23-Dec-18: In the UK, what we used to know about airport safety suddenly looks so 1990s

Massive disruption at Gatwick this week [Image Source]

As the UK deals with the strange and unsettling experience of one of its most strategically important airports being left in a state of total paralysis as the holiday travel season reaches its peak, thoughtful Brits will be contemplating some even fresher - and certainly no less disturbing - news.

Gatwick Airport, the UK's second-busiest, was the scene of a still-perplexing series of massive anxiety attacks this week:

After rogue drones forced it to close for 32 hours this week, the airport, one of Europe’s busiest, reopened Friday morning and had a nearly 12-hour uninterrupted run of takeoffs and landings. Then came an unconfirmed drone sighting, forcing the airport to close yet again, although briefly, leaving planes circling above and travelers fuming in the terminals. And by the time flights resumed Friday night, many questions remained: What was behind the incursions? Why couldn’t they be stopped more quickly? And is Britain doing enough to keep the devices away from airports and other sensitive spots? Early Saturday, the police in Sussex announced that they had arrested a man and a woman on suspicion on the “criminal use” of the drones... ["Two Arrests, and Many Questions, as Gatwick Reopens After Drone Threat", New York Times, December 21, 2018]

The answers, when they come, are unlikely to calm the fears of rational Brits. It's clear enough that the huge disruption at Gatwick, whatever its actual details (which at this stage are sketchy) can be reproduced and exacerbated at will by any trouble-minded copy-cat; sustainable protective and defensive measures are almost certainly on the agenda of the authorities but in the nature of things, are unlikely to be implemented as rapidly as they are needed.

But then what if people with serious and deadly malice on their minds, let's say, read the news reports and decide to test those not-yet-in-place defences? And not necessarily in the UK, or in the UK only, but elsewhere?

The issue is far from speculative and not at all fanciful. Underscoring the potential for serious trouble, a Times of London report under the byline of its political editor, Tim Shipman, this morning makes that painfully clear. 

Highlights to mull:

• The UK's Minister of State for Security and Economic Crime Ben Wallace met with senior UK airport managers a week ago, prior to the Gatwick chaos, in order to to discuss what's now known about threats to their facilities including the “insider threat” of jihadist sleeper agents working undercover at airports.
• "Al-Qaeda is resurgent and seeking to carry out new terrorist atrocities against airliners and airports, [he] warned last night. The terrorist group behind the 9/11 attacks in 2001 poses a growing threat that is keeping ministers “awake at night”, he told The Sunday Times... They have reorganised. They are pushing more and more plots towards Europe and have become familiar with new methods and still aspire to aviation attacks.”
• "...The decline of Isis meant al-Qaeda would seek to reassert itself as the world’s leading terror group and an aviation spectacular would be its calling card.... al-Qaeda is developing technology to bring down passenger jets using miniaturised bombs and drones packed with explosives." 
• "Security sources say sketches of drones designed to deliver bombs were discovered during a recent terrorist investigation in the UK. British businesses have also been warned that Islamist terrorists are seeking to mount attacks using a drone armed with explosives or chemicals."
• "British intelligence chiefs are concerned that Donald Trump’s decision last week to withdraw US troops from Syria will create a new safe haven for Islamists to launch attacks on the West. The UK found out about his decision only when he tweeted it on Wednesday."
• Especially depressing is his advice about how useful current, and very intrusive, security arrangements directed at ordinary travelers are. "Wallace said improvements in airport security meant terrorists were less likely to smuggle explosive through terminal security systems: “They have explored other ways of getting bombs on planes. We’ve talked publicly about an insider threat issue. If you can’t get in the front door, you’re going to try to get in the back door.”" ["Al-Qaeda terror group returns to target airliners and airports", Times of London, December 23, 2018]

Meanwhile, UK travelers are still absorbing the scale of the impact on their lives from what, at least at this moment, looks like a criminal offence at worst with no immediate connection to terrorism:

