US scraps screening, introduces profiling

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

By Anwar Iqbal
Saturday, 03 Apr, 2010
http://www.pakrealestatetimes.com/attach...hp?aid=576
WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday discarded a list of 14 nations, including Pakistan, whose citizens required additional screening at American airports.

The new criteria selects passengers for additional security based on possible matches to intelligence information, including physical descriptions, age or a particular travel pattern.

An official announcement in Washington said that the US Transportation Security Administration will begin implementing new security policy from this month and it will apply to all air carriers with international flights to the United States.

US Secretary for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano told journalists that “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”.

Separately, a US official told Dawn in Washington that “the principled engagement of Pakistan’s leadership on this matter with the US resulted in this policy change”.

The official said that US special envoy Richard Holbrooke first learned about the negative impact of the now abandoned policy from Pakistani officials during his January visit to Islamabad.

“And he successfully agitated within the US administration to get the rules changed, as he saw the policy as ‘discriminatory’ and inconsistent with the administration’s desire to build a new kind of relationship with Pakistan,” the official said.

Starting in April, security personnel at US airports will match passengers with the information provided by the Department of Homeland Security for potential terrorist threats. Only those who match the new description for people of interest will be marked out for additional screening.

For example, if the US has intelligence about a Nigerian man between the ages of 22 and 32 whom officials believe is a threat or a known terrorist, under the new policy all Nigerian men within that age range will receive extra screening before they are allowed to fly to the United States. If intelligence later shows that the suspect is not a terrorist; that particular traveller will not be screened against that description.

The intelligence-based targeting will be in addition to screening names on terror watch lists. The government’s “no fly” list of suspected terrorists, who are banned from flights to, or within, US territory, has about 6,000 names.

The new rules are replacing the more stringent set of guidelines that occurred after the attempted shoe bombing of a flight in Detroit on Christmas day. Under the old rules everyone in those 14 countries received a full body pat down.

The countries affected include: Afghanistan, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

The new guidelines were put into place as part of a review ordered by President Barack Obama.

The move comes largely as an attempt to stop the inconvenience that has occurred for thousands of innocent travellers who have been patted down and targeted.

Last month, six Fata lawmakers returned to Pakistan in protest after refusing a body scan at the Dulles International Airport in Washington.

An observation that several of the 14 countries on the suspect list had begun to implement their own more stringent screening for travellers also convinced Washington to change the old procedure.

The Transportation Security Administration said the new measures were part of a threat-based aviation security system covering all passengers travelling by air to the United States.

Under the new arrangement, passengers travelling to the United States from international destinations may notice enhanced security and random screening measures throughout the passenger check-in and boarding process, including the use of explosives trace detection, advanced imaging technology, canine teams, or pat downs, among other security measures.

On Friday, the US Department of Homeland Security also released a surface transportation security priority assessment, which covers mass transit, commuter and long-distance passenger rail, freight rail, commercial vehicles and pipelines.

It provides a new framework for the improvement of surface transportation security and identifies discrete areas of focus for security officials.