Homeland Security

Remarks of Rafi Ron

CEO New Age Technology, Ltd.

Aviation Subcommittee

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

February 27, 2002

Mr. Chairman and members of the Subcommittee on Aviation.

For the record I am Rafi Ron and up until October 1st 2001 and for the last 5 years, I was chief in charge of security in the Israeli Airport Authority (I.A.A.). Within this role, I was in charge of all aspects of Israeli airport and aviation security including (but not only), security assessments and risk analysis, security planning and development, commanding all security operational units, identifying, negotiating, purchasing, and implementing new technologies etc. Within this role, I was in charge of more then 2000 security personal who were working in the Ben-Gurion airport.

Currently, I am CEO of New Age Aviation Security, and I am directly in charge of the professional side of the company's performance. I am also a member of the A.C.I.'s (Airport Council International), World Standing Security Committee, and a member of the G.A.S.A.G. (Global Aviation Security Action Group initiated by IATA).

I want to thank the committee for inviting me to talk with you about aviation security and profiling.

In 1968 an EL-AL aircraft was hijacked by Palestinian terrorist to Algeria. As a result the state of Israel decided that protecting Israeli aviation is a national security matter of high priority and established the "air marshal" program. It became obvious that there is a need to develop a ground security operation in order to minimize the risk on board the aircraft.

The operational analysis was based on the assumption that in order for an attack to take place, two conditions must be met:

1. There has to be a person with a hostile intention.

2. A weapon has to be used.

The natural tendency was to choose the discovery of the weapon as the preventive method. Through the attempt to develop an effective method for this purpose, it became clear that while it is possible, it must involve some very thorough checks, some at forensic level. The reason for the great difficulties is the fact that weapons and especially explosive charges take almost every possible shape, color or smell and they can be produced from a great variety of materials. Simple manual search is not effective enough. These checks consume a long time (about one hour for a single passenger with one checked bag), they are very intrusive and considered by most passengers as a very substantial hassle. It became clear that it will be impossible to provide this type of procedure to all passengers and therefore a need to develop a method that will allow an intelligent decision as to who is more eligible for this thorough search.

The answer to this need came in the development of a systematic, real time, investigation of the passenger profile. This well designed procedure allows the security officer to make a decision, based on identifying the level of risk, as to the level of checks to be performed before the passenger is allowed to board the aircraft.

This real time investigation can be as short as 90 seconds or last as long as 20 minutes. It involves the checking of documents (I.D. , flight tickets etc.) and questions that relate to the passengers journey and background.

This profiling method has been used very successfully for the last 32 years by the state of Israel. It led to the discovery of an explosive device in an attempted terrorist attack on EL-AL flight from London to Tel-Aviv in 1986, using a naïve Irish girl by the name Ann Marry Murphy. It was through questioning that the EL-AL security officer realized that the pregnant young woman was carrying a bag she received from her Palestinian, father to-be, boyfriend. The thorough check of the bag exposed a 1.5kg of Cemtex and a sophisticated altimeter initiation device disguised as an electronic calculator.

The lack of further attacks gives credence to the assumption that this method is a strong deterring factor, since it is difficult to assume that Palestinian terrorism lost its interest in Israel's aviation.          

There has been criticism against the use of this method on the ground of racial discrimination. Most if not all of this criticism in unfounded. The fact that there are many Palestinian "selectees" in Israel's aviation security procedures merely reflects the fact that most of the terrorists acting against it are Palestinian. It is also a fact that there are more "selectees" of other nationalities rather than Palestinians.

I would even argue that without a professional procedure the space if taken by intuition of the security person and in many cases will involve some level of prejudice personal views.

After the 9/11 tragedy the public discussion focused on the low performance level of the screeners as if the attack could have been avoided by better screening! To my best judgment this is not the case and focusing the discussion in this direction leads to future exposure to the same type attacks.

Even the great effort to develop quickly a 100%  hold baggage screening standard cannot prevent the 9/11 type attack. I do not suggest that these technological measures are not important, on the contrary, their importance is paramount - but they are not enough!    The missing element is the human factor and without relating to it we leave the room for future attacks.

It should also be argued that without the ability to take an intelligent decision on where to invest our effort we end wasting our attention on the "low risk" passengers and not being able to invest enough in the "high risk" passengers.

The situation is particularly worrying because the technology used in security check-points (x-ray screening and metal detection) is not enough to stop even the Richard Reid type attack and I would not suggest that we rely only on a  1-10 random  ETD (explosive trace detection) check.

Ideas like "Trusted passenger program" that allows people to register in advance, by submitting personal information voluntarily in the manner they do when applying for a credit card combined with the use of biometric technology for ID verification will make the use of pattern recognition (professional profiling) very feasible and very effective. The advantage of this program is not the exemption of any passenger from the bag screening, but by adding a human factor element we create the ability to invest more effort in the "high risk" passengers.

Finally it can be said that the civil rights issue can be controlled and the creation of an operational method for pattern recognition is feasible. Without it we will not be relating effectively to the threat as it materialized in the latest Al-qaida attacks.

Thank you and I would be pleased to respond to your questions.