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Adam Isles,
Director Strategy and Policy Consulting, Raytheon |
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In the wake of the December 25th bombing attempt on an Amsterdam to Detroit airliner, authorities in the European Union and the United States have signaled high-level commitment to an aligned aviation security approach. Disruption of cells long before operatives ever reach an airport is, of course, an underlying shared goal. That said, notwithstanding the change in U.S. Administration, tensions across the Atlantic remain over which tools to employ. The European Parliament is on the verge of utilizing its newfound post-Lisbon power to reject, as too privacy impinging, an agreement that would give U.S. authorities access to European-stored financial data for use in detecting and tracking terrorist activity, and it will also soon review a 2007 agreement on air passenger data. Members of the U.S. Congress may, in turn, question the Visa Waiver Program’s continued viability, particularly given that, in addition to the Christmas Day attack, a number of other recent attempts – the failed 2006 U.K. aviation plot, the 2001 Richard Reid attempt to name a few – not to mention the September 11th attacks, used Europe as a launching point.
However, both sides of the Atlantic want al-Qa’ida defeated and yet cherish privacy too. Let’s thus focus our energies instead on a new joint risk assessment that looks at how the threat has evolved since 2006, when groups of Westerners first headed to Pakistan’s FATA in significant numbers, plus more recent developments in Yemen and Somalia. Terrorist tradecraft trends – e.g., operatives with clean records and explosives concealment – should be examined, with a particular focus on transit passengers, who pose a greater risk assessment problem because of their lack of connections to the transit airport jurisdiction.
Current screening capabilities should then be evaluated for their ability to distinguish potential operatives from the great mass of travelers on legitimate journeys, and gaps between terrorist tradecraft and current capabilities must be identified. Police, border, and transport security officials should all participate in this assessment, and legislators on both sides of the Atlantic with appropriate clearances should then be briefed. The oldest and hence most trusted relationships across the Atlantic are bilateral; hence guidance is needed from key EU member states on how to reflect these relationships in a post-Lisbon Union.
If America and Europe fail to align on risk, al Qa’ida will exploit the seams to launch attacks on planes over the Atlantic in hopes the ensuing reactions will drive a wedge between allies. We need instead a joint, unflinching, unwearied effort to consider the new capabilities that may be required including a more complete approach to information analysis. Aligned technology acquisitions and airport standard operating procedures would ideally result. So would greater information sharing with appropriate privacy protections, based on agreed common principles. More important, our alliance would be anchored in a joint, current understanding of the threat we both face, and must face together.
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What the Chiefs Say is a public affairs platform designed for senior executives from leading organisations to voice their expectations and concerns.
In this issue, business and industry leaders present to Europe’s policymakers their policies and priorities.
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