Over 350 potential terrorists have been stopped from flying by US officials over the past 15 months.
That's according to one element of the US media, The Associated Press, which links the successful flight preventions to the advent of a security boost in light of the attempted 2009 Christmas Day mid-air explosion.
Prior to that, the legacy of 9/11 survived for some seven years. According to unnamed officials working within US Security, hundreds of individuals, with various degrees of involvement in terrorism, slipped through the net, arriving in the US after boarding commercial flights from elsewhere. When questioned on arrival, they often linked their presence to business trips or holidays.
Their success dramatically reduced after 25 December 2009 when one man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was arrested, after it was claimed he tried to explode an airliner in mid-Transatlantic flight.
At the very start of 2010, new US airport screening measures began to be put in place to enable terror flight prevention, requiring passengers from specific terror-related nations to be patted-down and have their luggage come under close scrutiny, while there's also a watch list and a no-fly list against which international passengers are checked.
Consequently, airliner passengers with links to Hamas, al-Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Taibi and many other organisations have had their travel plans stopped. In line with legal requirements, no specific identifies have been provided.
The Christmas Day explosion attempt gave US airport security a thorough overhaul and the improvements keep on coming. The Terror Watch List is updated on a daily basis and, at present, it features in the region of 450,000 names, while the no-fly list has approximately 30,000.
In related news, the current US government terror security system - which issues risk-based alerts - is to be trimmed down from five elements to two.
Again, as reported by the Associated Press, these alerts will, from the end of April, will be issued when there's an ‘elevated' level of terror and when there's an ‘imminent' terror level. US citizens will get notice of these warnings in certain circumstances, but not if the risk level is too high, the AP says.
Currently, five colours are used to signify increasing US security risk levels and that's been the case since 9/11.
See also:
Companies supplying Airport Security
0 comments:
Post a Comment