Air Marshals Research Articles

Indonezijskij orden Bintang Dharma na rodine i v Sovetskom Soyuze

Th e award system of the Republic of Indonesia remains unknown despite it refl ects a leading role of the National Army of Indonesia (Tentara Nasional Indonesia) in the Indonesian state and society. Th e paper sums up the data on the statute of the Bintang Dharma-Military Distinguished Service Star which was instituted in 1958. Th e paper also examines the media and other open sources concerning the Bintang Dharma and its awardees. Th e Order is an award of the top generals of three- or four-stars ranks, including four-star generals, lieutenant-generals, admirals and vice-admirals, air marshals and air vice-marshals. Th e Order is bestowed for distinguished services in the Armed Forces.

Retrospective Benefit–Cost Analysis of Security-Enhancing and Cost-Saving Technologies

AbstractResearch and development (R&D) planners in homeland security agencies would like to be able to prioritize investments in projects based on costs versus future safety and security benefits. While costs are often readily available, estimates of safety and security benefits are fraught with uncertainty. To address these challenges, a benefit–cost model of technological change is adapted to the homeland security context. Data are sparse; therefore, estimation is facilitated by developing a familiar linear welfare model using derivatives of cost and risk reduction functions to estimate areas of costs and benefits. The theoretical model is applied to two homeland security projects involving airport patrols and the assignment of U.S. federal air marshals to international flights. Retrospective data are available for most periods. Welfare-based rates of return are reported for the two cases, each of which is estimated to return large present value net benefits. Extensive sensitivity and Monte Carlo simulation explores uncertainties. Two important findings are that (i) given the rationality assumption, relative increases in security levels can be valued, even if the absolute level of security is not known; and (ii) large uncertainties about risk reduction exist but can be bounded by parametric sensitivity and uncertainty analysis.

Risk and economic assessment of U.S. aviation security for passenger-borne bomb attacks

A systems reliability analysis is developed that includes 18 layers of security that might disrupt a terrorist organisation undeterred and intent on downing an airliner with a passenger-borne bomb. Overall, they reduce the risk that such an attack would be successful by 93%. The odds that a lone wolf will be successful in such an attack are considerably lower. This level of risk reduction is very robust: security remains high even when the disruption rates that make it up are varied considerably. The same model is used to explore the risk reduction of aviation security measures in other western countries and in Israel. The benefit-to-cost ratio is then calculated for most of the security measures. It considers the costs and the risk reduction of the layer, the losses from a successful terrorist attack, and the attack probability. It is found that the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) and police, PreCheck, Visible Intermodal Protection Response (VIPR) teams, and canines pass a cost-benefit assessment. However, it finds that air marshals and behavior detection officers, at a combined cost of nearly $1.3 billion per year, fail to be cost-effective. Accordingly, there are likely to be spending reductions that could be made with little or no consequent reduction in security.

