Preventing Mass Transit Terror Attacks
Oct 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Michael Fickes
THE LONDON BOMBINGS and the 2004 Madrid train bombings drove home a sobering point: The threat posed by radical Jihadist terrorists has metastasized into something more widespread, and perhaps more lethal, than al Qaeda and other global terrorist organizations developing and managing terror plots. This new threat involves terrorist cells operating on their own, relatively independent of their leaders.
Rafi Ron, president of consulting firm New Age Security Solutions, McLean, Va., recently told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security that the United States-led war on terror has disrupted the global terrorist organizational structure and shifted responsibility for initiating and executing attacks to local terrorist cells like those responsible for attacks in London and Madrid.
While global terrorist organizations may focus on spectacular signature targets, such as the World Trade Center, Ron suspects that independent terrorist cells will likely seek out easily accessible targets like those found in rail and mass transit systems.
Ron also told the Senate Homeland Security Committee that the threat to mass transit has increased in conjunction with the success of security measures designed to prevent terrorist attacks on aviation. “The turning of terrorist attention to urban mass transit systems is thus an expected consequence of our success in other domains,” he said.
By and large, existing security at train and mass transit stations has been designed around forensic and investigative models. The London underground is a prime example of forensic security design. With more than 6,000 closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras located in trains and at nearly all stations, police officers assigned to the underground can review video after any incident and find out what happened. The theory is that the certainty of being identified by the system deters criminal acts.
The investigative system worked well after the London underground bombings last summer. Within days of each incident, London police had discovered who was responsible and arrested many, if not all, of the perpetrators who remained alive.
The trouble is, investigative law enforcement models use the threat of capture to deter acts of violence and other crime. But suicide terrorists do not care about being caught. Because they plan to die, investigative law enforcement models, no matter how successful, cannot prevent suicide attacks.
Given the sprawling networks and numerous unsecured access points of the mass transit system in the United States, which serves an estimated 14 million people per day, is it even possible to shift the law enforcement model to prevention?
Homeland security and local law enforcement officials believe it is possible to mold new and old technologies, new tactics and new strategies into a security system that can prevent attacks.
Smart New Technologies
Three weeks after the London bombings, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority awarded a three-year $212 million contract to Lockheed Martin to manage an upgrade of the Authority's electronic security technologies. Prevention is a key goal of the Lockheed assignment. “We are starting with prevention,” says Judy Marks, president of Lockheed Martin Transportation and Security Solutions, Rockville, Md. “Prevention involves perimeter intrusion detection, access control at entrances, real-time video views of access control and intrusion alarm points and video analytics to alert officers to potential problems.”
Lockheed's New York City contract is emblematic of mass transit's shift to prevention strategies since the London underground bombings. “We have seen officials get more aggressive and budgets get looser since the London bombings,” says William Stuntz, CEO of BroadWare Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., provider of networks for conventional and intelligent video analytics applications.
Intelligent video systems have generated lots of excitement among security professionals seeking preventive security designs. “Intelligent video systems are useful in the preventive stage, where (the system) can prompt security officers to investigate and deal with a problem in real-time, instead of after the fact,” says David M. Stone, former assistant secretary with TSA and a member of the board of advisors of Vidient Systems Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., an intelligent video provider.
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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.
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