Passengers facing airport delays with start of new security code
Air passengers face body scans and more frequent searches under security guidelines unveiled yesterday in response to the Christmas Day bomb plot.
Full body scanners will be introduced at Heathrow within three weeks and the Government will consider profiling passengers. More sniffer dogs will be used and behavioural analysis will become commonplace under the revised code, Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said.
He acknowledged that the extra time needed to process travellers would cause delays but airlines and airport operators are not yet advising passengers to turn up earlier for flights.
“No one measure will be enough to defeat inventive and determined terrorists and there is no single technology which we can guarantee will be 100 per cent effective,” Mr Johnson told the House of Commons.
“We are examining carefully whether additional targeted passenger profiling might help to enhance airport security,” he said. “We will be considering all the issues involved, mindful of civil liberties concerns, aware that identity-based profiling has its limitations, but conscious of our overriding obligations to protect peoples’ life and liberty.”
There was broad consensus among security experts and industry insiders that the measures could help to protect aircraft from terrorist attack, but that their success or failure would depend on exactly how the changes were implemented.
Philip Baum, editor of Aviation Security International magazine, said: “I believe that every passenger getting on a flight anywhere in the world, whether they are flying out of Heathrow or Reykjavik, should be profiled by a streetwise, trained professional who would determine which technology is used to screen them.”
Airports should buy all three kinds of body scanners currently available and subject individual passengers to different screening methods, he said. “When you or I arrive at the airport, we should not know which technology is going to be used to screen us. It should be unpredictable.”
Body scanners use either natural radiation to produce an outline of the human body or low-level X-rays to highlight any artificial substance lying next to the skin. The third type of scanner uses more powerful radiation to detect objects hidden inside body cavities.
It is not yet clear which technology will be introduced at Heathrow but its operator BAA said that some scanners would be in place by the end of the month.
Mr Johnson said that he would work with airlines to see how many scanners should be introduced and where. He added that there was only a 50 to 60 per cent chance that a scanner would have detected the explosive used in the failed attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit last month.
BAA said it would strive to avoid “unacceptable delays” to passengers. British Airways said: “We have not issued any new instructions so far. It is something we will need to look at.” Since Monday, BAA has been using extra staff trained in detecting unusual behaviour to identify passengers who might face extra security checks.
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a former student at University College London, allegedly attempted to ignite explosives hidden in his underpants as his flight came in to land at Detroit.
Mr Johnson confirmed that Abdulmutallab, the son of a wealthy Nigerian banker, was known to MI5 during his time in London but he said he was not “engaged in violent extremism”.
He played down reports of a rift between the US and Britain. Intelligence about Abdulmutallab was given to US agencies before the incident, but Mr Johnson said the information did not suggest any imminent threat. The Tories had accused Downing Street of issuing false information about its contacts with Washington.
Original Source – Times On Line
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