The Re(d)active Force of the Transportation Security Administration

The Re(d)active Force of the Transportation Security Administration George F. McHendry Jr. (bio) It has been a decade since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), originally part of the Department of Transportation and now part of the Department of Homeland Security, was created as a direct response to the 11 September 2001 attack against the United States. TSA has grown to a workforce of more than fifty thousand “security officers, aviation and surface inspectors, air marshals, intelligence analysts, multimodal transportation experts, and other dedicated professionals who protect the nation’s transportation systems so you and your family can travel safely.”1 TSA is a large organization that conducts searches of every passenger and their belongings. These searches are part of a collective performance, which Louise Amoore and Alexandra Hall argue, requires “focus on the intertwining of the sequential and the contingent, the mundane and the extraordinary within its workings and effects.”2 From checked bags and carry-on luggage to human bodies crossing the limen into secured areas of airports, TSA guards our border crossings. This Sisyphean task of perpetual (in)security has become a controversial project; TSA deploys increasingly invasive techniques. TSA has become the target of angry criticism focusing on its poor proficiency at detecting dangerous items3 and its record of passenger complaints regarding botched screenings, such as the accidental exposure of the breasts of an underage niece of a member of Congress.4 Yet, formal complaints are relatively rare, given the number of people traveling. In 2011, 0.001% of passengers complained about TSA techniques.5 However, the notoriety of individual incidents overshadows the small number of total complaints. For example, Scott MacFarlane’s aforementioned reporting about the niece of Rep. Ralph Hall sparked controversy despite being an isolated event.6 The discourse of and around airport (in)security highlights the simultaneously secretive and invasive nature of TSA. This essay is a critical reading of an improperly redacted, publicly released TSA document, [End Page 211] “Screening Management Standard Operating Procedures” (hereafter, “Screening Management”), dated 28 May 2008.7 A heavily redacted version of this document was released, but the redacted material was easily recovered by using computer software. Five TSA employees were disciplined, and a public controversy erupted over the competency of the agency.8 This artifact affords a rare opportunity to look into the way TSA documents its security procedures, and the artifact serves as an important archival TSA text. Paired with this analysis is a critical reading of images released by TSA that have been produced by its whole-body imagers. This analysis looks at both the photorealistic images and the current use of more cartoonlike images as a way of tracking TSA’s responsiveness to criticisms over the original lifelike quality of body images. The thread that ties the images and manual as artifacts together is their use of redaction to attempt to increase public transparency while simultaneously feeding a paranoiac discourse of (in)security. Redacted manuals and images provide an appearance of public oversight while simultaneously refusing to engage the public directly on open ground. The discourse of secrecy pervades even basic attempts at responding to controversy and public outcry. I use the concept of re(d)active force in this essay to map the simultaneous desire for secrecy and demands for transparency. For me, re(d)active force has a double meaning. Re(d)active force is a play on Nietzsche’s reactive forces in that TSA takes a reactionary posture to the abundance of insecurity post 9/11, and it recognizes TSA’s reactive posture to calls to release some information in the name of transparency while still redacting sensitive information—and failing. This essay unfolds in six remaining sections. First, I address the theoretical apparatus built into this essay, structured around the Deleuzian–Nietzschean concepts of active and reactive forces. Second, I address relevant literature on the ideological nature of airports. Third, I analyze an improperly redacted TSA training manual. Forth, I analyze images produced by TSA whole-body imagers. Fifth, I look at the role of resistance towards TSA based on its use of redaction in airport security checkpoints. Last, I draw implications and conclusions based on...

9.1.2 Two‐stage Multi‐objective Analysis in the Assignment of Federal Air Marshals

AbstractThe United States Federal Air Marshal Service (FAMS) plays a critical role in ensuring safe travel aboard United States (US) air carriers. Federal Air Marshall agents, who operate out of field offices throughout the US, are assigned to accompany flights in order to deter and respond to hostile acts. In an era of limited resources, the FAMS is interested in optimally locating its field offices and agents to minimize the overall risk to the US air transportation system. This represents a highly constrained and complex optimization problem that resists standard techniques. In this paper, we demonstrate an approach that leverages the value‐focused thinking to model risk and optimize risk mitigation. Our approach uses a novel two‐stage approach to risk analysis that reduces the optimization burden and provides a solution to the FAMS.

The conundrum of the inflight security officer (IFSO)

A heightened awareness of the need for strengthened security on board aircraft surfaced in the aftermath of the events of 9/11 where armed hijackers took over several aircraft and deviated them to targets on the ground. Awareness of aviation security and the need for implementation of more stringent security measures inside the aircraft, both while it is on ground and when it is airborne, became critical determinants. One could well ask the question, if there are “bouncers” at night clubs, railway security in the trains, and hotel security in hotels to protect hapless staff who serve customers, why is there no such protection for the transportation industry? At any given time, aircraft of commercial airlines keep 1.2 million passengers aloft. In the process, these airlines carry thieves, pickpockets, drug addicts and con men, among other passengers. Most States do not have legislation to respond to crimes on board aircraft. A few years ago, there was concern in the airline industry for a stewardess who was critically wounded with a knife by a drunken passenger who was a British subject, on board an aircraft flying over German territory and registered in the Middle East. When the aircraft landed in its destination, the offender was only fined $1,000 and released, as there were no laws in that country which would apply to the offense. In September 2001 after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the United States Government decided that most, if not all, domestic US flights are to have "air marshals" carrying firearms on board. In December 2003 the British Government decided to deploy armed undercover sky marshals to counter heightened fears of terrorist attacks. This measure involved the presence on board British aircraft of undisclosed, highly trained police marks-men with special low-veloocity arms. Other possible measures taken included changes to screening at airports, improving the protection of airliners on the ground and security systems to prevent hijacks.

