The 'Why' Behind Air Security
News & Happenings
August 31, 2006
Below Michael Chertoff, Secretary for Homeland Security, discussed air security and other issues with USA TODAY's editorial board on August 30, 2006. His comments were edited for length and clarity.
Question: The terrorism threat comes predominantly from young, Muslim male extremists. Without racial or ethnic profiling, are there ways to make airport security better match this threat?
Yes. At the extreme, 3-year-olds are not probably a threat we need to worry about, and 75-year-old grandmothers are probably not a threat. But if you look at the experience of watching suicide bombers in other parts of the world, saying those can't be women is just not factually correct. So I'm hesitant to say that we should focus only on males, or Muslims of a particular age.
Q: So what might an airport screener look for?
We are training our screening officers in behavioral pattern recognition, looking at ways people behave that will actually suggest they're trying to hide something. That's a positive step that does not require ethnic profiling but looks to the pattern of behavior. I think some element of that is talking to people when they come through, asking them a few basic questions: Where are you going? What are you doing? Why are you going there? These are tools that would allow us to be more precise, but without getting into racial profiling, which is a bad thing.
Q: Have you learned any more about the chemistry of the London plot that might enable you to fine-tune the ban on liquids and gels?
The chemistry's still being looked at. But I actually want to come at it a different way. The question becomes not only is there a more precise way to screen out liquids you're worried about, the question is whether doing so would actually be more inconvenient than having an absolute ban. There is technology that would allow you to screen — bottle by bottle — whether something is dangerous. The problem is that it takes a long time. If everybody carries four bottles and it takes 15 seconds, that's a minute per person. Well, if you have 300 people boarding a jet, that's 300 minutes to board. Nobody wants to do that. The trick for us is to find a system that keeps out bad stuff and is as efficient and as convenient as possible. And sometimes it turns out that a more comprehensive ban is clearer, more easy to enforce and more efficient for the traveler.
Q: Had you identified the threat of liquids before the London plot and considered how to combat it?
We were aware of this as an issue, and what was particularly troubling about this scheme is how hard these guys worked to come up with ways to conceal liquids. That is what made us see the need to go to this total ban. I had actually thought of a total ban, but I had a real concern about whether it was something that would work. What alarmed me about this was that it was a very, very sophisticated way to bring components in.
Q: What role, if any, did the National Security Agency (NSA) terrorist surveillance program or the banking surveillance program play in thwarting the British terror plot?
I can just tell you at a very general level, the ability to monitor communications, or movement of money, is in my experience the single most important tool in stopping terrorist attacks. It's a very important tool.
Q: There is a very obvious security gap regarding a less stringent screening of cargo shipments that are placed on passenger planes. Why has this not been a bigger priority?
It is a big priority. First, if you come to the airport or you go to the airline and you want to ship a package on a particular airline in the passenger hold, it's going to go through screening the same as a checked bag will. So people who say we don't screen that are just wrong. Now the (shipping companies) have to verify the person who's bringing the package in. Most of the FedEx and UPS stuff that the ordinary person sends doesn't go on passenger airlines. And I do think that the threat to cargo jets blowing up is not one that I think is probably a likely terrorist target given what we currently know.
Q: But what if someone landed a low-level job at a known shipper? Isn't that still a vulnerability?
Here's the problem they would have. They would really have no way of knowing in advance whether a particular package would wind up on a passenger plane. So as a threat vector, it would be hard for somebody to plan, to be able to put something on a passenger jet. Now, that's not to say that we don't want to make it tougher. But the idea that anybody can come up and stick something in a passenger plane and know it's going to go there is actually not true.
Q: The Registered Traveler program, which asks passengers to volunteer information ahead of time, would smooth the screening process in exchange for faster screening, yet it hasn't happened. Why?
The airline industry at some point in the last year became somewhat less enthused about Registered Traveler because I think they came to the conclusion that it actually was not going to be something a lot of people would sign up for. I disagree with that. Frankly, there are privacy advocates who are strongly against it. We need to obviously make sure that we're obeying the privacy rules, but I think a Registered Traveler and some form of domestic Secure Flight (a similar government-sponsored program) is still the way to go. It still is better to get a little more information about people, and certainly on a voluntary basis, and then not have to put them into secondary (searches) than to put more people into secondary and have their stuff searched and have them asked questions.
Q: Will the flying public embrace such voluntary screening?
Those who choose to do it will get the benefit of it and those who choose not to can weigh their own convenience.
Q: There are significant civil liberties concerns associated with the war on terror as the government collects more and more information about its citizens. What will protect Americans from an encroachment by government in the future?
What we'd want to do would actually enhance civil liberties. For example, if we had more specific information about travel history and things of that sort — this is not deep secret stuff, this is stuff that you give to your travel agent — that data allows us to focus on people that we are really more worried about. I actually view that as a plus to civil liberties. I dare say if you asked most people, they'd rather give you a little more information and avoid getting padded down and having their bags gone through than have no information given out so we'd have to wind up doing searches of everybody.
