Intelligence Based Screening and Intelligent Screening

It was announced today that the TSA will be using new intelligence-based screening guidelines that should cause fewer problems for some foreign travelers who were previously put under extra scrutiny simply because of the countries from which they came.

Residents from 14 specific countries had been subject to more intensive screening procedures since the U.S. introduced new rules in the wake of the failed Christmas Day bombing attack. That meant that all travelers from Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen were singled out for extra attention — including full-body pat-downs by TSA personnel

But now, other passenger information will also be scrutinized: their travel patterns, whether their ticket was paid for in cash, what stops they may be making in their journey, if they are traveling alone, and other behavioral data. A filtering process can zero in on whatever characteristics may be considered of interest at the time…

These new security procedures taken today by TSA are a step in the right direction and in fact, they should be implemented to every passenger on any flight regardless of nationality or port of origin. With intelligence based screening data mining applications detect patterns/suspicions in a traveler’s ticket information and from other  sources; all of which indicate a potential terrorist threat from a specific passenger.

As many of you know, detecting the suspicion indicator is the easiest part of any screening process. In fact, on 9/11 nine out of the nineteen hijackers were deemed suspicious by the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS) and by airline representatives. Richard Reid, the
Shoe Bomber, was also identified as suspicious by a profiler at Paris Airport on the day he planned to blow up an American Airline flight bound to Miami.  These examples and many others prove that the true vulnerability in aviation security screening does not rest in the detection of the suspicion but rather in trying to determine the MO and choosing the appropriate security measure against the MO.

With the new“intelligence based screening, detection efforts will be improved. It is however the determination skills that must be enhanced.  TSA screeners must retain the skills and the authority to determine the potential terrorist MO they are faced with. Terrorist MOs such as hijacking, surveillance, dry run, suicide bombing on the aircraft in mid-air, unintentional mule, semi-intentional mule etc.

All the terrorist MOs mentioned above require different security procedure to counter them. Searching for a bomb on someone who was identified as an unintentional mule will be completely different than searching for a bomb on a traveler who is deemed a potential suicide terrorist. When searching an unintentional mule, the screener should look for a fully assembled bomb ready to be activated by a non-human detonation mechanism (barometric, GPS, cellular phone etc.). The search in this case, should be limited mostly to the mule’s language and belonging. When searching a potential suicide terrorist, the screener must look for the components of a bomb that could potentially be assembled to a bomb on board the plane. This requires  a very intrusive check of the traveler’s belonging as well as a  strip search and continued monitoring throughout the flight.

Conducting security screening based on adversarial methods of operation is the most effective (in cost and in results) and it the most intelligent, common sense approach to take towards threat mitigation. We must integrate intelligence based screening with intelligent screening to succeed in this counter-terrorism effort.