WASHINGTON – The United States has announced new security measures to replace the mandatory screening of air travellers from 14 countries that had angered some allies when it was imposed after a failed bombing on Christmas Day.
The measures are designed to significantly reduce the number of passengers pulled aside for additional screening and will not be based on nationality or passport but on characteristics put together by intelligence agencies.
“These new measures utilise real-time, threat-based intelligence along with multiple, random layers of security, both seen and unseen, to more effectively mitigate evolving terrorist threats,” homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano said.
A senior administration official, who spoke to reporters yesterday on condition of anonymity, said the new system would require travellers who matched information about terrorism suspects – such as a physical description, partial name or travel pattern – to undergo additional screening.
“So it’s much more tailored to what the ‘intel’ 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.
He described the measures being scrapped as a “blunt-force instrument”.
The names of terrorism suspects identified by the US government will continue to be included on security watch lists and no-fly lists as part of airline security.
The new policy affects all travellers coming into the US. The measures in force since January required that passengers travelling in from 14 countries be subjected to especially rigorous pre-flight screening.
The US government implemented the security measures after a Nigerian man tried to detonate explosives hidden in his underwear on a flight to Detroit from Amsterdam on December 25th.
Questions have been raised about why Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who has been charged with trying to blow up the airliner, was not stopped before he got on the flight.
The 14 countries on a US blacklist of “state sponsors of terrorism” were Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.
Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Nigeria – US partners in the fight against al-Qaeda – were angered at being on the list.
Under the new measures, if there is intelligence information about, for example, an individual of interest coming from a particular Asian country who recently travelled to certain countries in the Middle East and was of a certain nationality and age range, that data would be compared with the background of travellers to the US at foreign airports.
Anyone fitting the data could be subjected to additional screening procedures and pulled aside for questioning by airline or airport security officials.
US officials have been consulting countries and foreign carriers with direct flights into the US about airline security, the administration official said.
“It is designed to be much more tailored so that we don’t stop everybody coming from a certain country, because that information is out, and if I’m a terrorist, the last thing I want to do then is send somebody with this passport, going that way,” the official pointed out.
The US government also yesterday released a review of rail security conducted over the past year in a report called Surface Transportation Security Priority Assessment.
The review provides recommendations and guidelines on improving security on rail transportation. – (Reuters)