Securing interdependent assets

Stackelberg security game models have become among the leading practical game theoretic approaches to security, having seen actual deployment in the LAX Airport, the United States Federal Air Marshals Service, and the United States Coast Guard, among others. However, most techniques for computing optimal security policies in Stackelberg games to date do not explicitly account for interdependencies among targets. We introduce a novel framework for computing optimal randomized security policies in networked (interdependent) domains. Our framework rests upon a Stackelberg security game model, within which we explicitly capture the indirect spread of damages due either to malicious attacks or unintended failures. We proceed to specify a particular simple, yet natural model of damage spread based on a graphical representation of asset interdependencies coupled with an independent failure cascade model. For the general model, we present an algorithm based on submodularity of the attacker's decision problem, in combination with local search, to approximate optimal security resource allocation across the assets, and show experimentally that our algorithm is far more scalable than an alternative exact approach, yields nearly optimal results, and offers substantial improvement over a well-known heuristic alternative. We then show that in a particular important special case we can compute optimal security policies exactly and efficiently. We proceed to apply our framework to study comparative network resilience, unifying previously disparate strands of research in the area, and to offer insights into other aspects of the interdependent security problem.

Computational Game Theory for Security and Sustainability

Security is a critical concern around the world that arises in protecting our ports, airports, transportation and other critical national infrastructure from adversaries, in protecting our wildlife and forests from poachers and smugglers, and in curtailing the illegal flow of weapons, drugs and money; and it arises in problems ranging from physical to cyber-physical systems. In all of these problems, we have limited security resources which prevent full security coverage at all times; instead, security resources must be deployed intelligently taking into account differences in priorities of targets requiring security coverage, the responses of the attackers to the security posture, and potential uncertainty over the types, capabilities, knowledge and priorities of attackers faced. Game theory, which studies interactions among multiple selfinterested agents, is well-suited to the adversarial reasoning required for security resource allocation and scheduling problems. Casting the problem as a Bayesian Stackelberg game, we have developed new algorithms for efficiently solving such games that provide randomized patrolling or inspection strategies. These algorithms have led to some initial successes in this challenging problem arena, leading to advances over previous approaches in security scheduling and allocation, e.g., by addressing key weaknesses of predictability of human schedulers. These algorithms are now deployed in multiple applications: ARMOR has been deployed at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) since 2007 to randomize checkpoints on the roadways entering the airport and canine patrol routes within the airport terminals [17]; IRIS, a game-theoretic scheduler for randomized deployment of the US Federal Air Marshals (FAMS) requiring significant scaleup in underlying algorithms, has been in use since 2009 [17]; PROTECT, which schedules the US Coast Guard’s randomized patrolling of ports using a new set of algorithms based on modeling bounded-rational human attackers, has been deployed in the

Forensic psychological mindset of a terrorist: More questions than answers for public safety threat risk assessments

In 2012, a team of US air marshals forced a Delta Airlines overseas flight to return and evacuate because two passengers were thought to be working as a terrorist team, which proved to be false after investigation. This incident plus two other on-plane psychological meltdowns of in-flight personnel are alarming reminders of the snap decisions that are currently made without much guidance to inform such threat assessments. Preflight security measures have addressed many of the post-9/11 threats of terrorism. Nonetheless, successful and thwarted acts of terrorism and reconnaissance response probes have fueled a growing need for homeland security, military and public safety personnel's reflexive instincts to engage, ‘what if’ as a guiding principle in threat assessments. There is an elusive nexus between timely intelligence gathering, acts of terror and understanding the mindset of a terrorist. An internalized homeland security decision-making approach to ‘think like a terrorist’ is instructive in coming up with actionable information for many contraterrorism efforts. This article raises several issues related to the mindset of a terrorist. Such mindset is reviewed from two traditional theoretical frameworks (that is, criminological and psychological theories). The article also explores the applicability of these theories to public safety from a risk assessment perspective. The article concludes with implications for public safety research, practice and training.

