U.K. trial shows liquids allowed on board can be used for deadly explosive

were mixed in a 500 ml. water bottle bought in an airport departure lounge. The explosion was initiated with a commercial detonator, but Alford said a home-made one, which could also be carried through security in an electrical item such as a phone or iPod, would produce the same effect. The bomb was tested the at Lasham airfield in Hampshire on a section of fuselage from a decommissioned passenger jet that was still fitted out with seats and other cabin furniture. The explosion caused a large fireball, a massive hole in the side of the aircraft, and blew seats out of the cabin. The bomb snapped the ribs of the aircraft — the structure holding it together — and in the air would have led to rapid depressurization and a loss of control. At altitude, Alford said, the damage would have been even greater.

Baum said airport X-rays and metal detectors were ineffective against many threats. “I cannot cite a single example of a bomb being found using an airport X-ray machine alone, he said. “X-rays were introduced to identify dense metallic items, not bombs. If you’ve got a well-concealed bomb, it’s possible to get that through many an X-ray machine.” Baum described a disturbing trial he had run for a European government. “We took a woman through 24 different airports. On her body were the complete components of an improvised explosive device,” he said. “At each of those airports, she alarmed the metal detector and was subject to a pat-down search on her body. But not a single item was identified in any of the 24 searches.”

Baum said X-rays had identified bombs in conjunction with intelligence or passenger profiling. He called for the emphasis of airport security to change from identifying suspicious objects to identifying suspicious people. “We are currently guarding against business travelers with penknives, not international terrorists,” he said. “We should be looking more for behaviors. The person who has negative intent will show signs of stress and nervousness.” Baum adds that trained spotters should be deployed in terminals to watch for suspicious behavior, passengers who do not fit the normal traveler profile for a flight should be flagged and software such as voice stress analysis should be used to select certain travelers for more thorough checks that stand a better chance of detecting a weapon. The technique, called behavior pattern recognition, is controversial because of fears that it will be used in a racist way. Supporters say the idea is to target particular behavior, not skin color. To single out, say, all young Asian men would be failing to implement the technique properly.

Norman Shanks, a former head of security for BAA, operators of Britain’s largest airports, told Dispatches that he trialled behavior pattern recognition at Stansted, but the experiment was ended by the government. “We used a process not unlike the one that Customs officers use to spot potential smugglers,” said Shanks. “It worked quite successfully. But we hit a brick wall when the worker bees in the Department of Transport responsible for inspecting the security process couldn’t find a way of satisfying themselves they could test it correctly. The real definition of success is surely something we cannot measure — a lack of attacks. We know from elsewhere, for instance in Israel, that this technique prevents attacks.”

We note that the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has more confidence in behavior observation technique, or SPOT (for Screening Passengers by Observation Technique), and has trained several hundreds officers — called BDOs, for Behavior Detection Officers —in it, then placed them airpirts across the United States (see this HSDW story).

Back to the United Kingdom: New hand luggage screening machines recently introduced at British airports have a greater chance of detecting explosives than the previous machines, the government says. Aviation security minister Jim Fitzpatrick added that the 100 ml limit for carrying liquids through security was determined as “appropriate by safety and risk assessments.”

He said: “Nobody is absolutely protected, but we need to put in place staff and equipment to protect people as best we can and ensure the terrorist doesn’t get an easy ride.”