New U.s. Air Traveler Screening Focuses On 14 Nations

[LaoPo]

New U.S. air traveler screening focuses on 14 nations

1:49am EST

By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Air travelers from Nigeria, Yemen, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and nine other countries will face full-body pat downs before boarding airliners under new security screening procedures targeting foreign passengers announced by the United States on Sunday.

The procedures, which go into effect on Monday, follow the botched Christmas Day bombing attempt on a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner blamed on a Nigerian man who U.S. officials believe was trained by al Qaeda in Yemen.

Passengers traveling from or through nations listed as "state sponsors of terrorism" -- Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria -- as well as Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen will face heightened screening, an Obama administration official said.

Nearly all of those are Muslim countries.

Such passengers will be patted down, have their carry-on luggage searched and could undergo advanced explosive detection or imaging scans, according to the official, who spoke on condition on anonymity.

The Transportation Security Administration, the U.S. agency responsible for air security measures, announced the "enhanced screening" procedures, adding that any passengers on U.S.-bound flights could be subjected to random security searches.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old Nigerian, was arrested by U.S. authorities after being accused of carrying a bomb sewn into his underwear onto a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on December 25. He got through security screening in Amsterdam, and was subdued by passengers and crew after trying to blow up the plane.

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Friday it appeared Abdulmutallab was a member of al Qaeda and had been trained and equipped by the Islamic militant network in Yemen.

RISING CRITICISM

The announcement of the new security steps comes amid rising criticism by U.S. Republicans and others that American diplomatic and intelligence officials failed to prevent the December 25 incident despite having evidence about Abdulmutallab.

U.S. intelligence officials have said they believe that al Qaeda leaders are hiding out in Pakistan after being chased from Afghanistan during the war that began in 2001 in the weeks after the group's September 11 attacks on the United States. Most of the men who carried out the September 11 hijackings of U.S. airliners were Saudi-born.

Yemen also is emerging as a major area of al Qaeda activity, according to security experts.

The new rules apply to anyone with a passport from any of the 14 countries, and anyone stopping in those countries, the administration official said.

The Transportation Security Administration said it issued security directives to all U.S. and international airlines with inbound flights to the United States that would include random screening of passengers. This random screening policy applies to any airport in the world for flights coming to the United States, the official said.

"Because effective aviation security must begin beyond our borders, and as a result of extraordinary cooperation from our global aviation partners, TSA is mandating that every individual flying into the U.S. from anywhere in the world traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening," the agency said in the statement.

"The directive also increases the use of enhanced screening technologies and mandates threat-based and random screening for passengers on U.S.-bound international flights," it added.

NEW RULES AGREEABLE TO AIRLINES

All passengers are screened electronically for weapons and bombs regardless, and the new rules that include random enhancements appear more agreeable to airlines, which chaffed at broad requirements imposed after the December 25 incident.

Carriers complained about widespread delays and other passenger inconveniences, especially in Canada and Europe.

However, airlines will not be able to assess the full impact of the new regime on their operations for a few days.

Last week, airlines told Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that the system could not manage efficiently under a 100 percent pat-down mandate over the long term. Any changes to that routine would be welcome.

"Our goal remains to improve security and reduce the hassle factor for passengers," the International Air Transport Association, the lead trade group for international airlines, said in a statement to Reuters.

There were 25 million visitors to the United States in 2008 from Europe and Asia, according to IATA figures.

Carriers with transatlantic and transpacific flying include Delta Air Lines; Continental Airlines; American Airlines, a unit of AMR Corp; United Airlines, a unit of UAL Corp; British Airways; Air France/KLM; Germany's Lufthansa; and Japan Airlines.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6021...usmorningdigest

LaoPo

[sharecropper]

Cuba. Pathetic.

Why can't they just get over the Bay of Pigs fiasco?

