All flights entering the United States will be subjected to a new level of security screening, officials plan to announce Friday.
The new security measures, that will be announced by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, will use “real-time, threat-based intelligence,” according to the official.
The new measures will supersede the measures put in place immediately after the attempted terror attack on X-Mas Day 2009, the official said.
“These new, enhanced measures are part of a dynamic, threat-based aviation security system covering all passengers traveling by air to the United States,” the official said. “To more effectively mitigate evolving terrorist threats, these measures utilize multiple, random layers of security, both seen and unseen and are tailored to intelligence about potential threats.”
These new measures are a result of a review President Obama ordered after the December 25 attack.
The failed attack occurred when Nigerian Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab allegedly tried to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.
Since that attack, Napolitano participated in aviation summits in Spain, Mexico, Tokyo and other places in an effort to forge agreements and to strengthen ways information can be shared around the aviation community, the official said.
Napolitano has suggested in the past that International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), an agency of the United Nations, set standards that would apply to all international airports.
Previous efforts by the United States to gain access to passenger information have been stymied by European privacy laws.
Napolitano announced in March another effort to bolster airport security when she said the federal government was starting to deploy full-body scanning machines to 11 more airports across the United States.
Before the new scanners, 40 of the body-imaging machines had already been put into use at 19 airports nationwide, according the Department of Homeland Security. The Transportation Security Administration expects to deploy 450 units by the end of this year.
Plans to deploy these scanners were given added urgency after the failed X-Mas Day attack.
(Source: CNN)
5 Responses
Instead if saying how much superceding these new measures will be, why doesn’t the article tell us what they are?
Does this mean less searches of 90 year old white women with walkers?
The picture says it all….
Security measures should include EVERYONE. Yes – even 90 yr. old women with walkers. You never know who someone really is, or if someone was set up. We should not take any chances.
Good Moed!
Ideally, safety screening of CREW and passengers should use the Israeli approach, which includes looking people in the eye, evaluating their responses. etc., etc. Unfortunately, the labor pool the TSA uses are more used to looking at their “Blackberry” or ogling a co-worker for immoral propositions, than using their brains for serious work. Have you looked at the high school riff-raff lately? Are they different outside of NYC?
BTW: have they ever screened Hussein Obama?