Here is early US coverage in the New York times related to this story.Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=29807 Security Checks on Flights to U.S. to Be Revamped By JEFF ZELENY Published: April 1, 2010
The new approach will replace a broader layer of extra scrutiny that had been imposed recently on all passengers from 14 countries, most of which are Muslim.
The change, which will be announced Friday by the
Department of Homeland Security, is the result of a review of security at international airports ordered by Mr. Obama after the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a jetliner bound for Detroit. The system, which will be put in place this month, applies only to travelers flying into the United States.
“It’s much more tailored to what intelligence is telling us and what the threat is telling us, as opposed to stopping all individuals from a particular nationality or all individuals using a particular passport,” the administration official said Thursday, speaking on the condition of anonymity in advance of the formal announcement.
The intelligence-based security system is devised to raise flags about travelers whose names do not appear on no-fly watch lists, but whose travel patterns or personal traits create suspicions. The system is intended to pick up fragments of information — family name, nationality, age or even partial passport number — and match them against intelligence reports to sound alarm bells before a passenger boards a plane.
The new security protocols will be built around present-day threat situations, officials said, where fragments of intelligence from various threat streams are considered. So, for example, if terrorist groups are recruiting college-age men who have spent time in Asia and have been to the Middle East, that type of travel pattern would raise a flag to officials at international airports.
“It is much more surgically targeting those individuals we are concerned about and have intelligence for,” the administration official said, speaking to a small group of reporters at a White House briefing on Thursday afternoon. The official added: “This is not a system that can be called profiling in the traditional sense. It is intelligence-based.”
Officials said intelligence information from a variety of United States agencies would be made available to foreign airlines, whose employees and security officials would have wide latitude to stop passengers, or not.
If this system had been in place on Dec. 25, when a 23-year-old Nigerian man wearing explosives-lined underwear boarded a Northwest plane, the administration official said, “we would have had one more chance to stop him.”
The bombing attempt exposed significant flaws in how the administration collected and shared intelligence reports. The president said the government had sufficient information to uncover the terror plot to bring down the commercial jetliner, but had “failed to connect those dots.”
The system to be announced Friday replaces the mandatory screening — including full-body pat downs — that was hastily set up in January. Citizens of Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria have also been subjected to extra checks of their carry-on baggage before boarding planes for the United States.
While the United States has never formally confirmed the names of the 14 countries where passport holders face automatic additional scrutiny, they have been widely reported. Administration officials said terrorist organizations had turned their recruiting efforts elsewhere.
For the last three months, thousands of people flying to the United States each day have faced additional security measures simply because they were from one of the 14 countries. But officials said they feared such broad measures did not provide an adequate filter to identify people suspected of being involved in potential terror plots.
Reference:: Sikh Philosophy Network http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/showthread.php?t=29807
Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano, who will announce the new system, has traveled to several countries in recent months to enlist the cooperation of foreign airlines and governments.
She presented her findings to Mr. Obama this week, administration officials said, and he approved the new system.
Our Donation Goal
: Why Donate? : Donate Today! : Donate Anonymously (ਗੁਪਤ) : Our Family of Supporters 
Linear Mode
