September-October 2022 - 32

COVER STORY
Mediterranean by Mohammed Ali
Hamadei and two collaborators, with
his 153 passengers and crew members,
from Beirut to Algiers and back again,
landing in Beirut three times before
finally coming to rest. During the
ordeal, passengers were tied up and
many beaten. On their initial stop in
Beirut, the terrorists severely beat a
U.S. Navy Seal and eventually shot and
killed him on live television in front of
the opened aircraft aft door, throwing
his body some 30 feet onto the tarmac.
This gruesome, made-for-television
event was a catalyst for the post-9/11
mandate for more stringent security
and safety regulations.
" The government put mitigations
in place as new threats emerged, even
though there was recognition there
were other vulnerabilities. When you
had the shoe bomber attack, which
happened right after 9/11, we had to
put mitigations in place and take your
shoes off and do other things to make
sure that bad guys weren't putting
bombs in shoes. And then you move
forward to the underwear bomber and
that's when we put mitigations in for
whole body imaging or AIT. Then
we saw the explosives being hidden
in your carry-on, in different configurations
and so they updated training,
they put new technology in. That's
when we got to CT to have better
imaging capability, " explains Kair.
" With every new event, it's always that
risk equation where you have to have
a threat as the impetus to being able
to put mitigations in place, but it puts
you in the position of always saying,
'Well, why didn't you think of that
ahead of time and have these mitigations
already in place?' You're always
having to play a little bit of catch up
to overcome the threat portion of it
and you're always trying to balance
efficiency and effectiveness. "
Kair insists that TSA could take
security to the next level and make it
extremely effective in stopping everyone
going through airport checkpoints.
However, he admits it would make
air travel unbearably cumbersome and
require more staffing.
" It's always that balance of efficiency
and effectiveness to mitigate the aviation
risk scenario that you're trying to
overcome. There are very few times
that you can actually increase efficiency
and increase effectiveness at the same
time, which is why we're excited about
what we're doing. It's one of those rare
cases where you actually can have a
better outcome and be more efficient
at the same time, " says Kair, referring
to a potentially revolutionary security
concept he, The Chertoff Group
and Integrated Defense and Security
Solutions (IDSS), are collaborating on
to take aviation security into the clouds.
A New Slant on
Airport Security
Kair has just seen a U.S. patent issued
on his innovative system to enhance
aviation security operations and
provide significantly higher officer
performance and efficiency. The
Chertoff Group is partnering with
IDSS to develop a solution based on
open architecture DICOS imaging
standards. Utilizing this patented technology
will allow access and interoperability
with any checkpoint or checked
baggage computed tomography (CT)
system located anywhere in the world.
CT systems take a series of X-ray
images of a traveler's bag, and electronically
" stitches " them together
into a high-resolution, three-dimensional
rendering. A key component
of the patent is its covert node, which
32 \ AIRPORT BUSINESS / SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2022
966889914 | VM | GETTY IMAGES
allows bomb technicians at a secure
non-airport location to create bags
with real threat items and remotely
assess the performance of all officers
operating in the massive multiplexing
environment concurrently.
According to Kair, government
entities armed with these insights
can now target
individuals for
focused instruction and practice, and
train artificial intelligence (AI) and
machine learning (ML) algorithms.
These system-wide performance
insights can also inform enhancements
to standard operating procedures
and detection algorithms.
" Just like with the traditional X-ray,
the first deployment of CT has a
person standing next to it, evaluating
the images. That's a pretty inefficient
position because there's a lot going on
in that machine and that person is also
idle quite a bit. Another problem is
that person is on a rotation within the
checkpoint, so they move from that
position to the walkthrough, to the
AIT, to doing bag searches. You don't
get much specialization or real proficiency
on that one position because
they're always on a rotation, " says Kair,
explaining that there's a concept called
multiplexing - or remote screening -
where TSA officers take those images,
port them to a conference room that's
adjacent to the checkpoint, and begin
comprehensive screening.
" It is similar to what they do in the
check baggage environment, where
September-October 2022

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of September-October 2022
