"At Airports, a Search For Better Security"

Sunday, May 26, 2002

At Airports, a Search For Better Security
The New York (NY) Times


EIGHT months into the war on terrorism, airport security guards treat
everyone as a possible terrorist until proved otherwise -- unless the
traveler is selected for additional inspection, in which case previous
inspections are irrelevant. The procedures have become so cumbersome
that some travel experts are calling for a new approach.

The possibilities include heavier reliance on profiling, which before
Sept. 11 was a dirty word; a ''trusted traveler'' plan; and even common
sense. At the moment, the first two have the inside track.

Either profiling or a trusted-traveler system would reduce the number of
people to be inspected. ''Everyone gets all freaked out'' when they hear
the term profiling, said Todd Hauptli, a spokesman for the American
Association of Airport Executives. But finding someone who intends to
hijack or blow up a plane is like looking for a needle in a haystack, he
said, and ''you've got to figure out how to make the haystack smaller.''

A computer-assisted passenger profiling system has been in place for
several years at the major airlines. Before Sept. 11, it was used at
check-in to decide whose luggage should be more closely screened. Now,
it is used at the boarding gates to check passengers and their
carry-ons, but not at the main screening checkpoints, where screeners do
not know the identities of the people they are searching.

The attributes that subject people to closer scrutiny are secret.
Government officials have said that a large part of the system is based
on ruling people out; if enough is known about travelers, from their
travel history, for example, they are not profiled. While many people
believe that a factor is the buying of a one-way ticket at the last
minute and paying cash for it, it seems difficult to imagine that
sophisticated terrorists would call attention to themselves that way.

But no security expert trusts the existing profiling system enough to
make it the sole basis of security. Partly as a result, security checks
have a random factor thrown in, with some people selected simply to give
terrorists the idea that there is always a chance of being singled out.

As described by security officials, the randomness also adds an element
of fairness: they assert that the profiling system does not take race or
religion into account, while adding passengers chosen at random assures
that people of every race, religion and background are among those
searched.

The breakdown of who gets searched is also secret, but anecdotes abound,
and the results have not always inspired public confidence in the
system. In fact, some of the threats to which airport security screeners
pay the closest attention seem distinctly unthreatening to typical
passengers.

Wyatt Forman, for example, was waiting to board a United Airlines flight
to Phoenix from Denver on March 16 and got the full treatment: wanding,
pat-down, examination of his shoes and item-by-item examination of his
carry-on. He was singled out for extra scrutiny because of a mark on his
boarding pass, which meant he had been selected by the airline's
profiling system. He may have been chosen at random, or because he is
not a frequent flier, did not buy a ticket with his own credit card, and
does not hold a job.

But the computer did not know that ''Mr. Forman,'' who is my nephew, is
7 years old.

Wyatt said he was merely a little disconcerted. Elliot Gosko, on the
other hand, was sick, literally.

Elliot, 14, was waiting on Easter Sunday to board a flight home to
Philadelphia from Aspen, Colo. He was carrying a big Gatorade jug with
water in it, and the screener at the gate told him to drink some of it.

It wasn't drinking water, however; it was from a stream near his
grandparents' home in Snowmass. Back at Henderson High School, in West
Chester, Pa., Elliot's science teacher was offering extra credit to any
pupil who brought back water from a pond or stream; the plan was to
culture the bacteria in the science lab. There was dirt floating in it.

Elliot, facing the security guard alone, sized up the situation quickly.
''I didn't really want to, but I did it,'' he said. And by the time he
changed planes in Minneapolis, he had full gastric symptoms, he said. He
came home and missed the next two days of school.

''They stopped a bioterrorist,'' said his father, George Gosko Jr. He
said he was annoyed that he had paid Northwest Airlines $75 extra in
each direction to carry Elliot as an unaccompanied minor, meaning that
it was supposed to keep an eye on him, but that no one from the airline
was with him when he faced the security guard.

Paul Turk, a spokesman for the Transportation Department, said, ''the
screener has to be confident that the substance is not in fact a harmful
substance, under the principle that you must resolve all alarms.''

