Knipsel
Borderpol calls for internationally shared watch list
Borderpol slams politicians and government officials: 'Eight years after 9/11 we have not even begun discussions on an internationally shared watch list which could be available to embassy staff, immigration officials, border police and airport security staff involved in implementing travel, aviation and border security.'
As governments worldwide scramble to respond to the so-called 'underpants bomber', Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who boarded airplanes freely from Lagos to Amsterdam to Detroit, Borderpol, has called for the formation of international border organisation to provide an international solution to an international problem.
According to the Canadian-headquartered, international public security organisation, little has been heard from the US and UK beyond speeding up the use of body scanners at airports and prescribing who should be scanned.
But a basic fact is that that there were grounds for preventing Abdulmutallab from getting on to an aircraft in the first place, as he was by then on at least two watch lists; one in the US and one in Nigeria and probably in the UK as well. He had also had a visa request to visit the UK in May 2009 rejected by the UK Border Agency and, by the time he reached Amsterdam, he was flagged in the U.S. consular database as being presumptively ineligible for a visa due to having been nominated to the terrorist watch list.
So how did this happen? It happened in part because, believe it or not, over eight years after 9/11 we have not even begun discussions on an internationally shared watch list which could be available to embassy staff, immigration officials, border police and airport security staff involved in implementing travel, aviation and border security. Nor do we have a well established standard for deciding the level of risk that is appropriate to accept for air travellers.
Stove-piping of information remains endemic among agencies, but it is far worse between countries and is, without doubt the weakest link in international cross border security. Sometimes information sharing is a problem with legacy information systems, sometimes due to concerns about privacy and data protection. More often than not, however, the real problem is a lack of willingness on the part of politicians and government officials to find solutions to implement it.
Borderpol's view is, collectively, border and transportation officials, in cooperation with intelligence and law enforcement authorities, can do a far better job of prevention than we have done so far. Borderpol continues to advocate the establishment of an international global extranet designed for sharing information on suspect individuals among border agencies of allied countries involved in border security.
Held by Borderpol as a trusted third party; basic information on suspect individuals such as name, date and place of birth, the reason they are on the list (eg, visa rejection, Home Office, UK), photo and source, would be available to officers of those countries that have signed up to the scheme. The system would allow them to flag up suspect individuals either for further questioning or action, such as in this case, visa rejection or withdrawal.
