% reliant upon a single point of failure. The TSA tester should have been identified through behavior detection, travel document check, pre-screening or some other mechanism before getting to the checkpoint.

Unfortunately, as noted (oddly enough) in a book title Brain Rules for Baby, author John Medina notes that social networking is making the human race less capable of detecting the non-visual cues that have been our baseline survival tool for the past several thousand years. So maybe this was a human failure. Blame Twitter.

Do you trust that we’re going the right direction?

2011 February 19 by leadingedgestrategies

The TSA recently announced that it is moving forward with two programs to improve aviation security, Trusted Traveler and a better system of checking on passengers before they can fly. I believe these are two steps in the right direction.

In a recent USAToday editorial, the paper disagreed based on the fact that the programs have not worked in the past. However, the previous trusted traveler programs were not implemented the way they were supposed to be – they were set up to fail from the beginning.

It is interesting how we do this in the U.S. We take a great process and drain all of the benefit, then implement some impotent form of it, but we still call it the same thing, then we’re surprised when it doesn’t work.

USAToday claims that the first time Trusted Traveler was tried Congress railed against the program and killed it. The second time, the program was called Registered Traveler and resulted only in front-of-the-line privileges with no actual reduction in any security processes.

Here’s the real story.

Included in the Aviation & Transportation Security Act of 2001, was the Trusted Traveler program. The intent of the program was to allow certain travelers who submitted to in-depth background checks and submission of biometric information, in exchange for less screening. However, with TSA’s early stumbles, the agency quickly decided that they didn’t trust anyone and the program should be called Registered Traveler and that there would be no lessening of the screening process.

Airport’s and private companies made a go of it anyway, banking that frequent flyers would pay just for the right to get to the front of the line – and they were right to a certain extent. The airlines initially didn’t jump on board with RT, claiming that their frequent flyer preferred lines did the same thing. Clear, the company that rolled out the first RT programs, went under a few years ago, but has now resurfaced, and personally, I’m enjoying the privilege – particularly after spending 30 minutes in the frequent flyer line a few weeks ago.

Interestingly, the government still wanted all the background information and submission of biometric data to be in the RT, but you still underwent the same security process as everyone else – in fact, that way the program worked out is that RT members pay for the privilege of being the most vetted and screened passenger on the plane.

TSA Administrator Pistole however has resurrected the original intent of the program.

Previously, the hue and cry about Trusted Traveler didn’t just come from the politicians and TSA, it came from non-frequent flyers who cried that everyone should be forced to go through the entire process. But think about this – if a program is established where individuals submit to very in-depth background checks in exchange for less screening, screening lines for non-frequent flyers would get shorter and would move faster. Plus, from an aviation security perspective, we would be narrowing the haystack down so we’re looking through less hay for the evasive needle.

There is always the argument about the so called “clean” terrorist – someone who is not on the grid, has no criminal background, and no record with law enforcement could become a trusted traveler and then have an easier time smuggling a weapon or bomb on board a plane. Remember that aviation security is a system of layers. While most of the general public thinks that the screening process IS the entire aviation security program, it’s not. Plus, the screening process is not perfect, and there are other areas of weaknesses where individuals could penetrate the system, such as catering, vendor deliveries and employees. While there are security processes in place in each of those areas as well, there is no 100% solution to all of this. The only way to completely protect aircraft from terrorism is to park all the planes.

Pilot You Tube Videos Revealed. . . what?

2010 December 27 by leadingedgestrategies

This story is getting a lot of play this week. I’ve heard that this pilot has been called everything from a hero to a whistleblower, and his attorney is equally enjoying his own celebrity. Just recently his attorney offered to make his client available to consult with Congress on aviation security.

Time to offer some reality.

First, I don’t know who the pilot is. Second, taking away his gun and credentials to carry concealed and be a Federal Flight Deck Officer is beyond my call. Like ALL stories, there are probably details here that we’re not hearing about. I can say that off-hand, it appears that the pilot violated certain items that are either Sensitive Security Information, or through his methods of attempting to reveal security “gaps,” he has demonstrated to the authorities that he may not be able to be trusted with other SSI materials and data.

As for what he revealed and his hero status and potential to brief Congress. From what I can tell, a “gap” was not revealed. The fact that many airport and airline employees do not undergo screening like passengers do, is not an industry secret. It’s been going on since about the time that screening for passengers was implemented. It IS a controversial topic, but there are not easy solutions.

