Protecting Transportation (eBook)

Implementing Security Policies and Programs

R William Johnstone (Autor)

eBook Download: PDF | EPUB

2015 | 1. Auflage
398 Seiten
Elsevier Science (Verlag)
978-0-12-407928-1 (ISBN)

Infos

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

R. William Johnstone served on the staff of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) after working for over 20 years as a Congressional staff member. He is the author of 9/11 and the Future of Transportation Security (2006), Bioterror: Anthrax, Influenza, and the Future of Public Health Security (2008, paperback edition to be published in 2015), and the homeland security section of the annual A Unified Security Budget for the United States (2007-2012). He is the co-author of the monograph 'Four Flights and Civil Aviation Security, staff report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States” (2004), and a contributor to The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (2004). In his time as a Congressional staff member, Johnstone served as legislative director for U.S. Senators Wyche Fowler, Jr. (D-GA) and Max Cleland (D-GA). Mr. Johnstone grew up in Atlanta, GA and attended Emory University. He currently lives in Rockville, MD with his wife and son, and is a consultant and writer on homeland security matters.

---

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 "e;inputs of security policy, including laws, regulations, and programs; and the "e;outcomes, such as enforcement, effectiveness metrics, and workforce morale

Textauszug

Introduction

Transportation security as a distinct discipline scarcely existed before the 1970s. From that period forward, security systems have been developed and evolved largely in response to the occurrence (or absence) of high-profile incidents, which increasingly involved acts of terrorism. Thus, by 2001, there were internationally recognized standards in place for maritime and aviation security (with enforcement left largely to national governments and thus of a highly variable quality), as well as a limited number of significant localized land transportation security efforts (including the security system developed to protect London’s passenger rail network in response to decades-long attacks by the Irish Republican Army). National aviation security programs in the United States, the United Kingdom, and certain other countries had been significantly increased after terrorist bombings of passenger aircraft in the 1980s. However, the 9/11 aircraft hijackings in the United States produced the largest expansion in transportation security, resulting in its current state in which tens of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of workers are assigned to provide such security in the United States alone.

Protecting transportation systems is an extremely difficult undertaking. The front-line airport screeners, customs agents, transit operators, security inspectors, law enforcement personnel, intelligence officers, and others involved in implementing transportation security measures are confronted with the daunting mission of securing a globally connected, largely open network of airports, seaports, rail tracks, roads, tunnels, bridges, and stations, as well as the passengers, cargo, and transportation workers within those systems. This must be accomplished so as to minimize disruptions to commerce; inconveniences to passengers; and costs to shippers, customers, and taxpayers. Much of their effort is directed at continuously defeating a terrorist enemy who may choose the time, place, and method of attack. Furthermore, these defenders must cope with the fact that the nature of the terrorist threat means that security measures must be maintained over time, although actual incidents—which help to galvanize attention and secure resources—are likely to be limited in number and infrequent in occurrence.

Many works have been written about the achievements and shortcomings of these efforts to implement transportation security, with much of the focus directed to the most visible, and most expensive, component: screening of passengers and luggage at commercial airports. These are important and useful documents, and gaining an understanding of the details of the technologies, systems, and methods used in carrying out specific security measures is an important part of learning about transportation security.

Although this volume also seeks to describe the major programs that define the security measures being deployed for maritime, land, and aviation transportation systems, its primary concern is with another key component of the transportation security picture: policymaking and the strategies, plans, international agreements, laws, appropriations, and regulations that comprise it. It is transportation security policies that define security standards, authorize and fund programs, and develop and enforce regulations. These policies determine whether, and how, a particular threat is to be addressed or a program is to be reconciled with privacy and cost concerns. If the front-line implementers are confronted with substantial challenges in carrying out their responsibilities, so, too, are those who set the policies being implemented.

• Because of the impossibility of financing and carrying out efforts to protect all potential targets, governments seek to use risk management principles to focus security activities on the most vulnerable of these targets and those whose destruction or impairment would produce the most harmful consequences. Yet calculations of the threat, vulnerability, and consequence components required to inform proper risk-based decision making are all fraught with significant uncertainties and other limitations.

