In the name of airline security

Here's a new idea for keeping airplanes safe from terrorists: hidden microphones in the cabin which, combined with other technology, alert the cockpit to anyone acting suspiciously. Bye-bye private conversations in a plane!

Before, one could automatically blame such a concept on former President Bush. But not only has he retired from the scene, but it is the EU funding the research, which is being conducted at the UK's Reading University. Ah, life is so complicated!

Reverse lawfare

I've referred in previous posts to the threat of 'lawfare': lawsuits launched against people who criticize Islam or Islamic organizations. The suits are designed to intimidate, bankrupt, or otherwise silence any voices of opposition.

Security expert David Harris, writing in The Ottawa Citizen, suggests a remedy for this problem: "Passengers and others victimized by terror threats should be encouraged to sue airlines and other entities that have failed in their duty to safeguard passengers’ well-being." It's certainly an idea!

Sorry to be right

Being able to say "I told you so" is usually sweet, but not this time.

Over a year ago, Mark Richard (a former senior Department of Justice official) and I predicted, in an article published in Policy Review, that U.S.-EU counterterrorism and law enforcement cooperation would suffer if the EU adopted the Lisbon Treaty.

Well, the Treaty was adopted on December 1, 2009, and the European Parliament, which under the Treaty acquired new powers in this area, has just rejected an agreement allowing the EU and the United States to share financial data that may be linked to terrorists. The agreement had already been renegotiated, but the Parliament found it still lacked sufficient protection for personal data.

Expect more of this in future. The Parliament has a great deal of pent-up resentment at being excluded from such issues in the past; it lacks the law enforcement expertise necessary to make informed decisions on such issues; and many of its members are convinced that the United States is out to abuse their privacy and to somehow take advantage of Europe.

Just for the record, here's the report prepared by Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere, perhaps the most prominent European expert on fighting terrorism. It documents the agreement's proven value to European governments as well as to the United States. (Thanks to John Rosenthal.)

A simple solution

You can try to solve the question of airline security using U.S. government methods: keeping people in their seats for the last hour of the flight, and not letting them have anything in their laps during that time. (Gee, what if the next terrorist hears about these requirements and decides to blow himself up two hours before the flight lands?)

Or you can take some fraction of the billions we've spent on intelligence gathering and security systems and replace TSA with African Union peacekeepers. Last month, they stopped a Somali man trying to board a flight with a syringe, liquid and powdered chemicals. Why? Because the materials could have caused an explosion. Those are the kind of security folks we need - and maybe there are enough to share them with the Dutch as well.

Mark and the MLAT

Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder and his EU counterparts Gilles De Kerkove and Hans Nillson exchanged instruments between the European Union and the United States for two essential treaties on mutual legal assistance and extradition.

This is the result of years of work, led on our side by my dear friend Mark Richard who passed away last spring. The two treaties represent a big step forward in transatlantic cooperation to combat terrorism and transnational crime.

It is such a shame that Mark couldn't have been there to see the culmination of his efforts - but if he had, he would have spent the whole time explaining that he really didn't have much to do with it, or some similar nonsense. He was a brilliant guy with a very big heart and a very small ego.

Terrorists and UK labs

UK security agencies report that up too 100 individuals, a number of them from Iran and Pakistan, have sought to infiltrate UK laboratories containing dangerous pathogens and weapons technology. Typically posing as graduate students, they seek things that would help to make weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

This isn't a new trend; in the 'good old days' before the first Gulf War, Iraqi scientists infiltrated UK labs prior to the first Gulf War. (Thanks to Jihad Watch.)

Data mining

Data mining, in the counter-terrorist world, refers to various methods used to extract (or try to extract) from a large amount of data key nuggets that can help to track and neutralize terrorists. Sometimes, the data has been collected by government sources; more often, it is personal data collected for commercial reasons - and the individuals giving up that information were unaware that it might be passed on to the government.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) funded a study of this practice that has just been published. The study was conducted by a privacy and terrorism committee created in 2005 by the National Research Council. Its findings, according to the press report: "The government should not be building predictive data mining systems that attempt to figure out who among millions is a terrorist...The commission found that the technology would not work and that the inevitable mistakes would be un-American."

Those strong statements made me curious to read the report itself. Unfortunately, it looks as if it's not available on the internet - unless you pay for a hard copy. For something like this, I think at least the executive summary should be widely available. (Thanks to Stefaan.)