Date: 13-Feb Incident: The European Commission on Wednesday said it plans to fingerprint all inbound foreigners visiting Europe's 24-nation border-free area as part of a plan to fight terrorism, illegal migration and organized crime. The plan, which would create an entry/exit electronic register, could take effect in 2015 if governments and lawmakers agree. Meanwhile the European Union is warning its member states not to sign on to bilateral agreements being floated by the Bush administration that seek to increase security on passenger flights bound for the United States. Franco Frattini, the EU Commissioner for Justice, Freedom and Security, raised objections to the draft agreements in a Friday meeting with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. U.S. homeland security officials have proposed (or will propose) draft "memoranda to accommodate EU reservations.
Date: 13-Feb Incident: Lawmakers are saying with increasing stridency that the TSA is not moving quickly enough to find and fund technology that could strengthen aviation security. A report last year by the Government Accountability Office found that the TSA quietly stopped acquiring explosives trace portals because of performance problems. In addition, alleged privacy concerns have slowed the TSA's adoption of other more personally invasive technology. Increasingly, the implementation of workable initiatives is being seen as "stalled". Date: 12-Feb Incident: Boston's Logan International Airport is one of seven airports participating in a TSA pilot program that will require all airline crew members, concession workers and other badged employees to be screened before entering secured areas of the airport. The program will launch in May and should include Denver International, Jacksonville International, Kansas City International, Oregon's Eugene and Southwest Oregon Regional, plus Craven Regional in New Bern, N.C. Date: 12-Feb Incident: Travelers at Washington, DC's two major airports began having their fingerprints taken and eyes iris-scanned this last week in order to participate in the Registered Traveler program. The travelers received cards that allow them to use designated lanes at airport security checkpoints. Dulles and Reagan airports are the 14th and 15th airports to "get with" the Verified Identity Pass called the Clear card. Orlando International Airport was the first, beginning in the summer of 2005. Thurgood Marshall Baltimore-Washington International Airport officials say they're likely to be the "next cabs off the rank".... or the next cards dealt in the security shuffle. Date: 12-Feb Incident: Airport and airline leaders in the U.S. say a law requiring bags arriving on flights from Canada to be screened for bombs before being put on connecting U.S. flights should be changed.....because it's causing up to 100,000 bags to be lost or delayed each year, according to airline sources The policy, in effect since 2003, requires luggage from Canadian flights to be screened at U.S. airports before being put on connecting domestic planes. That wastes time and money, airports and airlines say, because the luggage has already gone through bomb scanners in Canadian airports. Roughly 6 million bags from Canada are rescreened each year at U.S. airports, and 50,000 to 100,000 of them miss their connecting flights, according to a study by the Airports Council International. Date: 12-Feb Incident: The Dutch government announced plans on Tuesday to tighten security at Amsterdam's Schiphol.. Three staff entrances will be closed immediately and body searches introduced for all personnel and their belongings within days, Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin said in a parliamentary response. The number of random checks on personnel leaving the airport will also be increased. The measures come after a journalist easily smuggled a fake bomb and drugs onto planes at Europe's fourth-busiest air travel hub. He'd used the uniform and identity badge of an associate who'd secured a job as a baggage handler. He said gate personnel always let uniformed workers onto planes without demur. Date: 11-Feb Incident: Hawaiian health officials are trying to locate 250 passengers on a San Diego to Honolulu flight who may have come in contact over the weekend with a baby infected with measles. The baby has been isolated at a military hospital in Hawaii. It's the latest case diagnosed since an outbreak began in San Diego last month after a child contracted the virus during a family trip to Switzerland. The child's two siblings were also infected. Since then, health officials have confirmed five cases and suspect at least five others. San Diego County health officials say they are also trying to find people who were at Lindbergh Field's Terminal 2, Gate 41, last Saturday morning before departure of Hawaiian Airlines Flight 15. Date: 11-Feb Incident: The burden of proof in baggage loss claims has subtly shifted to the passenger being able to prove his claim. So much baggage is being lost and/or bag contents pilfered that insurance companies have shifted the onus to the insured to verify and validate the claim. The increased access required to checked baggage after 911 has