The drone sightings had forced the cancellation or diversion of more than 1,000 flights over three days, affecting some 140,000 people, officials said. On Saturday, Gatwick warned passengers to expect still more delays and cancellations and to check their flight status before going to the airport... [British] officials identified the two [suspects] as Paul Gait, 47, and his wife Elaine Kirk, 54... from Crawley, a town just south of the airport. The couple are suspected of disrupting civil aviation services and endangering people or operations — offenses that carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, according to the police. They have not been formally charged and are still in custody, but the police did not release further details. The incident exposed the vulnerabilities of the airport to outside interference and drew attention to the limitations of security officials responding to such a threat at a peak travel time... ["Married Couple Arrested Over Drone Incursions at Gatwick Airport", New York Times, December 22, 2018]

It's evident that whatever the solution, technology will be part, but only part, of fighting back. We noticed some reporting in a Russian source about the things technology can potentially do in ameliorating the drome threat:

UK authorities could use an Israeli-made "Drone Dome" system that the British army acquired in August 2018 to take down the drones, which had been disrupting Gatwick Airport's operations for the last two days. The equipment, seen on the rooftop of a building near the airport and operated by the UK police looks just like the "Drone Dome" components in the photos, published in 2016 by several media platforms. The DJI system is capable of not just detecting drones and hijacking their controls, but also of tracking down the person, who controlled it. Its major downside is that it is not compatible with all drones. On the other hand, "Drone Dome" can take down any drone, by either hacking and landing it or by shooting it down with powerful laser. ["What is 'Drone Dome' That UK Could Have Used to Take Down Gatwick UAV", Sputnik News, December 22, 2018]

What the Russian report calls "Drone Dome", a system developed by two of Israel's major defense firms Rafael and RADA, is described in this recent Times of Israel report: "UK army said to use Israeli-made system to end drone chaos at London airport".

UPDATE Sunday December 23, 2018 at 2:30 pm: So who is actually behind the drone assault (if that's what it was) on Gatwick? At this point, and despite the certainty generated by a proliferation of news reports referring to a specific couple, it seems ["Gatwick drones pair 'no longer suspects'", BBC, this afternoon] no one actually knows:

A man and woman arrested in connection with drone sightings that grounded flights at Gatwick Airport have been released without charge. The 47-year-old man and 54-year-old woman, from Crawley, West Sussex, were arrested on Friday night on suspicion of "the criminal use of drones"... Sussex Police said the pair were no longer suspects. Det Ch Supt Jason Tingley said: "Both people have fully co-operated with our inquiries and I am satisfied that they are no longer suspects in the drone incidents at Gatwick... "Our inquiry continues at a pace to locate those responsible for the drone incursions, and we continue to actively follow lines of investigation."

29-Jun-16: Footnotes to the Istanbul human-bomb horror

From ABC NEWS television coverage [here]

It's striking to read, on the morning after an awful massacre carried out by terrorists in one of the world's dozen busiest airports, that the first instinct of the politicians is to reach for a fig-leaf. And to be clear, it's surely not a uniquely-Turkish phenomenon.

What do we know now? According to Associated Press this morning

Suicide attackers killed dozens and wounded more than 140 at Istanbul's busy Ataturk Airport, as Turkish officials blamed Tuesday's massacre at the international terminal on three suspected Islamic State group militants. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said 36 were dead as well as the three suicide bombers. Justice Minister Bekir Bozdag said 147 were wounded. Another senior government official told The Associated Press the death toll could climb much higher...
Yildirim said the attackers arrived at the airport in a taxi and blew themselves up after opening fire... Another Turkish official said two of the attackers detonated explosives at the entrance of the international arrivals terminal after police fired at them, while the third blew himself up in the parking lot. The official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government regulations, cited interior ministry information and said that none of the attackers managed to get past security checks at the terminal's entrance. Turkish airports have security checks at both the entrance of terminal buildings and then later before entry to departure gates...
Yildirim said there was no security lapse at the airport, but added the fact the attackers were carrying weapons "increased the severity" of the attack.

