Protecting Transportation

Implementing Security Policies and Programs

R William Johnstone

• Publisher: Butterworth-Heinemann
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9780124079281
• Topic: Technologie et ingénierie
• Subtopic: Transport et navigation

Protecting Transportation: Implementing Security Policies and Programs provides a thorough overview of transportation security in the United States, with a focus on policy. The book coversall major transportation modes and puts the American security system into perspective against other national and international systems. Author R. William Johnstone, a transportation security expert and member of the 9/11 Commission staff, discusses how the current transportation security system came to be and how it is performing.

Whether you are a current or aspiring transportation security professional, a policymaker, or an engaged citizen, Johnstone's presentation equips you to understand today's issues and debates on a problem that affects every member of the global community. Transportation security has evolved in the years since 9/11 from a relatively modest, sporadic undertaking into a multi-billion dollar enterprise employing tens of thousands. Protecting Transportation describes how that system is organized, funded, and implemented.

• Fosters critical thinking by reviewing the development and evaluation of key transportation security programs
• Clarifies security issues in the context of civil liberties, federal spending, and terrorist incidents in the United States and globally
• Considers the "inputs" of security policy, including laws, regulations, and programs; and the "outcomes, " such as enforcement, effectiveness metrics, and workforce morale

1

Transportation Security Before 9/11/01

Abstract

Security measures to protect transportation systems were very limited before 1970. From that point, the situation in each mode evolved based on the occurrence (or absence) of high-profile incidents. In the maritime sector, where such events were rare, the system of weakly enforced international laws on the high seas and variable local regulations in ports continued little changed. Land transportation systems experienced the most attacks, but many were part of ongoing armed conflicts in which the governments lacked the resources to deploy extensive security systems. Decades-long terrorist attacks on the London passenger rail network led the United Kingdom to develop the most elaborate land transportation security system. The United States established defenses against air hijackings in response to a wave of Cuba-related hijackings. Terrorist bombings of aircraft in the 1980s produced enlarged aviation security systems in the United States and United Kingom, with most attention devoted to countering the bombing threat.

Keywords

Achille Lauro

Air hijacking

Aum Shinrikyo

Bojinka plot

Land transportation

Maritime piracy

Maritime terrorism

Pan Am Flight 103

Passenger-bag reconciliation (or match)

Passenger and baggage screening

Chapter Objectives:

In this chapter, you will learn about transportation security before 2001, including:

• The evolution of transportation and transportation security systems

• Trends in terrorist and other attacks on transportation systems

• The content and effectiveness of transportation security measures

• The content, reliability, and comparability of data on terrorist and other attacks on transportation systems

Introduction

Throughout human history, transportation systems and their passengers and freight have encountered natural disasters, accidents, and intentional acts of violence, including robberies on highways, piracy on the high seas, sabotage and hijackings in the air, and bombings and assaults on the rails. In recent decades, one of the major sources of such attacks has been terrorism, defined most recently in the U.S. Code as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents” (22 USC 2656).¹ Nonterrorist criminal acts accounted for a large majority of intentional attacks on all modes of transportation and in all time periods, but terrorist actions (with their generally higher visibility and greater consequences) have served as the principal motivating force for the development and elaboration of security measures, especially after 1970.

Pre-9/11 Maritime Security

Before the Industrial Revolution of the latter half of the 18th century, there were no motorized forms of transportation, and systems on land were limited in speed, efficiency, and extent. Instead, it was waterways—first the great river systems of Eurasia and northeast Africa (including the Tigris and Euphrates, Nile, Indus, Ganges, and Huang He Rivers) where early civilizations and trading systems were centered. By the Middle Ages, large maritime transportation networks had developed using the Mediterranean, Baltic, and North Seas and the coastal waters, navigable rivers, and canals in Europe and China. In the early 15th century in China and later that century in Europe, voyages of discovery opened up the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans, which led to a further expansion of maritime trade (Rodrigue et al., 2006, pp. 14–18).

The advent of steam-powered ships in the late 18th century was followed by the establishment of the first truly worldwide maritime routes in the early 19th century, with sail-driven vessels gradually being supplanted by steamships. Ongoing improvements in propulsion systems, fuels, construction materials, and ship designs produced not only explosive growth in maritime trade but also required massive investments in port infrastructure to accommodate the larger vessels and increased volume of cargo. Harbors became major industrial centers, which supported both production and transshipment of goods. And beginning in the 1880s, ships provided the world’s first international passenger transport (Rodrigue et al., 2006, pp. 20–22).