meant that the only security is in having beat-up luggage that visually denies the possibility of its contents being valuable. A new luggage item identifying itself as a doctor's bag is most likely to suffer pilferage according to the TSA. Scott T. Mueller, former baggage services manager for Midwest Airlines and author of The Empty Carousel: A Consumer's Guide to Checked and Carry-on Luggage. "Pretty much the only thing that is going to be covered in bags is going to be cosmetics, toiletries, shoes and clothing," he said. "There is a whole lot more that is not covered, and people put themselves at risk every day because they just don't know." Date: 11-Feb Incident: A New Zealand newspaper reporter claims he was able to board both legs of a return trip from Christchurch to Napier with a six-inch knife and a toy gun in his carry-on baggage a day after a bizarre hijacking attempt in which two pilots and a passenger were allegedly injured by a knife-wielding Somali woman. Jonathan Marshall, of the Sunday News, said no one paid any attention to him or his bag on either flight, mostly because New Zealand does not require security checks of passengers on domestic flights on aircraft with less than 90 seats. By ironic coincidence, he was seated next to a police Armed Offenders Squad member (aka a kiwi SWAT squaddie) on the return leg and the officer studied a radio manual "while I sat drinking tea and concealing my gun and knife," he reported. Date: 10-Feb Incident: Many of the first comments posted on the TSA's blog were sarcastic or angry in the days following its launch, TSA Director Kip Hawley said. Since then the tenor of the subject matter and antagonism has become more productive and civil, he noted. "I think once people realize we're putting substantive content on there and really answering questions, the tone will calm down -- and it will lead to the same thing happening at the checkpoint," Hawley said. (www.tsa.gov/blog/) Date: 8-Feb Incident: An "obnoxious" aeroplane passenger who told an air hostess there was a bomb in her bag has been jailed for 12 months. Ann Hassell later claimed it was a drunken joke - but her claim sparked an emergency response by police and firefighters when the aircraft landed at East Midlands Airport. It had to be directed to a remote part of the airport while the matter was investigated. Leicester Crown Court was told that Hassell (34) and her companions were noisy, rude and demanding towards cabin crew throughout the flight from Crete on June 26 last year. When a stewardess picked up Hassell's handbag from her feet to put it in an overhead locker ready for landing, Hassell told her: "I'd be careful with that there's a bomb in it." A court later heard she had been released from jail six months before the incident, from a four-year jail sentence for drugs offences and burglary. She also had previous convictions for offences of violence. Date: 7-Feb Incident: Some peeved blog postings from irked travelers convinced the TSA on Thursday to cancel a rogue "pilot program". It appears that Head Office was unaware of an underling's initiative requiring passengers to remove all electronics -- not just laptops -- from their carry-on bags at some designated security checkpoints. Some terminals at up to 10 airports around the country, including the American Airlines terminal at San Francisco International Airport were being "trialed" for passenger reaction. At present the IRS, FEMA and the TSA are level-pegging in the least highly regarded federal agency stakes. The TSA blog, and the attention being afforded its threads, appears in part designed to ensure it (the TSA) doesn't become "top of the unpops". Date: 7-Feb Incident: A DHS plan that establishes minimum standards for state-issued ID cards is "a sensible program for improving the authenticity of identity documents," according to the Baltimore Sun. James Jay Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation. He also notes that the program does not increase the chances of identity theft and that it will be established in part by federal funding. The measure is planned to thwart recent instances by civic officers of using fraudulent documentation to bypass security and get personal weapons onboard.... without sinister motives and simply as a matter of personal convenience. Date: 6-Feb Incident: More than a Myth - ZS-OUT Stolen - Location sought Two years ago, this aircraft was sold to RJM in Chad. The buyer never paid and the sale agreement was terminated. Two South African pilots were arrested when they were sent to Chad to retrieve the plane. On News24 today, the following report of the same plane: "Johannesburg - Foreigners who are fleeing from Chad's war zone to Lagos, Nigeria, via Cameroon could be aboard a South African plane which has been reported as stolen to Randburg police. The King Air 200 was used, among other things, to fly Hollywood star George Clooney from Chad to Darfur. But it has since been entangled in a legal wrangle in South Africa after its sale was cancelled. The South African owner took steps on Tuesday to ask the civil aviation authorities in Cameroon to prevent the plane from taking off again, should it ever land there."
