In time, all security measures grow obsolete. The cavalry falls before the Panzer, the spear finds more space in museums than rifle racks, and the shoulder-fired missile makes short work of a biplane’s twin machine guns. Moats and ignited oil poured over the parapet offer little defense against precision-guided bombs or cruise missiles. As the means of successful attack change, so too must defenses adapt. Yet here we are, both attackers and defenders, ostensibly concentrating our adaptive skills into focusing on degree of attack and defense. Attackers seem to continue to concentrate on commercial airplanes as key targets, with innovation apparently limited to means of smuggling more exotic bombs that will elude detection. Similarly, defenders focus their resources on detection technology and increasingly more technologically invasive inspections at control points. Is this wise?
It certainly may be, for the attacker. A relatively modest investment in occasional aviation attacks – no matter how ham-handed or unsuccessful – does appear to consistently spawn more costly expenditure at the security screening point. The cost to defenders is not only in the expense associated with fielding and training screeners to use the latest equipment. An arguably greater cost comes in the form of alienating the constituency the screeners exist to defend. This, in turn, opens the door to new vulnerabilities and erosion of the kind of voluntary compliance at the heart of most effective security systems. Alienate enough passengers, and you will no longer find them engaging productively to report suspicious characters or take any part in what they perceive to be a supporting role for an unthinking bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, as this erosion of support accelerates further with each periodic aviation security scare, what is an attacker to do? Hatch the next plot and fine tune new tactics. Mumbai offers an example. After the attack’s devastation is over, residual dividends come from whispers of another such attack about to occur somewhere else. So now the European travel and hotel industries can look forward to decline in business thanks to November scares hinting at an imminent attack of the Mumbai variety that was to be transplanted to Germany or France.
These are great times for underfunded adversaries and difficult times for inflexible defenders. The former appear to be dictating the latter’s tactics and major investments – a sure signal that the next big surprise attack will not so much be inconceivable as just not addressed in time to limit the attending devastation.
FOOTNOTE: One day after the foregoing, the Washington Post presented this article questioning TSA's impetuous embrace of technology as panacea:
http://mobile.washingtonpost.com/c.jsp?item=http%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2fwp-syndication%2farticle%2f2010%2f12%2f20%2fAR2010122005599_mobile.xml&cid=578815
-- Nick Catrantzos
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Nick Catrantzos + Tom Goff
- All Secure
- NICK CATRANTZOS is the lead author of the All Secure website and is the emeritus security director for a large public organization. He has also managed security aspects of corporate takeovers, response to international hostage situations, and finding and keeping secrets. He has been board certified in security management, licensed as a private investigator, and certified as an incident commander. He worked as a case officer for a discreet branch of public service. He protected stealth technology at Lockheed and, later, as a consulting security director for both Kroll and Control Risks, he assisted executives with workplace violence cases and with protecting VIPs and critical assets globally in volatile areas. Nick's partner, TOM GOFF, was a captain in the Military Police Corps, U.S. Army Reserve and has a law degree from the University of California at Davis. He is a former reporter for Fortune Magazine, was senior editor at New York Magazine and Esquire, and has provided crisis and communications counsel to senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, including Lockheed, ARCO, Microsoft, Nissan, and Sony Pictures.