Stackelberg vs. Nash in Security Games: An Extended Investigation of Interchangeability, Equivalence, and Uniqueness

There has been significant recent interest in game-theoretic approaches to security, with much of the recent research focused on utilizing the leader-follower Stackelberg game model. Among the major applications are the ARMOR program deployed at LAX Airport and the IRIS program in use by the US Federal Air Marshals (FAMS). The foundational assumption for using Stackelberg games is that security forces (leaders), acting first, commit to a randomized strategy; while their adversaries (followers) choose their best response after surveillance of this randomized strategy. Yet, in many situations, a leader may face uncertainty about the follower’s surveillance capability. Previous work fails to address how a leader should compute her strategy given such uncertainty. We provide five contributions in the context of a general class of security games. First, we show that the Nash equilibria in security games are interchangeable, thus alleviating the equilibrium selection problem. Second, under a natural restriction on security games, any Stackelberg strategy is also a Nash equilibrium strategy; and furthermore, the solution is unique in a class of security games of which ARMOR is a key exemplar. Third, when faced with a follower that can attack multiple targets, many of these properties no longer hold. Fourth, we show experimentally that in most (but not all) games where the restriction does not hold, the Stackelberg strategy is still a Nash equilibrium strategy, but this is no longer true when the attacker can attack multiple targets. Finally, as a possible direction for future research, we propose an extensive-form game model that makes the defender’s uncertainty about the attacker’s ability to observe explicit.

Discovering many worlds

On 2 January 1971 two US air marshals were stewarding a White House courier from Dulles Airport in Virginia to Los Angeles.

Software Assistants for Randomized Patrol Planning for the LAX Airport Police and the Federal Air Marshal Service

The increasing threat of terrorism makes security at major locations of economic or political importance a major concern. Limited security resources prevent complete security coverage, allowing adversaries to observe and exploit patterns in patrolling or monitoring, and enabling them to plan attacks that avoid existing patrols. The use of randomized security policies that are more difficult for adversaries to predict and exploit can counter their surveillance capabilities. We describe two applications, ARMOR and IRIS, that assist security forces in randomizing their operations. These applications are based on fast algorithms for solving large instances of Bayesian Stackelberg games. Police at the Los Angeles International Airport deploy ARMOR to randomize the placement of checkpoints on roads entering the airport and the routes of canine unit patrols within the airport terminals. The Federal Air Marshal Service has deployed IRIS in a pilot program to randomize the schedules of air marshals on international flights. This paper examines the design choices, information, and evaluation criteria that were critical to developing these applications.

Security Games with Arbitrary Schedules: A Branch and Price Approach

Security games, and important class of Stackelberg games, are used in deployed decision-support tools in use by LAX police and the Federal Air Marshals Service. The algorithms used to solve these games find optimal randomized schedules to allocate security resources for infrastructure protection. Unfortunately, the state of the art algorithms either fail to scale or to provide a correct solution for large problems with arbitrary scheduling constraints. We introduce ASPEN, a branch-and-price approach that overcomes these limitations based on two key contributions: (i) A column-generation approach that exploits a novel network flow representation, avoiding a combinatorial explosion of schedule allocations; (ii) A branch-and-bound algorithm that generates bounds via a fast algorithm for solving security games with relaxed scheduling constraints. ASPEN is the first known method for efficiently solving massive security games with arbitrary schedules.