Two major developments during the 20th century were the introduction of increasingly large tankers in midcentury (especially oil tankers to carry petroleum from the Middle East) and the development of standardized, multimodal containers as the central element of modern freight transportation. The first container ship was launched in 1956, the first specialized container terminal (in Port Elizabeth, NJ) was built in 1960, and the first regular maritime container route (between North America and Western Europe) was established in 1966. By the early 1980s, container shipping had become the dominant form of international transportation (Rodrigue et al., 2006, pp. 23–24).

Piracy

Since its beginnings, maritime trade was accompanied by the use of force aimed at seizing vessels, crews, or cargo. These acts of piracy² are recorded at least as far back as the first millennium BCE in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean Sea. The development of trans-oceanic trade routes starting in the 15th century led to more far-ranging pirates. These latter included privateers, which were chartered by European monarchies and authorized to seize ships and cargo on the high seas (especially the gold and silver shipments to Spain from its New World colonies). This officially sanctioned piracy stood in contrast to the limited success governments had in suppressing such acts during this era. The takeover of colonial responsibilities from private companies by European governments, the recognition of more distinct colonial boundaries, the development of more aggressive and effective antipiracy patrols (especially by the Royal Navy of Great Britain), and the establishment of both national (e.g., Britain’s Piracy Act of 1721, which extended penalties for piracy to include all those who traded with pirates) and international (including the 1856 Declaration of Paris, which renounced the use of privateers) sanctions produced sharp declines in piracy by the mid-19th century (Bennett, 2008, pp. 150–151).

In more recent times, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), established by the International Chamber of Commerce in 1979 primarily to combat maritime fraud, found a resurgence of piracy dating as far back as 1970. However, it was not until 1983 that the international community felt sufficient need to respond significantly with the adoption by the United Nations’ (UN’s) International Maritime Organization (IMO) of a resolution that

• Expressed great concern about the rising number of incidents involving piracy.

• Recognized the grave risks to lives, navigation, and the environment posed by such acts.

• Urged governments “to take, as a matter of highest priority, all measures necessary to prevent and suppress acts of piracy and armed robbery from ships in or adjacent to their waters, including strengthening of security measures.”

The IMO subsequently indicated that between 1984 and the end of 2000, there had been 1700 reported pirate attacks on ships around the globe, although it estimated that the actual number of incidents was likely double that figure (International Maritime Organization, 2000, pp. 1–2).

Bennett (2008) cites several factors that contributed to the reemergence of piracy as a significant threat.

• More potential targets produced by the rapid growth in maritime trade and vessels

• Reduced governmental naval deployments after the end of the Cold War

• Inadequate national and international antipiracy laws and limited jurisdiction over attacks in international waters

• Increased shipboard automation, leading to smaller crews, which in turn offer fewer defenders against pirate attacks

• Higher fuel costs that necessitated cost-driven reductions in ship speeds, making pirate pursuits easier to accomplish

• Reduced costs for private arms and technology purchases, allowing pirates to procure better tracking equipment, assault vessels, and weapons (p. 152)

The distribution and nature of pirate attacks shifted during the period from the early 1980s through 2000, with assaults in port in west Africa (especially Nigeria) most common at the beginning, attacks within the Malacca Strait in Southeast Asia particularly prominent in the late 1980s and early 1990s, attacks in international waters within the South China Sea the biggest problem area in the mid-1990s, and incidents in port or in territorial waters in both the Malacca Strait and South China Sea the leading trouble spots at the end of the period (International Maritime Organization, 2000, pp. 2–4).

The costs of 20th century piracy, in both economic and human terms, are harder to assess. One estimate of the financial effect on the shipping industry put the figure at somewhere between $450 million and $1 billion in losses in 2000, but found that, even at the upper end of the range, the impact was relatively small, amounting to an additional cost of less than 40 cents on each $10,000 worth of shipping (Gottschalk and Flanagan, 2000, p. 106.) With regard to casualties, Chalk (2008) cited figures from the IMB indicating that between 1995 and 2000, 256 maritime crew and passengers were killed during pirate attacks, another 203 were injured and 1780 were taken hostage (p. 9).

Maritime Terrorism

Terrorism “within the maritime enviro...