In December 2001, Richard Reid tried to destroy American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami by detonating plastic explosives hidden in his shoes.
This act of cowardice led to the requirement that airline passengers remove their shoes for inspection before boarding U.S. flights.
In August 2006, British police arrested 24 suspects in a plot to detonate peroxide-based liquid explosives on board at least 10 aircraft travelling to the United States and Canada from the United Kingdom.
This cowardly plot led to immediate restrictions on passengers’ ability to carry liquids aboard commercial flights, restrictions that are still in place.
And last Christmas, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to blow up Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit with a packet of explosive powder sewn into the crotch of his underwear.
This laughable act of cowardice led to a hasty decision by the Canadian government to spend $11 million on 44 full-body scanners to perform “virtual strip searches” of airline passengers at major airports.
Since caving to pressure by the U.S. to do something, anything, about terrorism, the Canadian government has tried to reassure Canadians that only passengers selected for secondary screening will be strip searched, the images of their naked bodies will not be made public or archived, and they will have the option of a physical pat-down by security.
What’s next, body cavity searches? After all, al-Qaida almost assassinated Saudi Arabia’s Interior Minister in August 2009 using an improvised explosive device concealed in the suicide bomber’s anal cavity.
As absurd and laughable as the terrorists’ attacks have become, they have two things in common: (1) they succeeded in causing terror, fear and disruption in spite of their failure; and (2) their tactics evaded existing security measures.
The Canadian government believes strip searching thousands of passengers is the missing link in terrorism prevention. Security experts disagree.
Bruce Schneier, author of a blog covering security and security technology, argues there’s been far too little discussion about what worked and what didn’t, and what will and will not make airline passengers safer, in light of the Christmas Day bomb plot.
His list of “what will not work” includes full-body scanners, which are easily foiled by the type of explosive used in the Christmas Day attack; racial profiling of people from 14 countries allegedly linked to terrorism and “ridiculous” seating requirements imposed on passengers for the last hour of flights.
“What we need is security that’s effective even if we can’t guess the next plot: intelligence, investigation and emergency response,” he says, pointing to the arrests of the liquid bombers as an example of effective security.
The same could be said of the counter-terrorism raids in June 2006 that culminated in the arrests of the Toronto 18, an Ontario-based terrorism cell.
That group allegedly planned to detonate truck bomb, open fire on crowded areas, attack the CBC, Parliament, the Toronto Stock Exchange and CSIS headquarters, and behead the prime minister.
Rafi Sela, a security consultant at Ben Gurion International Airport in Israel, a country all too familiar with terrorism, also places a higher priority on intelligence and investigation than beefing up security searches.
Observing passenger behaviour is critical, Sela says, because terrorism is not limited to airplanes, as the Toronto 18 hoped to prove.
“If you have a suicide bomber or somebody who wants to make an impact, he doesn’t have to bring down a plane. He can just explode in the middle of this huge crowd that is waiting for security,” Sela explained to a Canadian news service.
Canadians should not subject themselves to mass strip searches — virtual or otherwise — in a futile effort to foil the next terrorist cell. Their tactics have already evolved, as evidenced by the attack in Saudi Arabia.
Our tax dollars would be better spent, as the experts suggest, on intelligence, investigation and emergency response, which Canada has used in the past to foil terrorism plots.
Only then will we stay one step ahead of the terrorists instead of one step behind.
Cameron Kennedy is an Advocate editor.