A BBC report today (archived here) points out that

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said early signs suggested the so-called Islamic State was behind the attack... Ataturk airport was long seen as a vulnerable target, our Turkey correspondent adds, reporting from a plane stuck on the tarmac in Istanbul. There are X-ray scanners at the entrance to the terminal but security checks for cars are limited.

Children run out of the airport terminal to safety
[Image Source]

BBC also points out that a US state department travel warning for Turkey, originally published in March and updated just this past Monday

urges US citizens to "exercise heightened vigilance and caution when visiting public access areas, especially those heavily frequented by tourists."

Our hearts go out to the Turks (where one of our children acquired some first-rate professional training at an Istanbul university a few years back), especially to those hurt last night, and to the families of those who tragically will not be coming home. The process ahead of them, adjusting to life after being the targets of a terrorist attack, is not simple and comfort is likely to come only in the far-distant future, if ever.

To recap on the basis of the brief, but authoritative, reports above:

1. Notwithstanding the horrific loss of life, "no security lapse" happened. 
2. Very fortunately, none of the attackers managed to get past security checks at the terminal's entrance. That must have been a great relief, says nobody.
3. Leaving aside the quality of the airport security arrangements, Ataturk airport security's checking of cars is "limited". (When the US very properly call for "heightened vigilance" by tourists, are we meant to know which airports adequately check incoming vehicles? How?)
4. In some way that is somehow significant, the killers arrived by taxi. Are vigilant travelers expected to avoid airports that allow taxis to pull up at the terminal? (Does anyone have a list?)
5. The attackers carried weapons and that "increased the severity". That might even be a reasonable observation until you start to ponder whether the authorities have an actual plan for preventing such weapons-borne atrocities in the future. 
6. The terrorists carried bombs. We wish the news reports had said they were bombs - human bombs. That is what each of the three known attackers was. It's what they ought to be called.

Note that neither AP nor BBC mention "terror" or "jihad" even once, in accordance with addled editorial policies that contribute nothing to ordinary people's comprehension of the issue and, in our opinion, add to the likelihood of yet more lethal political decision-making in the future.

No report anywhere (at least none we have seen) calls the Istanbul attackers what they actually are: "human bombs". This is a mistake because whatever brought them to Ataturk last night, this was about murder; suicide was never their goal. That's true even if the nature of the ideology likely motivating them made them indifferent to the outcome so far as it affected their own well-being and lives.

Last night's horror was based not on the self-destructive motivations that characterize suicide but by a profound, overwhelming hatred, identifiable in many places inside and outside Turkey at this very moment. It stems as well from a theologically-inspired sense of massively-lethal religious mission - something that is being inculcated into millions of people's heads at this minute, right under our noses.

UPDATE June 29, 2016 at 3:30 pm: The toll keeps rising...

"At least 41 people were killed, 130 injured Tuesday in a triple suicide bombing and gun attack at Istanbul's main Atatürk airport, in the latest deadly strike to rock Turkey's most-populated city, which had many similarities with the deadly attacks carried out in Brussels in March. Flights partially resumed in the airport on Wednesday morning, while many of the schedule flights were cancelled or delayed. Reports have said that one Ukrainian and one Iranian national was among those who were killed by the terrorist attack in the airport. Among the 37 identified victims were 10 foreign nationals and three dual citizens..." [Daily Sabah (Istanbul), today]

10-Jun-15: Taking counter-terrorism measures seriously: are we all on the same page?

PreCheck program probably makes sense if it's done right, but
is it? [Click to visit TSA site]

As the summer travel season gets into full-swing, millions of passengers passing through airports are going to encounter security officials and the counter-terror processes they administer. Most of us, one way or another, justify the inconvenience, and often the indignity, of the experience with the thought that, on the whole, it contributes to our personal security. And it stops the terrorists.

