[Infowarrior] - U.S. changing the way air travelers are screened

[Richard Forno]

(of course, we still have to take off our shoes.....grrr.  -rick)

U.S. changing the way air travelers are screened
By Anne E. Kornblut and Spencer S. Hsu
Friday, April 2, 2010; 1:07 AM

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/02/AR2010040204131_pf.html
The Obama administration is abandoning its policy of using nationality  
alone to determine which U.S.-bound international air travelers should  
be subject to additional screening and will instead select passengers  
based on possible matches to intelligence information, including  
physical descriptions or a particular travel pattern, senior officials  
said Thursday.

After the attempted bombing of an Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight on  
Christmas Day, U.S. officials hastily decided that passengers from or  
traveling through 14 specified countries would be subjected to  
secondary searches. Critics have since called the measures  
discriminatory and overly burdensome, and the administration has faced  
pressure to refine its approach.

Under the new system, screeners will stop passengers for additional  
security if they match certain pieces of known intelligence. The  
system will be "much more intel-based," a senior administration  
official said, "as opposed to blunt force."

"It's much more tailored to what the intelligence is telling us, what  
the threat is telling us, as opposed to stopping all individuals of a  
particular nationality or all individuals using a particular  
passport," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

On Christmas Day, Nigerian student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly  
tried to ignite explosives sewn into his underwear as Northwest  
Airlines Flight 253 prepared to land, but the device failed and he was  
subdued by fellow passengers. Abdulmutallab has allegedly said he was  
trained by an al-Qeada affiliate in Yemen.The case exposed gaps in the  
government's ability to identify people who might pose a threat.

Days later, the administration ordered a significant increase in  
secondary searches, requiring all passengers from or traveling through  
Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Liberia, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi  
Arabia, Somalia and Yemen to undergo extra security at the airport.  
Travelers from countries considered state sponsors of terrorism --  
Cuba, Syria, Iran and Sudan -- were subjected to the same screening,  
including pat-downs and additional bag checks.

Airlines had warned that the measures instituted after the Christmas  
Day incident would need to be eased before the busy summer travel  
season. And critics objected that the added scrutiny amounted to a  
pretext for racial profiling that could potentially affect 675 million  
people, including American Muslims and religious pilgrims.

Administration officials briefed reporters about the revised policy  
Thursday. But they did so on the condition that reporters not  
publicize it or seek reaction to it until after midnight, saying they  
were still working to notify foreign partners and members of Congress.

The underlying airline security policy of checking passenger names  
against watch lists will continue, and certain passengers will still  
be banned from flying or required to submit to additional security  
based on names in intelligence databases. About 24,000 people around  
the world are currently on those "no-fly" and "selectee" lists.

Administration officials said the new system will "significantly"  
reduce the number of passengers chosen for mandatory extra screening,  
eliminating entire swaths of travelers who had been chosen based on  
their nationalities.

But it will also broaden the universe of potential targets for  
secondary searches, expanding the focus from the 14 named countries to  
dubious passengers from anywhere in the world, a move also designed to  
outsmart terrorist plotters who knew which countries were affected.

The rules will take effect within the month, the senior administration  
official said, acknowledging that the system instituted in January  
presented a severe inconvenience to travelers from the listed countries.

The official offered a hypothetical case to illustrate how the new  
system will work. If U.S. intelligence authorities learned about a  
terrorism suspect from Asia who had recently traveled to the Middle  
East, and they knew the suspect's approximate age but not name or  
passport number, those fragments would be entered into a database and   
shared with commercial airline screeners abroad.

The screeners would be instructed to look for people with those traits  
and to pull them aside for extra searches, the official said,  
acknowledging that that in some cases, screeners will have to rely on  
their judgment as they consider the listed traits.

While intelligence officials had fragments of information about  
Abdulmutallab -- including warnings from his father that he was  
becoming radicalized, and warnings about a Nigerian plot against U.S.  
interests -- those pieces of information were not connected in time to  
keep him from flying.

Administration officials have said that, in hindsight, the central  
failure involved inadequate sharing of information. It is not clear  
whether the new screening measures would have been sufficient to block  
him.