[markm]

It'll be the thin edge of the wedge. US Security ignorance knows no boundaries and eventually all airports will have to adopt it. The US Security guidelines are all about reducing the potential risks, never mind civil rights, human rights or personal privacy rights.

Colour me racist if you want, but what’ll eventually happen is that any traveller that comes from a Islamic country known to have extremist activities will get photographed and logged onto a central database and if those persons will fly onto other countries they’ll be red-flagged as persons of special interest. This central database will eventually be deployed to cover land and sea ports to trap any potential terrorists from sneaking in that way. This database will get tied into the Immigration and customs systems so the monitoring and detection is automatic.

There will eventually be 2 secret tiers of security no one is supposed to know about, one for those that don’t fit the profile of an Muslim nut-job intending to cause murder and mayhem somewhere, and a far more intrusive security (penetrative body scan) for those that seem to fit the terrorist nut-job profile or are flagged as “person of special interest”. To keep the plebs from realising that there are 2 levels of counter-terrorism security deployed, there will be random smattering of those who don’t fit the profile going through the more intrusive security just for the amusement of the security goons.

There will eventually be a secret informant system put in place in college and university campuses around the world to report on suspicious gatherings of Muslim students, this data will then get fed into the central database and if one of those students who attended suspicious gatherings start travelling out of the country anywhere, they get flagged and singled out for monitoring. If a named student flies out to a red-flagged country, that student becomes permanently red-flagged as a person of special interest whether or not the trip is innocent.

Won’t be perfect until every living person on this blue ball in space is on that central database.

[gosompoi]

Thailand did not make the list!

[Jingthing]

Thailand did not make the list!

I still think we're gonna get the pat down here going to the US, just not the nudie scan.

[Jingthing]

OK, some more info on this. Profiling is going to happen for travelers coming into the US. This is separate from the automatic increased searching from the selected countries. The criteria for this profiling --

Single Male

Way you bought your ticket (presumably paying cash gives you bad man points, buying at the counter with cash gives you super bad man points, paying with satangs at the counter is unclassified)

Travel patterns (some secret formula they ain't gonna tell you)

So lets break this down. If you have two or three of these going on, wear clean underwear.

Edited January 4, 2010 by Jingthing

[puyaidon]

It seems a lot of people don't remember that Cuba was a major sponsor of terrorism albeit not airline highjackings or bombs. I am an American and although it is a pain to go through the screening, those who don't can get to the US by walking, car, taxi, truck, bus, ship or find some fool to fly an airplane without any pat-downs or screening.

While we have people who don't care who they kill, the rest of us have to bear the brunt of the aftermath. If you think about it, don't blame us Americans. We didn't start the practice of blowing up airplanes. We got hit twice before, the second by airplane. Now we have a third time also by our own military. We won't do it again, regardless what anyone thinks.

I don't like the 2nd amendment to the Constitution concerning guns but don't be surprised when you hear of certain people getting shot just because they belong to a certain group or look like the group. What we refer to as the good old boys like their guns and will take up arms to protect their rights and not adopt another religion or its tenants.

Those who don't agree, fine but why do so many people want to go to the US? If you can't figure it out, you have had a very minimal education.

[LaoPo]

Thailand did not make the list!

I still think we're gonna get the pat down here going to the US, just not the nudie scan.

Holland has 16* of those scan portals and ordered 60 more of which 20 will be installed already next week....it's the future and if one refuses....no seat, no flight.

I don't like it but there is no escape. Of course it's not 100% safe but it will become more and more difficult for terrorists to smuggle explosives on board.

And, thus they will move to other countries (with less security...), planes and crowded places to bomb themselves with many casualties

* at € 150,000 each

LaoPo

[david96]

Do not treat everyone equally, use the Israeli approach.

Race/Religion/Nationality and no Western "PC"

Mickey Mouse air security from "The Australian "08/01/2010

If not for extra security that profiled passengers according to the potential threat they posed, El Al's safety record would be considerably lower. Source: Reuters

AS hands are wrung in the aftermath of the near-tragedy on a Northwest Airlines flight approaching Detroit, a conversation from London's Heathrow airport in 1986 comes to mind.

