I bombed an airliner a few years ago. Just like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, I easily got my bomb through airport security. Unlike underpants man, however, I blew a big enough hole to bring my plane down in flight and kill everyone aboard.
This was, admittedly, television, not terrorism: a British Channel 4 Dispatches documentary. But the plane was real enough, part of a decommissioned passenger jet on the ground at a Hampshire airfield. And the bomb was real, too. We created it by mixing together two easily obtainable chemicals. I'm not telling you what they are, obviously, but they are colourless, odourless, undetectable by scanners and look like water to any security guard. I didn't need to worry about hiding them in my smalls; I and an accomplice could have brought them on board disguised as two bottles of mineral water.
I used a commercial detonator. But a homemade one, which can also be carried through security in a phone or an iPod, would have created just the same effect: a massive fireball which blew a large hole in the side of the cabin, snapping the aircraft's ribs. Had the explosion occurred in flight, there would have been rapid depressurisation and loss of control; at altitude, the damage would have been even greater, almost certainly bringing the aircraft down.
In the week since the Abdulmutallab attack, there have been the usual crass, simplistic demands for ever more intrusive airport security - scanners that figuratively strip us naked, and so on. But the purpose of my little demonstration, and the reason for recalling it now, is to show that ever more intrusive blanket checks are the wrong answer.
Unless we are all actually forced to strip naked at the airport - and probably not even then - the fact is that we can never erect a Berlin wall to physically stop everyone taking bad things on planes. All our efforts to do so, all the silly routines to which we dutifully submit, are at best a minor hindrance, a deterrent to nutters; at worst a charade and a distraction from the real target.
In my documentary, Philip Baum, the editor of the magazine Aviation Security International, said he could not recall a single time when a bomb had been found using an airport X-ray machine alone. Airport security, he said, was ''theatre'', designed to reassure the public rather than to stop bombers. The Abdulmutallab case would seem to support this view.
Many airport X-ray machines cannot, in fact, detect most types of explosives: Baum ran a recent trial for a European government in which a woman passed successfully through 24 different airports with the complete components of a bomb concealed on her body. But even if the technology was better (and it is, to be fair, improving), it's largely beside the point. At the moment, aviation security is about looking for suspicious things. It should be about looking for suspicious people.
That doesn't mean scrutiny on the basis of race. To single out all young south Asian men would, given the vast numbers of them passing through an airport such as Heathrow, be almost as blanket and pointless as what we do now.
It means scrutiny on the basis of behaviour. A would-be bomber will show greater stress and nervousness than the average. Those with such signs could be selected for extra checks that would have a better chance of detecting a bomb. Unlike blanket checks, this procedure has found bombers in the past.
By the time a bomber reaches the airport, however, it is probably too late. And even if we can improve airport security's strike rate for passengers boarding planes, there is nothing to prevent a terrorist blowing himself up in the check-in area.
Airport security means, above all, starting long before the airport, with intelligence. Abdulmutallab was already known to the authorities, and on a watch list; it should therefore have been very easy to single him out for extra checks. That was the failure in this case.
That is the answer, not ever more machines, ever more guards, and ever more grannies taking off their shoes.
One of the defining characteristics of Western governments, such as Britain's Labour Government - from child-molester checks on school volunteers to ID cards - is its belief that everyone is a suspect. Not only is that illiberal, it just doesn't work. What it means is that the guilty get missed because the authorities are spending too much time hassling the innocent. That lesson applies as much to airport security as to any other area.
Andrew Gilligan is London editor at The Daily Telegraph.
3 comments so far
Another answer would be for some form of profiling to take place.
Even if behaviour would become a marker, wouldn't the writer think that al Qaeda or their like would find a way around this? For example, they would give their bombers tranquilisers or some other medication before arriving? Or pick mentally disabled people, as in Iraq?
Even if it meant all men, I would be happy to go through the inconvenience. We must not be afraid to discriminate on the basis of race or religion, otherwise fruiltess expense, in both lives and money will be the case for years.
It's not up to the flying public and the authorities to prove they are not 'racist' or 'Islamophobic' but on the communities or areas that al Qaeda stem from to prove that they are safe to fly.
Perhaps certain airlines could profile like El Al (Israel) as part of their service package?
As a long suffering pilot I, and other pilots and associated airport workers, have pointed out how ineffective and costly the measures taken have been. Of course we were the last to be listened to by the powers that be in the gov't, gov't agencies and airports. What makes you think that clear thinking and logic will play any part in the future crippling ieffective measures that willl be taken? The labor mob in power have a history of spending big, talking big but making no progress, they will not change. All kevin747 wants is to be reelected and if it means destroying the aviation industry he will not care. This does not excuse Howard but they have been out of power for years.
Gin - I wish you could keep local politics out of this. You destroyed your credibility with that. Howard's mob told us boat people were bad because they could be terrorists. All point scoring. From both sides. And it's obviously a global problem, not just Australian.
I agree with Andrew Gilligan that smart terrorists could be bombing planes, airports, trains (remember Spain), buses (London) with impunity if they really were organised and motivated in that direction. But generally, they're not. It's the pollies that want us to think it's always the nasty Al Qaeda, or their friends, but the recent attacks have been solo or small group efforts. The security checks are designed to convince moron voters that governments are saving us.
Am I cynical?
Already a Fairfax Digital Member? Log in
Simply log in below to start commenting on articles.
Not a member? Sign up for a free account.
Please check the following fields before continuing:
Read Full Article »