Here is something I found in the Washington Post on Saturday
By Roberto Suro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 31 1996; Page A01
The Washington Post
A presidential commission on aviation security is considering a bomb detection plan that would require U.S. airlines to scrutinize all passengers at U.S. airports using massive computer files to identify potential terrorists or other suspicious individuals, according to senior federal officials.
If the plan is enacted, the federal government would require creation of a computer profiling system that would examine passengers' bill-paying records, flying habits and much other data to determine which checked baggage should undergo examination by sophisticated explosives detection equipment.
Passengers would become aware of the new procedure only if a machine suggested a bomb were present in their baggage, and it had to be opened for a physical check.
Numerous legal issues still need to be resolved, including thorny civil liberties questions such as whether the airlines would be given access to information from government computer systems like those containing criminal records.
Nevertheless, a plan combining computerized profiling and high-tech detection devices is the chief option being presented to the commission by federal agencies and White House staff, according to senior officials involved in the deliberations.
The commission was created by President Clinton in the wake of the suspicious July 17 explosion of Trans World Airlines Flight 800, which killed 230 people. The panel, headed by Vice President Gore, is due to recommend a plan on Sept. 9 for installing a nationwide explosives detection system.
Under the proposal, the Federal Aviation Administration would establish the criteria for passenger profile databases, but they would be operated by the airlines, probably in connection with reservation systems. Officials said that in addition to the civil liberties concerns, a key technical challenge is to create a profiling method that would recognize potential threats with a high degree of certainty.
"This is something that if you don't have a bit of an ulcer about it initially, it is because you don't understand the problem," said Cathal L. Flynn, associate FAA administrator for civil aviation security.
The chief advantage of computerized profiling is that it allows authorities to determine that a large majority of passengers are not suspicious, thus greatly reducing the number of bags requiring examination. That in turn resolves a problem that has bedeviled airport security officials around the world for years: the kind of equipment sensitive enough to detect most bombs operates too slowly and is too expensive to use on every suitcase checked on an airplane without creating unacceptable delays.
"Anyone who has thought this through realizes that [passenger] profiling has to be part of the way we resolve the dilemmas inherent in creating an explosive detection system," said Elaine Kamarck, a senior policy adviser to Gore. His 18-member commission is made up primarily of current and former government officials and technical experts.
Kamarck, who is directing staff work for the commission, noted the Customs Service has made extensive use of computerized profiling to improve efficiency of baggage and cargo inspection procedures at Miami International Airport as part of Gore's government reengineering initiative.
Rather than screen all bags and cargo as in the past, Customs officials in Miami now use profiling to identify the majority of material that does not merit close scrutiny, such as cargo from regular, well-known shippers. That has allowed a concentration of resources on suspicious travelers and cargoes and, as a result, drug seizures have increased, Customs officials say.
In the wake of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, Congress passed a law in 1990 requiring installation of a nationwide airport bomb detection system, but a variety of factors has stymied the effort. Clinton, in his acceptance speech to the Democratic National Convention Thursday night, reiterated his commitment to quick deployment of such a system.
So far, only one device has been proposed for certification under the strict requirements for explosives detection developed by the FAA in conjunction with law enforcement and scientific agencies under mandates established in the 1990 law. That device, certified in December 1994, is the CTX-5000 manufactured by InVision Technologies Inc. of Foster City, Calif.
The CTX-5000 uses a combination of rapid computing capacity, X-rays and CAT scans of the sort used in medical diagnosis to locate suspicious objects and then analyze its mass and density. However, in extensive field trials the machine has proved too slow to handle the full flow of a major airport baggage-handling system, according to federal officials.
Computerized profiling would identify most passengers as families on vacation, frequent business travelers or some other category of person unlikely to pose a threat. The remaining baggage, belonging to anyone not easily cleared, would be subjected to inspection by a sensitive device, like the CTX-5000.
Such a plan is not the only solution to the challenge of finding bombs in checked baggage.
Britain, Belgium and several other European countries have developed systems that rely on several layers of detection devices. In these systems a cruder but quicker detection device, like a high powered X-ray, checks baggage first.
It allows most bags to be passed on to the aircraft but diverts some deemed suspicious to a closer check by slower and more thorough devices, like the CTX-5000.
Israel uses a combination of profiling and intensive interviewing of passengers in a process that also winnows down the number of people and bags that require closer scrutiny. Israeli airports also use detection equipment, including the CTX-5000, to examine suspect baggage.
The European system, because it relies on an initial look by devices less sensitive than those mandated under U.S. standards, has been judged by U.S. officials as potentially unreliable, particularly for unusual or hard-to-detect explosives.
Computerized profiling, as it will be presented to the Gore commission, would look at a wide range of information about passengers, according to Flynn.
"They'll need to be able to determine that you are who you say you are, that you are of fixed abode, that you are traveling with family, that you have so many miles flying recently with that airline, that you have been paying and receiving bills at a certain address," Flynn said. "There are those fields and many, many more others that will go into determining who gets selected for detection."
Flynn emphasized the objective of computerized profiling is not to catch potential wrongdoers of any sort.
Rather, the goal is to identify all the people among those boarding a plane whose baggage might justify further scrutiny.
"We are going to err on a whole lot of people whose bags are going to be screened and who are innocent, and that error in favor of screening innocent baggage will be by a factor of several million to one" over luggage of guilty parties, Flynn said.
U.S. airlines mow use several types of profiling under heightened security measures mandated by the FAA over the past year. For example, someone who pays cash for a ticket and is traveling alone will undergo more detailed questioning at the check-in counter than other travelers.
In the past, airlines had been expected to assume the multimillion-dollar costs of acquiring and installing an explosive detection system, but since the TWA 800 crash the Clinton administration has indicated it will propose government funding for a substantial part of the initial expense.
The FAA has supported research and development work on computerized profiling since February 1994, and is now funding a development project with Northwest Airlines.
Virtually the entire federal law enforcement and intelligence establishment has participated in developing the criteria for a database, Flynn said. Since the TWA crash "we have been accelerating the hell out of it," Flynn said, predicting development work could be completed within months.
But even then, he said, "there are a whole variety of constitutional and legal questions that will still have to be resolved before this can go forward." Would the airlines store information on individuals? Would they go out and seek information from credit bureaus and other private sources?
An important factor in favor of the plan, he argued, is that by moving toward deployment with profiling and the CTX-5000 the government will create incentives for high-tech industries to enter the field more aggressively.
"We can show that it can be done," Flynn said, "and that is going to cause boards and heads of engineering departments to say, `Don't tell me it cannot be done. Let's do it cheaper, faster and better.' "
Such equipment emerging from private laboratories might lessen reliance on profiling, Flynn said, but, in the meantime, he acknowledged the Gore commission will have to wrestle with the unknowns of a system that relies on computerized judgments on human personalities and a detection device that is still undergoing field trials. |