It consisted of an El Al security agent quizzing Ann-Marie Doreen Murphy, a 32-year-old recent arrival in London from Sallynoggin, Ireland.

While working as a chambermaid at the Hilton Hotel on Park Lane, Murphy met Nizar al-Hindawi, a far-leftist Palestinian who impregnated her. After instructing her to "get rid of the thing," he abruptly changed his tune and insisted on immediate marriage in "the Holy Land". He also insisted on their travelling separately.

Murphy, later described by the prosecutor as a "simple, unsophisticated Irish lass and a Catholic," accepted unquestioningly Hindawi's arrangements for her to fly to Israel on El Al on April 17. She also accepted a wheeled suitcase with a false bottom containing nearly 2kg of Semtex, a powerful plastic explosive, and she agreed to be coached by him to answer questions posed by airport security.

Murphy successfully passed through the standard Heathrow security inspection and reached the gate with her bag, where an El Al agent questioned her. As reconstructed by Neil C. Livingstone and David Halevy in Washingtonian magazine, he started by asking whether she had packed her bags herself. She replied in the negative. Then:

"What is the purpose of your trip to Israel?" Recalling Hindawi's instructions, Murphy answered, "For a vacation."

"Are you married, Miss Murphy?" "No."

"Travelling alone?" "Yes."

"Is this your first trip abroad?" "Yes."

"Do you have relatives in Israel?" "No."

"Are you going to meet someone in Israel?" "No.

"Has your vacation been planned for a long time?" "No."

"Where will you stay while you're in Israel?" "The Tel Aviv Hilton."

"How much money do you have with you?" "Fifty pounds." The Hilton at that time costing at least pound stg. 70 a night, he asked:

"Do you have a credit card?" "Oh, yes," she replied, showing him an ID for cashing cheques.

That did it, and the agent sent her bag for additional inspection, where the bombing apparatus was discovered.

Had El Al followed the usual Western security procedures, 375 lives would surely have been lost somewhere over Austria.

The bombing plot came to light, in other words, through a non-technical intervention, relying on conversation, perception, common sense, and (yes) profiling.

The agent focused on the passenger, not the weaponry. Israeli counter-terrorism takes passengers' identities into account; accordingly, Arabs endure an especially tough inspection. "In Israel, security comes first," David Harris of the American Jewish Committee explains.

Obvious as this sounds, over-confidence, political correctness, and legal liability render such an approach impossible anywhere else in the West.

In the US, for example, one month after 9/11, the Department of Transportation issued guidelines forbidding its personnel from generalising "about the propensity of members of any racial, ethnic, religious, or national origin group to engage in unlawful activity." (Wear a hijab, I semi-jokingly advise women wanting to avoid secondary screening at airport security.)

Worse yet, consider the panicky Mickey-Mouse and embarrassing steps the US Transportation Security Administration implemented hours after the Detroit bombing attempt: no crew announcements "concerning flight path or position over cities or landmarks," and disabling all passenger communications services. During a flight's final hour, passengers may not stand up, access carry-on baggage, nor "have any blankets, pillows, or personal belongings on the lap".

Some crews went yet further, keeping cabin lights on throughout the night while turning off the in-flight entertainment, prohibiting all electronic devices, and, during the final hour, requiring passengers to keep hands visible and neither eat nor drink.

Things got so bad, the Associated Press reports, "A demand by one flight attendant that no one could read anything elicited

gasps of disbelief and howls of laughter."

Widely criticised for these Clousseau-like measures, TSA eventually decided to add "enhanced screening" for travellers passing through or originating from 14 "countries of interest" as though one's choice of departure airport indicates a propensity for suicide bombing.