• Attempts to evaluate the effectiveness of security measures—of determining what works and what does not—are impeded by recurring difficulties in developing appropriate performance measurements, and much of the information that would be useful in this regard is classified (to prevent its disclosure to those who pose threats to transportation systems) and thus unavailable to many transportation security stakeholders.

• Most policy is either made directly by, or strongly influenced by, elected officials and thus is inevitably subject to political factors. In the United States, this influence has posed a number of challenges in making coherent transportation security policy, including, among others, partisan divisions that have produced uncertainty and delay in the funding process, parochial allocations of grant money, and fragmented congressional oversight of security programs.

• As has historically been the case, transportation security policies remain subject to singular events (the 9/11 hijackings being the most severe example) that can produce rapid and major changes in policy priorities.

Part of the purpose of this text is to promote awareness and understanding of these and other policymaking challenges, as well as the means developed by policymakers in coping with them and the policies that have emerged from this process. Another central aim stems from this author’s belief, as expressed in a 2006 work, that shortcomings in policy are responsible for many of the current problems in transportation security:

In the pre-9/11 world, [efforts to significantly boost transportation security in the U.S. were] doomed to fail, with neither the White House, nor the Congress, nor the American public prepared to accept the financial costs and inconveniences [such actions] would have entailed. However, 9/11 was a watershed event, and in its aftermath there was a sea change in attitudes toward the terrorist threat and the priority to be attached to homeland security. And the national leadership has responded with a multi-billion dollar increase in federal expenditures and a raft of policy initiatives…. It has clearly become possible to do much more to bolster transportation security than was ever the case prior to 2001. If significant systemic problems persist in aviation and transportation security, as the available evidence indicates, the post-9/11 failure is, then, one of policy and national policy makers.

Johnstone, 2006

Before 9/11, transportation security policies in the United States and elsewhere were much more limited in terms of objectives, authorities, and resources than became the case after that catastrophe, when the scope of policymaking became much wider. Thus, it is the opinion here that the opportunities for the greatest improvements in transportation security, in terms of performance and cost effectiveness, lie in the policy arena and that learning more about that aspect should be a higher priority in transportation security coursework.

To both provide as up-to-date information as possible in the rapidly evolving field of transportation security and expose readers to the “world” of policymakers, multiple “primary” documents from official governmental sources (including agency websites and reports, the Federal Register, Government Accountability Office [GAO] and Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General [DHS OIG] reports, and others) are used whenever possible, supplemented as appropriate by independent analyses (“think tanks,” nongovernmental stakeholders, and so on). This is meant to provide useful information not only to those who are, or aspire to be, transportation security professionals but also to policymakers themselves and to citizens seeking to understand and evaluate transportation security policies.

The focus of the book is on the U.S. transportation security system, which is, in many respects, the most elaborate such system in the world while also exerting a strong influence on what has been done at the international level. However, to place the U.S. system into greater context, some attention is given to security efforts in the European Union and other nations.

Protecting Transportation is organized into 10 chapters.

The opening chapters provide an historical overview of the evolution of threats to transportation systems and the security response to those threats. Chapter 1 covers the period before September 2001 and considers maritime piracy, the terrorist threat to each transportation mode, and the key incidents (including the 1985 seizure of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and the 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system) that manifested these threats and provoked international and national security responses (including the international Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety of Maritime Navigation and the U.S. Aviation Security Act of 1990).

Chapter 2 addresses the events of 9/11, as well as the security measures in place on that day and how they were circumvented. In addition, the chapter describes the immediate policy reaction to the hijackings in the United States and elsewhere, as represented by new laws in the U.S. (the Aviation and Transportation Security Act of 2001, the...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 30.1.2015
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Natur / Technik ► Fahrzeuge / Flugzeuge / Schiffe
• Themenwelt: Naturwissenschaften ► Geowissenschaften ► Geografie / Kartografie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung ► Europäische / Internationale Politik
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
• Themenwelt: Technik
• Themenwelt: Wirtschaft ► Betriebswirtschaft / Management ► Unternehmensführung / Management
• ISBN-10: 0-12-407928-8 / 0124079288
• ISBN-13: 978-0-12-407928-1 / 9780124079281