I addressed this issue in Practical Aviation Security. While many employees that work at the airport do go through screening, thousands still do not — at least not in the way that passengers do. In the U.S. employee “screening,” is conducted through the fingerprint-based criminal history record check. Yes, we decide to do a background check on employees, then we trust them. The same type of screening that many security experts have been calling for, in lieu of touching junk and being x-rayed.

That said, several significant aviation security attacks were conducted by employees so the problem clearly still exists. I don’t know that sending hundreds of thousands of employees through checkpoints will resolve that issue. It will certainly cost A LOT MORE MONEY and TSA would have to hire tens of thousands of employees to staff the new checkpoints. Or, TSA could decide that employee screening is the purview of the airport operator, and declare an unfunded mandate that airports install their own employee checkpoints and staff them with contract personnel. This is exactly what’s happening at Miami and Orlando, where employees are screened at checkpoints, in addition to the background check. However, these airports are paying for it themselves.

TSA has run pilot programs on various employee screening options and I agree that this is an area that remains weak in terms of the layered system. However, the “hero” pilot has not revealed anything new here. I know from reading plenty of congressional testimony in my book research that Congress is already aware of this fact. If you want a pilot to address Congress about aviation security issues, then I suggest you contact the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). ALPA has a great team with excellent security backgrounds and can put the proper perspective on this issue.

I’m sure the pilot who shot these videos (many of which just show the public areas of an airport), had good intentions. However, if you really want to make security safer, get involved with your trade associations and union security committees. I think you’ll find some folks there with a wealth of knowledge who can help you address your concerns, so at least you can keep your credentials and gun.

Don’t touch my junk…

2010 November 16 by leadingedgestrategies

The National Opt Out Day, where passengers are encouraged to avoid the body imaging devices at airports and elect to do the pat-down procedure, will fail in causing long lines at airports. But it will succeed in attracting attention to the issue. Unfortunately, this could also be a ‘win’ for the bad guys.

It will fail because the day before Thanksgiving is one of the busiest air travel days of the year, usually, second only to the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Many passengers on those days are leisure travelers, many with kids — they are not experienced at moving through the system, which means they are slow. They will not want to spend an hour in a security line, then spend another hour waiting in the opt-out line, when they can quickly walk through the metal detector or body imager and make their flight.

However, the Opt Out Day is already a win for those individuals opposed to the screening methods, both pat down and body imaging. It is a win because it has become part of the national conversation. It made USAToday (Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano has addressed the issue twice in as many days), and garnered the attention of the networks.

It is also a small victory for the bad guys. If passengers, who are clearly not a threat, decide to opt out of the quicker security procedures, they will draw attention to themselves, rather than the people that really deserve higher scrutiny.

The solution to the problem: common sense. We need technological methods to screen individuals and their bags to ensure they are not carrying weapons and explosives. We also need alternative procedures when the technology does not work, or when individuals are opposed to its use. The problem right now is that we’ve eliminated common sense when it comes to deciding who is deserving of higher scrutiny and how that individual should be screened.

We are treating everyone as a threat, rather than weeding those out that we are reasonably certain are not threats and focusing on the others we know less about. We’re trying to come up with better technologies to “screen” the haystack, rather than reducing the size of the haystack.

The answer goes back to behavior detection. GAO says it doesn’t work and they are probably right. The TSA’s program was rolled out too soon — it wasn’t ready for prime time. It was a quick win for the Administration at the time, but it’s time to go back and fix the model.

In the meantime, the Federal Security Director in this video is dead on right. We need to evaluate the totality of the circumstance and make a risk assessment. The TSA and airports already do this when there is a potential security breach and the individual cannot be found. At some point, the decision is made to continue the operation of the airport, aircraft or checkpoint based on a risk assessment.

TSA personnel should have the flexibility to make simple risk assessments so that we’re not having our children and ourselves subjected to embarrassing and possibly illegal searches.  We’ve hired some sharp people at the field level – it’s time to let them exercise discretion and good judgement and stop hamstringing them with ridiculous, inflexible policies.