The TSA engages in "security theatre" bumbling pretend-steps that treat all passengers equally rather than risk offending anyone by focusing, say, on religion. The alternative approach is Israelification, defined by Toronto's Star newspaper as "a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death".

Which do we want, theatrics or safety?

[kimamey]

It seems a lot of people don't remember that Cuba was a major sponsor of terrorism albeit not airline highjackings or bombs. I am an American and although it is a pain to go through the screening, those who don't can get to the US by walking, car, taxi, truck, bus, ship or find some fool to fly an airplane without any pat-downs or screening.

While we have people who don't care who they kill, the rest of us have to bear the brunt of the aftermath. If you think about it, don't blame us Americans. We didn't start the practice of blowing up airplanes. We got hit twice before, the second by airplane. Now we have a third time also by our own military. We won't do it again, regardless what anyone thinks.

I don't like the 2nd amendment to the Constitution concerning guns but don't be surprised when you hear of certain people getting shot just because they belong to a certain group or look like the group. What we refer to as the good old boys like their guns and will take up arms to protect their rights and not adopt another religion or its tenants.

Those who don't agree, fine but why do so many people want to go to the US? If you can't figure it out, you have had a very minimal education.

Some good points there. It's very difficult to screen people without being biased towards certain nationalities or religions. At the moment it's Muslims simply because a very small number want to kill anyone who doesn't agree with them. At one time in the UK it was the Irish. This was also due to a small minority who wanted to kill and unfortunately they got a lot of their help from the US. A lesson in changed attitudes. Don't forget that in many cases of course it is Muslims killing Muslims because they're the wrong sort.

Anyway let's hope this keeps us all safer wherever we are.

[featography]

OK, some more info on this. Profiling is going to happen for travelers coming into the US. This is separate from the automatic increased searching from the selected countries. The criteria for this profiling --

Single Male

Way you bought your ticket (presumably paying cash gives you bad man points, buying at the counter with cash gives you super bad man points, paying with satangs at the counter is unclassified)

Travel patterns (some secret formula they ain't gonna tell you)

So lets break this down. If you have two or three of these going on, wear clean underwear.

...traveling with no luggage, one way ticket, etc etc. Dead giveaways and there are many others. I am all for profiling, so any and all bleeding heart liberal civil right gungho tudes, keep your opinions of me to yourself. You wont change my mind. Dont throw the racist card at me either. Im maried to a Thai, have many black, and Vietnamese close friends in the states. Israel has been doing this a lot longer than we have, and they have always profiled. They have a superior safety track record in their airports too. Profiling works!!

[geriatrickid]

There have been a number of very good articles on the absolute waste that all this screening is. There is no point in raising the Israeli process, since Ben Gurion airport handles as many PAX as a mid sized EU or North American airport. There is no way the model would work at LHR or BKK or AMS. It is interesting to note however that Richard Reid the shoe bomber actually snagged a flight to Israel and back. He was on the watch list aand Ben Gurion screened and cleared him to fly. At least that's what my paper from yesterday says. The Israelis put an armed marshall next to him for the flight. The intent was to to say that hey we know who you are and we are prepared for you so don't even try it.

Cuba. Pathetic.

Why can't they just get over the Bay of Pigs fiasco?

Cuba has never sent armed terrorists into the USA. It has gone the other way with Cuban exile groups trying to cause disruptions in Cuba. The reality is that if it wasn't for this powerful lobby that can make or break a party's success in Florida, the US would have moved faster on normalization. Cuba is not an enemy of the USA. Chavez the wacko of Venezuela, Yes but not today's Cuba. I find it odd then when the USA was trying to assasinate Fidel or when Reagan and his proxy Ollie North were supporting right wing death squads in Central America, no one put the Americans on the watch list of evil.

I love the old chestnut of if America is so bad, why do so many people want to go there. Don't confuse immigration and travel. For many of us travelers, we have no choice because of the hub and spoke system. Whenever possible, I avoid transit into the USA because of the travel hassles. I am not anti American, but I'd rather pay a bit more and transit via Canada or Europe.