But it's far from being that simple. A syndicated Agence France-Presse report, datelined Washington DC and published in the early hours of this morning, includes revelations that ought to stop travelers in their tracks:

Dozens of US airport workers linked to terror: official | AFP | June 10, 2015
Last week, Homeland Security head Jeh Johnson announced new measures to improve security screenings at American airports after investigators were able to smuggle mock explosives and weapons through checkpoints dozens of times.... [A] report revealed that American airports had hired dozens of people with terror links. The Transportation Security Agency is already reeling after a recent Department of Homeland Security report found that investigators could sneak fake bombs and weaponry through security with a 95 percent success rate... [T]he TSA failed to detect at least 73 people with links to terrorism who were hired by US airports... Becky Roering, an assistant security director at the Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport, told the hearing that former "badged" employees had even gone to Syria to join the Islamic State group... More than a million people have signed up for the TSA's PreCheck program, and another seven million have been randomly chosen for expedited boarding checks. In one case, a former member of an extremist organization found himself randomly given access to the PreCheck line but a TSA worker recognized him and alerted his superior... "TSA is handing out 'PreCheck' status like Halloween candy in an effort to expedite passengers as quickly as possible," Roering said... Roering also said TSA staff have low morale and work in a climate of fear and distrust.

In another news source today, the same TSA official is quoted offering some background for the bizarre state of affairs:

Roering said enrollment in the program had fallen short, with only about a million people signed up. So the TSA had started letting unapproved passengers go through the quicker PreCheck screening lines despite the risks. ["TSA Whistleblower Says PreCheck Is Weak Point in U.S. Airport Security", Reuters, today]

The report criticizing the US Transport Safety Authority happens to have been the subject of an interrupted Senate discussion yesterday (Tuesday) in Washington.

...U.S. Capitol Police received a bomb threat that forced the evacuation of a hearing on the TSA in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. Secret Service officers covered up the press cameras in the briefing room during the evacuation to protect methods and practices used by the agency to investigate bomb threats... [T]he first bomb threat was made targeting a specific location, which is what caused the USCP to take the threat more seriously. The aide said the caller described a device that had been placed in the Homeland Security Committee offices on the third floor of the Dirksen building. [CNN, June 10, 2015]

Then just a couple of hours later, 

In the middle of White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest's daily briefing, officials told all reporters to evacuate the briefing room. The North Lawn of the White House was also cleared. The Secret Service said a bomb threat had been called in at 1:53 p.m. to the DC Metropolitan Police Department targeting the briefing room specifically... Secret Service officials said they couldn't discuss any potential connection between the White House and Capitol Hill threats. [CNN, June 10, 2015]

In slightly bizarre White House briefing yesterday right after the bomb threat [check the first two minutes of the video clip], it's made clear that only a single chamber in the entire White House complex was evacuated. That was the room in which the news people had been assembled for the briefing. Make of it what you will.

Fourteen years after the events of 9/11, how seriously are the dangers posed by terrorism taken in the US? Leaving the ongoing fiasco at the TSA aside, it's interesting to note how the White House, where the second of the two threatening phone calls was directed yesterday, reacted:

Earnest said President Barack Obama, who was in the Oval Office at the time, was not moved during the evacuation. First lady Michelle Obama and daughters Sasha and Malia, who were in the residence at the time, also were not moved. "I have complete confidence in the professionalism of the men and women of the secret service to make judgments about what's necessary to keep all of us safe," Earnest told reporters during the briefing after it resumed, though it remained unclear why only part of the complex had been evacuated. [CNN, June 10, 2015]

Israel police unit checks suspicious object (which did indeed
turn out to be an explosive device) in Petach Tikva,
near Tel Aviv, April 27, 2014 [Image Source]

Daily life in Israel is frequently interrupted by events we call "Hefetz Hashud", literally "suspect object" and meaning something has been found that might possibly be a security risk to people in the area and we're going to check it but meanwhile this bus is being stopped and you should get off, or this road is being blocked, and you will have to wait where you are while the sappers are called to the scene. And so on.

