Posted on March 11th, 2010 by leadingedgestrategies
As reported in USAToday, we now have American citizens actively engaged in the Jihad cause. This is not completely new as we have had others, like John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, who was caught shortly after 9/11 in Afghanistan, but what is new is that the threat is now much closer to home.
This sort of “insider” threat is a natural outgrowth of a terrorist movement. Historically, in many of these types of movements, there is an eventual sympathy for the “bad guys.” Most often this results in political change or political pressure to either end a conflict, or make some other sort of social change. However, in extreme cases it results in recruits to the cause. The Internet makes recruiting, training and equipping insider terrorists that much easier. Unfortunately, this internal threat is now in the U.S. But is there a solution?
Filed under: Current Affairs, Existing and Emerging Threats | No Comments »
Posted on March 9th, 2010 by leadingedgestrategies
In the aftermath of the attempt to get Erroll Southers confirmed President Obama has finally selected another person to head the TSA, Robert Harding.
I must admit, I do now know very much about Mr. Harding nor does anyone else in the aviation community.
The unfortunate fact is that we’ve NEVER had anyone from inside the aviation industry run TSA.
The good news about Harding that I can see on it’s face, is that he comes from a strong intelligence background. That’s a key component in ANY aviation security system, and in any security system period.
Filed under: Current Affairs | 1 Comment »
Posted on March 6th, 2010 by leadingedgestrategies
The problem with new threats to aviation is that every time there is another threat, we get a new box at the checkpoint. At some point, we’re going to run out of space before we run out of threats.
While many in the industry, particularly TSA Federal Security Directors (FSD), are excited about the deployment of the whole body imagers, there are just as many people who are trying to figure out where to put them — they are called Airport Security Coordinators (ASC).
The WBI’s are about 3x as large as a walk-thru metal detector and take about 10x as long to process a passenger. There are two issues here. First, space. Second, time.
Filed under: Current Affairs, Introduction to Screening, Passenger and Baggage Screening | 2 Comments »