It’s finally gone too far

2010 November 4 by leadingedgestrategies

If you’re not aware of the ramifications of TSA’s new pat-down policy, click here. If the link is still active, what you likely saw was a TSA screener appearing to conduct a pat down search of a a small boy. Yea, I know it looks like he’s feeling him up, but according to our government this is a necessary process to protect the flying public.

Okay, it’s now officially gone too far. I of all people understand that kids, women, the developmentally disabled, and the elderly have all been used to smuggle bombs, carry bombs, or other criminal or terrorist purposes, but there is a much BETTER way to do this. There is a process we can use that with one look, would have told the screener that that particular kid is not a threat.

First, let’s look at the options for screening individuals, then you can determine (or weigh in if you disagree) as to what the best method(s) are.

Since the 1970s, passengers have passed through walk-thru metal detectors. We know they don’t detect explosives, so what are our other options? There are basically 6 options for screening people for explosives: (1) body imagers, (2) portal trace detectors, (3) behavior detection, (4) physical pat downs, (5) electronic screening of passenger information prior to boarding – i.e. TSA’s Secure Flight but at a much higher level, and (6) thorough background checks on passengers.

Keep in mind that privacy rights groups have issues with ALL of these methods. Sorry, can’t make everyone happy – my goal is to not have to give up a ton of rights either, but also to make sure I can safely board a plane with my family without having my kids molested in the process. And to be fair, I’m sure most TSA screeners don’t look forward to patting down the general public anymore than we want to be patted down. I’m not pointing the finger at them (unless you touch my kid!), I’m pointing at this policy that needs serious review.

Let’s back out items 5 and 6 right now. While they can be effective, pretty much only so as a layer, not a process that you’d bet your life on.

That leaves us with body imaging, portal trace (known as the Puffers), behavior detection and pat-down.

Body imagers come with privacy issues, they are slower than walk-thru metal detectors, but they are quicker than pat-down, less physically intrusive and the imagery is viewed remotely (I’m sure you can see yourself on YouTube later though — even though we’ve been told these machines do not store images, it’s now been shown that they do — but who cares, it’s not like anyone can identify you with that fuzzy image). They are effective at detecting most threat objects including explosives, guns and knives.

Portal trace detectors were rolled out after two Chechan suicide bombers brought down 2 Russian airliners in 2004. Keep in mind this wasn’t the first time a suicide airliner bombing had occurred, but it was the first time the government really took notice. The “puffers” as they were called were slow, had a high breakdown rate and you still had to go through the metal detector because they don’t detect metal, like guns and knives. The puffers were pulled out of airports due to their breakdown rate and to make room for the deployment of the body imagers.

Pat-down: the most intrusive, embarrassing process you can subject the individual too. Not only passengers, but airline and airport employees must go through this with even more frequency. It takes longer than any of the other processes and comes with all sorts of bad implications. I’m sure some child molester, after seeing the LA times photo, ran to find the nearest TSA application.

Behavior detection: non-intrusive, highly effective when done properly, takes the smallest amount of time of all of the processes. The problems here go back to the old “profiling” argument – that people are being selected based on race or nationality. This argument is as old as law enforcement itself. The other challenge here is a GAO report released earlier this year that showed that TSA’s BDO’s failed to spot potential terrorists that passed through U.S. airports. TSA points to the fact that many people have been arrested based on BDO detection, but for outstanding warrants, illegal immigrant status, or something other than terrorism.

The debate rages on as to whether this process is effective but I wholeheartedly believe in it. Here’s why: The Israeli’s relied on it so heavily that for a period of time they relied more on their security questioning/behavior process than physical screening equipment. The U.K. has adopted a similar model and is already reporting successes. This type of process is also what stopped an individual from blowing up an El Al flight departing Heathrow in 1986, whereas tons of stuff gets through technology based checkpoints every day.

So what are we doing wrong here and how can we implement something that works and keeps screeners from feeling us up at the checkpoints?

First, some reality with respect to the GAO report. Maybe the bad guys who came through U.S. airports didn’t encounter any BDO’s. With some 800,000 million passengers going through U.S. airports and only about 3,000 BDO’s it’s possible that they just missed each other. Or, maybe the bad guys had no ill intent that day they were at the airport, and thus exhibited no signs. Remember, it’s very difficult to measure something like deterrence — it’s difficult to know if a deterrent measure resulted in the bad guys saying “we don’t want to go that way because of . . .” Unfortunately, the bad guys don’t often call us and let us know when some measure we’ve implemented actually deterred them.

