By IANS,
Washington : The US will announce Friday a new security system for international airports which will help in identification of passengers suspected to have terror links using intelligence database, a media report said.
The new approach, which will be implemented from this month, will replace a broader layer of extra scrutiny, including full-body scan, that had been imposed since January on all passengers from 14 countries, most of which are Muslim, New York Times reported.
President Barack Obama has signed off on new security protocols for people flying to the US, establishing a system that uses intelligence information and assessment of threats to identify passengers who could have links to terrorism, a senior official was quoted as saying by the Times.
The decision comes following a review of security at international airports ordered by Obama after a failed attempt to blow up a jetliner bound for Detroit in December last.
“It’s much more tailored to what intelligence is telling us and what the threat is telling us, as opposed to stopping all individuals from a particular nationality or all individuals using a particular passport,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
The intelligence-based system will raise flags about travellers whose names do not appear on no-fly watch lists, but whose travel patterns or personal traits create suspicions.
The system is intended to pick up fragments of information – family name, nationality, age or even partial passport number – and match them against intelligence reports to sound alarm bells before a passenger boards a plane.
“This is not a system that can be called profiling in the traditional sense. It is intelligence-based,” the official added.
Under the existing security scanning procedure, citizens of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria have been subjected to extra checks of their baggage before boarding planes for the US.