Editor's introduction

I am very happy to introduce Issue 8.2 of SIGecom Exchanges. The first four contributions concern game theory. The first contribution is a full-length paper by Demaine, Hajiaghayi, Mahini, and Zadimoghaddam, titled "The Price of Anarchy in Cooperative Network Creation Games." In it, they study network creation games, in which the nodes of a graph decide which edges to create. They study "collaborative equilibrium" in which coalitions do not want to change their collective strategy on a single edge, and analyze the price of anarchy in this model. In "Computing Shapley's Saddles," Brandt, Brill, Fischer, Harrenstein, and Hoffmann discuss the computational complexity of saddles, an ordinal, set-valued solution concept defined by Shapley. In "A Prescriptive Approach for Playing Games," Feldman gives an overview of two recent papers on two-player zero-sum games: one of these papers considers a model in which the randomization phase of a randomized strategy is not completely private, and the other considers repeated symmetric games in which one player never observes a single payoff (but does observe the opponent's play). Finally, Pita, Bellamane, Jain, Kiekintveld, Tsai, Ordóñez, and Tambe consider some real-world applications of game theory at Los Angeles International Airport and the US Federal Air Marshals, and discuss some of the challenges in applying game theory to practice, in their letter "Security Applications: Lessons of Real-World Deployment".

A review of Transportation Security Administration funding 2001–2007

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 spurred a fundamental change in the thinking, organization, and funding of transportation security in the United States. The most visible organizational change was the creation of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), first as an entity within the Department of Transportation in November 2001, and then as part of the newly-established Department of Homeland Security effective March 2003. The TSA assumed control of many aviation security activities, many of which had previously been provided through private organizations under contract to airports or aviation authorities. While the most visible of these activities was passenger and baggage security screening, the TSA mandate includes air cargo screening, the Federal Air Marshals service, transportation employee background checks, and roles in rail, urban transit, and port and maritime security. However, in the years since its inception, TSA has devoted the overwhelming majority of its resources to commercial aviation and to meeting aviation security statutory requirements imposed by Congress. More recently, the agency has increased efforts at security for rail, transit, and ports.

US counterterrorism before bin Laden

THE FINAL REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION on terrorist attacks upon the United States (the 9/11 commission) focused on the history of US counterterrorism policy in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. The sense that one gets from much of the new literature on US efforts against terrorism is that what went on before 1998 was passive and reflected a belief that terrorism was more a criminal matter than an intelligence challenge. Curiously, even Vice President Dick Cheney, who dealt with terrorism in three different administrations, furthered this particular impression in comments made during the 2004 election. But in fact, the truth is that the US got to be very good at counterterrorism in the 1980s and early 1990s, and the more interesting question is why it didn't do better against al Qaeda.The story of US efforts against international terrorism begins with the radicalization of Yasser Arafat's Fatah guerrilla movement following the Six Day War of 1967. When Palestinians attempted to hijack four planes simultaneously in September 1970-a feat not achieved until al Qaeda did it in September 2001-the Nixon administration responded with the first US federal antiterrorism measures. Air marshals were posted to some international flights and metal detectors appeared at the nation's airports. In January 1973, following a harrowing domestic hijacking involving a Southern air flight that, among other places, was rerouted to Toronto, the Nixon administration mandated 100 percent screening of passengers and carry-on bags. In the Ford administration, one saw the first work on preventing nuclear terrorism. Until the 1970s, the transportation of plutonium and enriched uranium acquired armed protection for the first time and the Atomic Energy Commission established NESTs-nuclear emergency search teams, comprising 200 specialists in nuclear detection, recovery, and protection. All of these measures, however, involved passive security.It is not until the Reagan administration that the US adopted the strategy of counterterrorism. There were no effective CIA covert operations launched against Middle Eastern terrorist groups in the 1970s, this despite the fact that the PLO's Black September group killed the US ambassador and another embassy official in the Sudan in 1973 and terrorists killed the US ambassador and one other diplomat in Lebanon in 1976. US policy was to use diplomacy to encourage Palestinians to seek a political solution to their grievances. The CIA offered a back channel for discussions between Arafat and both the Nixon and Ford administration. And although stated US policy was to give no concessions to terrorists, in practice Washington always negotiated and often asked Israel to release PLO prisoners to satisfy terrorist requests. There was an interagency working group on counterterrorism which met regularly from October 1972 on, but it operated at a low level. In resolutely hierarchical Washington, deputy assistant secretaries and below are not that important and that is where this group operates. Indeed, the Ford administration tried to insulate the president from these low-level CT types because terrorism was viewed as a losing issue for a president. There was nothing that could be done about it, so it was best not to associate him too much with it.All of this would only change in Reagan's second term, which brought the United States government's first brush with aggressive counterterrorism. It is a period easily forgotten, but one which produced remarkably positive achievements. Those achievements were remembered by Richard Clarke and the other top participants in the hunt for bin Laden just before September 11th and remain a useful standard by which to judge current efforts against al Qaeda .On 27 December 1985, terrorists from the Abu Nidal organization (AND) fired machine guns at the El Al ticket counters at the Vienna and Rome airports. Sixteen people were killed and more than 110 injured. …

