May 4th Brief: Transport Security

On Tuesday, the DHS issued a nationwide warning to municipal public transport systems. Citing the arrest of several ‘foreign’ persons who were videotaping trains and stations in metro systems of unnamed European countries, it said that the risk of attack remained high. According to the Washington post “The bulletin…said the episodes provided "indications of continued terrorist interest in mass-transit systems as targets and potentially useful insight into terrorist surveillance techniques." One tape included 17 minutes of subway footage, but no tourist sites. The memo also specified that this did not consitute a specific threat and the alert level would not be raised.

In the DHS’ 2004 memorandum on information sharing between infrastructure operators and authorities, the first three criteria for reporting deal with reconnaissance and uncommon interest.

Yesterday, in London, Sir Richard Mottram the UK government's Security and Intelligence Co-ordinator told MP's in regards to transit security that "It would be unreasonable to expect ... absolute protection against the terrorist threat we faced,”

He made the statement during the Transport Committee’s inquiry entitled “Traveling without Fear”. He said that airport style checkpoints would be impossible in an open transport system and that a better approach must include a social ‘process’ that would prevent radicalization and a more open system of communication between the government and public regarding risk. The inquiry will hear testimony over two days in an attempt to establish the government’s assessment of risk and infrastructure needs, the current state of transport security and international information sharing and lessons learned from other attacks.

Jerry Savill, the Met Police’s Commander of Special Operations also testified, saying that the level of risk currently borne by commuters is ‘very high’, the same as it was on July 7^th.

- Jessica R