My nephew Wyatt had no negative after-effects of the security check, but
his mother, Elizabeth Wald, said she was convinced that the resources
used for searching a 7-year-old who was traveling with his parents and
younger brother could have been better applied elsewhere.

But the current airport security system in the United States often hones
in on the unlikely. In widely publicized cases, a World War II flying
ace, on his way to give a speech at West Point, was stopped by a guard
who said that his Medal of Honor was a sharp object and couldn't be
carried on board; and an elderly member of Congress from Michigan with
an artificial hip was made to strip to his underwear.

And in less publicized cases, as Mr. Turk said, grandmothers in
wheelchairs have been singled out. Mr. Hauptli, of the airport
executives association, noted that these kinds of checks are a result of
randomness, saying, ''If you do every fourth passenger, you're going to
get that.''

And children and people in wheelchairs have been used to smuggle weapons
in other countries, Mr. Turk said. If the passenger selected at the gate
were an infant, he said, the procedure would be to ''search the diaper
bag, search the stroller.''

Airline executives and other aviation officials would like the system
changed before it wastes more resources and scares away too many
passengers.

Leo F. Mullin, the chairman of Delta Air Lines, has complained that the
hassles of travel are keeping people off airplanes. He said last month
that passenger irritation was part of the reason Delta's traffic was
down 8 percent in the first quarter.

Joe Leonard, the chief executive of AirTran Airways, has complained that
frequent episodes of security guards' emptying entire terminals threaten
to push travelers on short flights to drive instead of fly.

Delta recently offered passengers 20,000 bonus miles on its Boston-New
York-Washington shuttle if it takes more than 20 minutes to clear the
checkpoints. Delta and other airlines have added lanes to security
checkpoints, to help move more passengers through promptly.

Mr. Hauptli, on the other hand, suggested relying on improved profiling.
Cockpit doors have been made more secure, he pointed out, so ''the
chances of some 80-year-old or 8-year-old storming the door just doesn't
make a lot of sense.''

''We haven't gotten to where we need to be in terms of our integration
of technology and common sense,'' he added.

Another possibility is a ''trusted traveler'' card. Passengers would
agree to submit personal information in exchange for a
counterfeit-resistant ID card that would grant them exemption from some
portion of security, although how much is not clear.

Tom Ridge, the director of homeland security, has spoken in favor of
such cards, contending that random checks of passengers at the gates do
not improve security. But so far, John Magaw, the head of the
Transportation Security Administration, opposes them because, he said,
terrorists could eventually get such a card.

The option of a card might seem to appeal to people like Arab-Americans,
who now say they face discrimination. But not all Arab-Americans support
the idea.

For example, James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute,
raised two questions often raised by others. First, he said, the card
brings up civil liberties issues, and second, the holder of a card might
still bring a weapon onto a plane.

Arab-Americans still face harassment at some airports, he said, and will
be subject to that with or without a card. ''Prejudice will find a way
of winning the day,'' he said.

Common sense is also not a winning candidate at this point. The approach
so far is to heighten airport security by strict adherence to procedure,
rather than relying on the judgment of security personnel, so passengers
carrying pond water or with artificial hips should beware.

''Those acts are regrettable,'' said another member of Congress, Jane
Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence
subcommittee on terrorism and homeland security. ''No one's going to
defend making a 14-year-old drink pond water.''

But the fact that a screener is following the rules doesn't make that
person incompetent, she added. ''It just makes that person
unimaginative,'' she said.

Ms. Harman is not a defender of the present system's convenience or
logic. Waiting to board a Delta shuttle at La Guardia recently, she had
to remove her shoes twice while waiting in the same line. And like many
people who have been given extra scrutiny, she found a reason to blame
herself.

''It's probably because I bought a one-way ticket at the last minute,
and because I have blond hair and a lot of wrinkles,'' she said.

But like many others who still fly, she seems prepared to put up with a
lot. ''My basic take is that people are working as hard as they can to
make air travel safer and to make the system smarter,'' she said.


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