Second, we have to look at why these programs are successful everywhere else but here. The science of this is dubious and to being a researcher myself, I agree…to some extent. I think body language psychology is more art than science. Ever watch the TV poker tournaments? The entire process is based on two things, knowledge of statistics (playing the game well) and “reading” your opponent. When science is having problems proving things, I fall back to the old adage and ask, does it work anyway? If it works, then there must be something to it, and we just haven’t figured out the science behind it yet. However, there has been recent movements towards using technology to detect deception. Again, the old argument that we will be “saved” by technology, but just remember that the studies on the effectiveness of technology is often conducted by the companies interested in selling the technology.

Third, when I talk about the use of behavior detection, I’m not talking about the exclusive use of that strategy. Initial passenger screening should begin with the booking of the ticket — do a name check. If they’re a bad guy, arrest them, if they are a suspect, give them additional scrutiny when they get to the airport. At the airport, behavior detection should take over in the form of officers at the queue lines, talking to passengers. This process will have to be refined because there is a big gap between what a BDO suspects and what a cop can do about it. Plus, it seems the training can be better — let’s analyze what others are doing and see where we’ve potentially watered down the process here.

Then, individuals who either through their travel documentation or behavior that exhibit warning signs, should be given secondary screening, to include explosive trace detection, body imaging, or if they do not want to be “imaged” then private pat down screening.

Using this process effectively, we’ll start focusing on the bad guys and quit molesting kids at the checkpoint, in the “name” of security.

TSA vs Privatized Screening

2010 November 1 by leadingedgestrategies

The issue with privatized screening is very interesting and very misunderstood by the public. Pre 9/11, the screening was given to private companies who were contracted by the airlines at the lowest bidder. The standards were “upheld” by the FAA and those standards were far below the international standard for screeners in terms of qualifications, performance and training.

Post 9/11, the TSA took over screening at most, but not all, U.S. airports. There were 5 airports that continued to use private screening companies under a model known as the Screening Partnership Program,  more commonly known as “opt-out.” Those 5 airports continue to use private companies to this day and an additional 12 airports have opted out of TSA screeners since 2005. The reason most given for airports saying goodbye to TSA is customer service and waiting times.

This issue is coming back to the forefront today as TSA is on it’s 10th or 12th iteration of the Screener Allocation Model (SAM), which is their attempt at matching airport passenger flows with the amount of screeners that are assigned. However, the industry is seeing the failure of TSA in many areas to do this matching, whereas the private airports seem to have it down. Many of us in the industry expect to see even more airports opting out of TSA screeners in favor of private companies in the near future.

As for whether private companies are better or worse, it’s hard to tell, but here is some information to help consumers figure out if they are “safer.”

1. Much of the world uses private screeners at their airports including Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, and at London’s Heathrow airport. However, pre and post 9/11 these screeners were held to much higher standards than in the U.S. Since Israel is often pushed up as the “model” for airport security, I think it’s interesting to know that they rely on private screeners at the checkpoints.
2. The GAO reports that in classified testing, the detection rate is about the same for TSA and private screeners.
3. The “contract” model has changed. The airlines no longer have a say. If an airport goes private, TSA puts out an RFP and makes the selection. The screening company must then meet or exceed the TSA screening standards and the contract is managed by the TSA.
4. Post 9/11, failed screening was pointed to as the reason 9/11 happened. There is debate on this as the items that the hijackers apparently used were allowed on aircraft pre 9/11. However, there is some debate about whether the hijackers used tear gas, which was not approved to be on a U.S. aircraft at the time. Regardless, many in the U.S. felt that screening was in need of a long overdue overhaul, and thus, wrapped up those changes in the post 9/11 legislation.

To read more on a related article, visit http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11632944)

Removing Security Screening from Airports?

2010 September 21 by leadingedgestrategies

There have been several reports in the news lately of airports across the country having their security screening equipment removed by the TSA.  This is actually pretty common as long as TSA is the owner of the equipment. Prior to 9/11 various entities were responsible for screening and for purchasing screening equipment. The airlines would often buy what they felt was needed, but if the airport wanted more machines than the airlines were willing to pay, then the airport would be footing the bill.