[Jingthing]

OK, some more info on this. Profiling is going to happen for travelers coming into the US. This is separate from the automatic increased searching from the selected countries. The criteria for this profiling --

Single Male

Way you bought your ticket (presumably paying cash gives you bad man points, buying at the counter with cash gives you super bad man points, paying with satangs at the counter is unclassified)

Travel patterns (some secret formula they ain't gonna tell you)

So lets break this down. If you have two or three of these going on, wear clean underwear.

...traveling with no luggage, one way ticket, etc etc. Dead giveaways and there are many others. I am all for profiling, so any and all bleeding heart liberal civil right gungho tudes, keep your opinions of me to yourself. You wont change my mind. Dont throw the racist card at me either. Im maried to a Thai, have many black, and Vietnamese close friends in the states. Israel has been doing this a lot longer than we have, and they have always profiled. They have a superior safety track record in their airports too. Profiling works!!

You are all falling for the security threater game. The terrorists learn the rules and simply work around them. They send people from OTHER countries. They bring on items that can't be detected even from a full body scan. They stick things up their body holes. Intelligence about SPECIFIC people is the wiser tactic. Israel is more interested in the specific PEOPLE as opposed to the STUFF. in their bags/bodies. The west has been mostly interested in their STUFF.

Edited January 10, 2010 by Jingthing

[NanLaew]

It seems a lot of people don't remember that Cuba was a major sponsor of terrorism albeit not airline highjackings or bombs. I am an American and although it is a pain to go through the screening, those who don't can get to the US by walking, car, taxi, truck, bus, ship or find some fool to fly an airplane without any pat-downs or screening.

While we have people who don't care who they kill, the rest of us have to bear the brunt of the aftermath. If you think about it, don't blame us Americans. We didn't start the practice of blowing up airplanes. We got hit twice before, the second by airplane. Now we have a third time also by our own military. We won't do it again, regardless what anyone thinks.

I don't like the 2nd amendment to the Constitution concerning guns but don't be surprised when you hear of certain people getting shot just because they belong to a certain group or look like the group. What we refer to as the good old boys like their guns and will take up arms to protect their rights and not adopt another religion or its tenants.

Those who don't agree, fine but why do so many people want to go to the US? If you can't figure it out, you have had a very minimal education.

Bay of Pigs? Close but no coconut. Cuba WAS a major sponsor of terrorism? Nope. North Korea has been testing nukes and firing rockets willy nilly and they don't even get an honorable mention. I see Qadafi's roost is back on the watch list. Is that because of that old guy that the Scottish allowed to go home to die is still dangerous?

As a dear Republican friend explained it to me many years ago when I was working in Cuba and commuting (via Cancun) to Houston, "America will never forget that Castro pointed a gun (Russian nukes) at the US." To me that makes sense of the depth of mistrust some feel but I do consider that the gun was never really cocked and, well.... it was a long time ago.

You can see why Cuba has been added to the list since apart from Nigeria (automatically qualifies as a knee-jerk reaction to the Delta-Detroit attempt), ALL the other countries ARE Muslim and one cannot leave oneself wide open to accusations of profiling, despite the in-your-face logic that it is one very good way to nip this one in the bud. There's that passenger list that all carriers with flights to the US must send ahead of the aircraft arrival that contains over 30 pieces of information on each passenger... EXCEPT their religion. Go figure.

Yup, there's just no tellin' wut them rednecks will get up to eh?

I did my 12 years in the US, got my Masters there and left..... and for the life of me, I still can't figure out why I chose to go there in the first place. But I don't let it take up too much space in my pretty little head.

[Jingthing]

The list of countries is POLITICAL (domestic politics at the expense of international popularity). Obama is in deep political doo doo. Now he feels his only hope to keep in power is to be Bush-ier than Bush. Allah help us all!

Edited January 10, 2010 by Jingthing