Counter Terror Gazette

AIR WATCH – HIJACKS

24 APRIL       ROME Kazakhstan’s delegate to UNESCO, Valery Tolmachev, 48, attempted to hijack an Alitalia flight, which had departed Paris, to Tripoli, Libya. He was armed with a small knife with which he threatened a flight attendant. SEE MORE  

AIR WATCH – SABOTAGE & ATTACKS

12 APRIL       AUCKLAND    S&A A Pacific Blue flight, arriving in Auckland from Brisbane, was targeted by a laser. 24 APRIL       LOS ANGELES Danny Anthony Lopez, 18, allegedly opened fire on a police helicopter forcing it to make an emergency landing at the nearby Van Nuys Airport after its fuel tank was hit. Lopez was firing [...]

AIR WATCH – THREATS

29 APRIL       NEW YORK Christian Boncorps, 61, allegedly told an Air France ticket agent at JFK that “My name is bin Laden, and I have a bomb in my bag” when checking in for his flight to Paris. Boncorps was charged with filing a false report and later fined $250. 29 APRIL       EL CALAFATE, CALIFORNIA [...]

AIR WATCH – JUDGEMENTS & ARRESTS

26 APRIL       BANGKOK Mozawi Mazum, 27, was arrested on arrival off a Mahan Air flight from Tehran for drug smuggling after customs officials found crystal methamphetamine worth about 1.5 million Thai baht in packages in his stomach. Transmission X-ray revealed 56 packages of the drug, weighing a total 430g. 3 MAY           MIAMI Orville Braham, 38, [...]

AIR WATCH – INCIDENTS

3 APRIL         ABIDJAN, IVORY COAST As the country descended towards civil war, the French army took control over Ivory Coast’s main international airport.   6 APRIL         MELBOURNE The Qantas domestic terminal at Melbourne Airport was evacuated after a security breach into the restricted zone. 8 APRIL         CLEVELAND The airport had to be evacuated due to [...]

AIR WATCH – UNRULY PASSENGERS

6 APRIL         CHICAGO An American Airlines flight, en route from Dallas Ft. Worth to Paris, diverted due to a disruptive passenger on board. 18 APRIL       REYKJAVIK Disruptive behaviour on board a LOT Polish Airlines flight from Chicago to Warsaw, that involved a flight attendant being hit in the face, resulted in the Captain electing to [...]

X-ray Image Enhancement: optimising the viewpoint

From zoom to negative and outline tracing to high penetration, the X-ray operator has numerous image enhancement options at his or her disposal. How can they be turned from gimmicks into useful interpretation tools? Paul Quellin describes and illustrates just what can be achieved with tried and tested X-ray technology.

Although it had been around for quite some time, X-ray screening really became firmly established as the standard for passenger cabin baggage inspection in the early 1980s. Operator consoles were relatively simple and there were few image enhancements available; indeed with some early machines which were still around in the early eighties, there were no enhancements at all. I can recall using the one remaining fluoroscope at Manchester Airport, shortly before it was hastily spirited away when it was decided it probably wasn’t safe for us to operate! We have come quite a long way since then, but we might ask if we have come far enough given that we have had three decades to improve. The basic principles of X-ray – laws of physics – can’t really be changed. The quality of the image presented to the operator has certainly improved, and there have been some significant advances, such as the development of multi energy colour and dual or multi view systems. Latterly, it really seems to be the operator workstations and their image enhancement functions which distinguish the main machine manufacturers from each other.

Stress Response: a Physiological Analysis

Disruptive passenger incidents can be caused by an individual being in a state of high stress, either due to anxiety / phobia of flying, or due to external life stressors they may be experiencing. And although rare occurrences, an individual exhibiting manifestations of stress may have criminal intent, such as a hijacking or suicide bombing. Knowing and interpreting the signs of stress can play a crucial role in passenger profiling and the questioning of individuals. What behavioural indicators and body responses indicate that a person is experiencing high stress levels? Siriol Haf Griffiths looks at the human nervous system and highlights what to look out for and why the body responds in such a way.

Man vs. Nature: taking back perimeter security through enhanced technologies

Nuisance alarms, caused by natural and benign environmental events, have been unavoidable in an uncontrolled perimeter setting, without sacrificing detection capabilities, and are notoriously resource-intensive to resolve. Anna Hamilton explores improvements in security technologies that help abate nuisance alarms, and, with them, the ongoing monitoring costs that have long deterred many airports from installing technology-based perimeter security systems.
An airport’s perimeter, though understood to be a major concern for security vulnerabilities, is often protected by little more than a fence line and security patrols. Even major airports with technology-based perimeter security programmes will concede to gaps within their systems. For most facilities, the costs to install, maintain, and monitor perimeter security devices have long been more than are viable for the relative risk of the areas they would be installed to protect.

The Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques Programme: analysing the issues

The Transportation Security Administration implemented the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques (SPOT) programme in selected United States airports from 2003 as a counterterrorism strategy. Melissa Perry and Andrew Gilbey consider some of the issues underpinning the programme given that it has, according to a Government Accountability Office(GAO) report, failed to catch a single terrorist and, despite substantial investment, may have achieved nothing in terms of aviation security gains.

The ability to identify people whose aim is to threaten aviation security before they actually strike, by simply observing their behaviour, would offer a significant breakthrough in aviation security. Whilst this idea may sound like it has been borrowed from George Orwell’s novel 1984, it is in fact a real programme now in operation at 161 US airports.