The overwhelming majority of those incidents, once carefully checked, turn out to be nothing, usually a forgotten shopping bag. But not always. In a hyper-critical society, Israelis rarely complain when this happens to them. Living in a terror-rich environment eventually brings you to take such things in your stride.

15-Dec-13: Now what could possibly motivate a man to load up a car with explosives and drive onto an airfield tarmac?

Wichita Mid-Continent Airport terminal [Image Source]

A reminder from the middle of the United States of the very thin line that separates mass-casualty terrorist outrages from the near-misses that barely make it to the inside pages of the world's newspapers.

An ordinary-looking Kansas man was arrested on Friday December 13 on charges that he planned to explode a bomb at the Wichita Mid-Continent Airport, the largest in Kansas. That ordinariness - white, an aviation technician, 58, a former airport employee, nothing notably criminal in his background (other than having been arrested once in 2009 with a concealed weapon on his body, but this is the US and the punishment was that he was ordered to pay the court's costs) - is one of the common threads in the media reporting.

But because no one died, nothing exploded, life goes on, little attention is being paid to what he did manage to do, according to news reports: study the airport's layout, take photos of access points, research flight schedules to know where the greatest concentrations of passengers would be, detonate a vehicle packed with explosives that he thought were real, bring them up to the gate leading to the tarmac by means of a pass that he had tested successfully twice, and make all the right preparations so that the killings would take place "just prior to Christmas which would cause the greatest impact physically and economically". Allegedly, of course. A media release from the Department of Justice says he "planned to pull the trigger on the explosives himself and die in the explosion".

Michael Kaste is the U.S. Attorney who announced the plot in a press conference on Friday. He said the intending bomber sought to “die in the explosion as a martyr”. What the would-be murdering terrorist, Terry L. Loewen, didn't know is that he had been under surveillance since May 2013, and the materials he had assembled for his trip to wherever jihadists go had been rendered non-lethal by agents of the FBI. The indictment, here, charges him with attempting to "use a weapon of mass destruction". The FBI's interest, according to this report from Aljazeera, was prompted by his declaring a desire to "commit an act of violent jihad" against the US.

As for motivation, the theme running through the reports is based on what was said at that media event: Loewen was trying to support "al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula". In addition to murdering people for the usual matrix of Islamist/messianic reasons, that organization publishes the online magazines Voice of Jihad and Inspire.

The intending-bomber's son, who is 24, calls him "a really nice guy", a "really laid back, really happy guy". Unsurprisingly, the son says he "never thought this would happen". Fortunately others did. The man's recent correspondence shows him writing this to an un-named party:

"I believe the potential for me doing more is staggering. I have some rough ideas, but I know nothing about explosives. Don't you think with my access to the airport that I should put that to good use?"

The same source gives an insight into how really nice this nice guy is:

Asked if he is interested in dying for the cause and offered a chance to back out, Loewen responds, "I can't see myself doing anything that involves killing children, unless I know everything is being done to minimize that. I understand it's a war, and some of these brothers may have had their children killed by this country, but in light of what the Prophet said concering (sic) this, I just need to be sure it can be kept to an absolute minimum."

And this letter, evidently written by Loewen to an un-named family member just two days before the arrest:

"By the time you read this I will - if everything went as planned - have been martyred in the path of Allah. There will have been an event at the airport which I am responsible for. The operation was timed to cause maximum carnage + death... I expect to be called a terrorist (which I am), a psychopath, and a homicidal maniac."

It's sadly notable that some parts of the media have avoided dealing at all with the Islamist factor in this sad tale. They simply don't mention the matter of his evident religious conversion. Others, including a local Kansas publication, take pre-emptive measures so that the media coverage doesn't veer off into completely irrelevant places:

Grissom and FBI Special Agent in Charge Mike Kaste stressed that there was no indication that Loewen was involved with or working with any religious community in Wichita and that his alleged actions in no way should reflect on any religious group. Hussam Madi, spokesman for the Islamic Society of Wichita, said Friday: “We don’t even know who he is at all. We haven’t seen him here. This is the first time that we’ve heard of him.” Madi said the society checked with mosques around the city and none of them knew of Loewen.