Comparison of the performance of vulcanized rubbers and elastomer/TPE/iron composites for less lethal ammunition applications

One of the exciting novel potential applications of thermoplastic elastomers (TPEs) is less-lethal ammunition (LLA). The importance of LLA in crowd control and law enforcement has been acknowledged, and became evident for air marshals after the September 11, 2001 crisis. This article will compare the dynamic mechanical behavior of various elastomer/TPE/iron composites and commercially available LLA based on conventional cured rubbers (ethylene-propylene-diene rubber [EPDM], styrene-butadiene rubber [SBR], and natural rubber [NR]). Optimum combination of properties for LLA application was shown by the poly(styrene-b-isobutylene-b-styrene) (SIBS)/butyl elastomer (IIR)/iron 50/50/233 composite. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 45:966–975, 2005. © 2005 Society of Plastics Engineers

Preparing for Terrorist Attacks: An Ongoing Challenge

As we enter this particular new year, 2004, more than two years after the terrible events of September 11, 2001, it is particularly fitting that we consider the long-term national consequences of this event. During this winter holiday season, our country has once again been placed on a heightened level of terrorist alert. Added security checkpoints monitoring approaching vehicles at many airports augment the already familiar presence of federal security personnel and frequent snake-like lines at security stations within the terminals. Selected international flights have been cancelled, and air marshals are required on other international flights, in response, we are told, to an alarming crescendo in the volume and specificity of Internet messages by presumed or known terrorist groups. At the time of this writing, fortunately, no new major terrorist event remotely approaching the magnitude of the events of 9/11 has occurred; yet we are strongly advised to be watchful and alert, while still carrying on our usual activities. Whether the overall increased level of security in the country, intensified at times like the present heightened alert level, has actually reduced or helped abort terrorist attacks that would have otherwise occurred, we do not know. Remarkably, at least it seems to me, the public is grateful for at least the perception of greater safety, so that the sizable “hassle factor” involved in air travel and in many other daily activities, such as parcel or handbag searches at concerts or the theater, new metal detectors in many buildings, and other similar measures, are accepted with little protest. The article in this issue by Stein et al. provides us with important information about the persistence of psychological symptoms after September 11, not just in New York City but throughout the nation, demonstrating significant levels of distress persuasively related to the events of 9/11. By two months after the event, over 20% of adults remained substantially distressed, and this was equally true throughout the country. Impairment in work or school was common in this group, along with avoidance of crowds, persistent fears, and use of alcohol, prescription drugs, and non-prescription drugs. Information similar to the results presented in their study from two months post-disaster would be important to obtain longitudinally, so that Psychiatry 67(2) Summer 2004 167

The Air Marshals: The Air War in Western Europe.

The Air Marshals: The Air War in Western Europe.

Modern Idiom in an Ancient Context

Since the Second World War we have been subjected to a flood of memoirs and counter-memoirs by generals, admirals, air marshals, and politicians. One of the direct results of this is that our vocabulary has been increased—if not enriched—by a military jargon. Most of the latter's terms have in fact very specialized meanings, and if they are used out of their proper context they can present a highly coloured view of a rather simple situation. Can these terms be applied with validity to historical situations of antiquity ? At first sight there is an attraction in theirvery modernity, for they seem to give a freshness of approach; but Professor Salmon's use of them in his recent article, ‘The Strategy of the Second Punic War’, has made the dangers of their use manifestly clear. By his use of these anachronisms—for that is surely what they are—Professor Salmon has given nothing new in the way of interpretation, but merely provided confirmation of Oman's dictum ‘Historians may have the most divergent views according to their predispositions’, and has exaggerated the capabilities of both sides beyond belief.