There's no reason to question the truthfulness of that last statement. But while no rational person will think that some local "religious group" is connected with this attempt at carrying out a pre-holiday season massacre of innocents without evidence, how rational is it to skip any mention at all of the religion whose tenets are quoted again and again by the arrested man as being the reason for carrying out the complex plot?

An editorial published in today's Wichita Eagle ["Eagle editorial: Terrorism threat real, present"] mentions the religious factor just once:

Too many continue to forget that those who plan or carry out terrorist acts in the name of Islam have twisted that faith to unrecognizable extremes.

While there's plainly some room for a variety of views on whether acts of terror carried out in the name of Islam amounts to unrecognizable and twisted distortions, stepping around the religious motivation and avoiding any mention of it (see these stories from the Kansas City Star, Fox News and the BBC among others) is tendentious, agenda-driven journalism, and sloppy editorial work.

The charge sheet and the facts disclosed by the law enforcement people make clear that, whatever the theological correctness of the alleged murderer's alleged motivations, he plainly enough thinks he did them because his god wanted him to and that doing what he allegedly did was directly connected to his religious outlook on life.

We all pay a significant price when those in charge of the flow of information fail to allow the news-consuming readership to figure out for themselves whether this has great significance, or little or none.

3-Sep-13: Speeding truck ignores security, smashes through checkpoint and fence... and no one dies in the shooting. Which airport?

UK airport security: A shoot-first-ask-questions-later mission
[Image Source]

It takes very little imagination to contemplate how badly this morning's events at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv might have ended if the security personnel were less disciplined, trained less well, and less restrained.

The facts are still not entirely clear. But the main elements of what happened in the dark of early Tuesday morning are more or less evident. The account reported by Times of Israel is a good place to start: "Palestinians in speeding truck penetrate airport security | Vehicle stopped, two men arrested; perpetrators claim they are car thieves; airport resumes normal functioning".

In thinking about how much more bloodily this night have ended, there are some aspects of this we might ponder:

• Israel attracts terrorists on a world-class scale. Elaboration unnecessary.
• Those acts of terror continue right up until this week. For instance, this.
• Ben Gurion Airport knows what it means to experience terrorism on a horrifying scale
• Airports in general are prime targets for the terrorism-minded. Securing airports is a huge industry. 
• The security personnel who guard the entrances to Ben Gurion are very well-armed, and come with years of training in how to protect and, if necessary, how to permanently stop attackers.
• Notwithstanding, there is endless criticism of how 'heavy-handed' and 'intrusive' the security at Israel's major airport can be.

This morning's penetration of Israel's major airport happened two days before the Jewish New Year, a time when relatively huge numbers of travelers pass through it checkpoints and halls. It happened in the dark, a time when even the best trained security personnel can be subject to major misunderstandings. In the circumstances, if any of the guards had itchy trigger fingers, it's difficult to envisage them being criticized by their superiors. 

With all of that, what was the outcome today? The men in the truck, two Palestinian Arabs from Jenin and Qalqilya, walked away alive, under arrest. They say they are mere car thieves - a vibrant occupation in this part of the world, and a significant part of the PA economy, and therefore a plausible alibi. But imagine other transit centers, and think about how heavily armed men, equipped with powerful rapid-action weapons, pursuing the driver and passenger in a vehicle that has just tried to break through the fence of one of the most desirable terrorism targets in the world, might have reacted. The truck-thieving losers ought to be two of the happiest men on earth at this moment, given how close they came to the premature and irreversible ending of their careers today, though that's normally how men in their social and cultural circles think. (Their mothers might be saying a quiet prayer.)

May the New Year about to begin be one of peace and contentment.