TY - JOUR
AU - Hoijtink,, Marijn
AB - Abstract This paper provides a detailed study of the liquid bomb plot from 2006, focusing on the ways in which the plot was constituted as “an event unlike others” (Adey, Anderson, and Lobo Guerrero 2011, 340). Engaging with a critical body of scholarship that examines how events are assembled and governed as emergencies, disasters, or catastrophes, the paper explores two sets of questions. First, the paper engages with the temporal dimension of the event, asking how the liquid bomb plot was mediated as a particularly risky event that required immediate action. Second, the paper focuses on the spatial dimension of the event and asks how the plot also threatened a seemingly interconnected system of global airline movements and a mobile form of life. Drawing on Cowen’s (2010) analysis of the “seam space,” I am particularly interested in developments of reform and experimentation at the airport and in how newly emerging technologies are targeted at keeping airports both secure and open. Ultimately, by examining the liquid bomb plot “in the middle of events” (Barry 2006, 244), the paper goes beyond an understanding of the security event as something that happens abruptly and by surprise, and sheds light on the ongoing work that is involved in constituting and governing events. On the night of August 9, 2006, British authorities arrested twenty-four men and charged them with plotting a series of attacks on transatlantic flights using explosive liquids smuggled aboard in soda bottles. Three years later, ringleader Abdul Ahmed Ali and his two closest associates, Tanvir Hussain and Assad Serwar, were found guilty of conspiring to bomb at least seven airliners flying to destinations in the United States and Canada. A High Court judge imposed life sentences with minimum prison terms of thirty-two to forty years, calling the plot “the most grave and wicked conspiracy ever proven within jurisdiction,” and only comparable to the September 11 attacks (quoted in Burns [2009]). The sentence followed a first trial in 2008 in which the jury had convicted the three of plotting murder, but failed to reach verdicts on the charge of a conspiracy to detonate liquid explosives aboard airliners. During the first trial, the defense successfully denied that the three men intended to target airplanes, arguing that no airline ticket had been bought and that several plotters had passports containing suspicious foreign stamps from Pakistan and elsewhere, which would have prevented them from boarding a US-bound airplane. The defense also pointed out that there was little evidence that the suspects planned to strike immediately: the group had not yet made the hydrogen peroxide needed to construct the bombs, and there were questions about their technical capacity to successfully do so. Further still, a number of martyr videos made by the defendants and shown in court appeared amateurish, with some of the defendants smiling and stumbling during their video. While questions of immanency and sophistication were debated during the trial, this was in stark contrast with the immediate responses to the alleged plot. UK and US authorities instantly banned all liquids from going through airport checkpoints, causing major backups for passengers worldwide at the height of the holiday season. At Heathrow, hundreds of passengers jammed in the airport terminal as airline officials handed out clear plastic bags for their limited number of carry-on items. A great number of flights from and to the UK were canceled, and those flights that did take off were half-empty because passengers were stuck in security lines awaiting body searches. Newspapers and magazines were seen as suspicious—the plotters allegedly planned to circumvent security officials by bringing erotic magazines in their carry-on luggage—and bottles containing baby food and milk had to be tested by the accompanying passenger. Later that month, the US Transportation Security Authority (TSA) introduced the new 3-1-1 system, allowing passengers to carry 3.4-ounce bottles (100 ml) in one clear plastic zip-top bag per person. Shortly thereafter, the European Commission followed with Regulation No. 915/2007 that imposed Europe-wide restrictions on liquids, aerosols, and gels, while stating that “developments in screening technology should, in due course, provide solutions to these problems” (Commission of the European Communities 2007). To date, strict regulations remain in place, limiting what passengers can bring onto a flight in hand luggage. Let me emphasize, here, that I do not wish to deny that the liquid bomb plot represented a real threat. Rather, my focus in this paper is on the ways in which the plot was constituted as “an event unlike others” (Adey, Anderson, and Lobo Guerrero 2011, 340). While crisis situations and emergencies are typically cast as events that happen abruptly and by surprise, their occurrence and significance should not be taken for granted. Like risk, crisis is a construction, “a way in which we govern and are governed” (Adam and van Loon 2000, 2; Amoore and de Goede 2008). To describe how governing in and through events takes place, I engage with a critical body of scholarship that examines how events are assembled and governed as emergencies, disasters, or catastrophes (Martin and Simon 2008; De Goede and Randalls 2009; Aradau and van Munster 2011; Anderson and Adey 2012). Although there exist important differences between the concepts of emergency, disaster, and catastrophe, what they have in common is that they are all connected to a specific problematization of events. First, these are events that exceed traditional frameworks for risk assessment in the sense that they confront us with a danger that is imminent and that we “can only imagine, suspect, presume or fear” (Éwald 2002, 286). Second, the focus on emergency, disaster, and catastrophe occurs against the backdrop of what appears to be another characteristic of contemporary events, that is, the idea that they emerge from, and are amplified across, the circulations and interconnections that make up contemporary forms of life (Anderson and Adey 2012, 25; see also Dillon and Reid [2009]). Anderson and Adey (2012, 26–27) argue that emergency or disaster typically involves “claims about events and about the world in which events take place,” by which they refer to the “assumptions about normal life and disruptions to that normal life,” which emergencies always carry with them. Building on an analysis of the liquid bomb plot, this paper explores two sets of questions. First, the paper engages with the temporal dimension of the event, asking how the liquid bomb plot was mediated as a particularly risky event that required immediate action. Second, drawing on Deborah Cowen’s (2010) analysis of the maritime border as a “seam space,” the paper focuses on the spatial dimension of the event and asks how the liquid bomb plot also threatened a seemingly interconnected system of global airline movements and a mobile form of life. In addition, the paper analyzes the technologies, knowledge-forms, and modes of governing that are developed to keep air travel secure, mobile, and seamless in the wake of the event. To answer these questions, the event is also my methodological starting point. Following Andrew Barry, the technologies, knowledge-forms, and modes of expertise that are developed to protect airports after the liquid bomb plot are best examined “in the middle of events,” at times when “the discrepancies between … public statements … and the complexity of social forms become most apparent, and when the direction of change is uncertain and contested” (2006, 244; emphasis added). According to Barry, this methodology is likely to be multi-sited and oriented toward tracing the relations and flows of knowledge between the different actors involved. The case of the liquid bomb plot presents us with such a multi-sited event. As part of this analysis, the event is understood as the liquid bomb plot plus its wider consequences. The European debates about the procedures for scaling back the liquid restrictions and implementing the new liquid-explosives screening equipment that followed the liquid bomb plot are no less interesting than the plot itself. In brief, since January 31, 2014, the European Commission has begun to scale back the restrictions on liquids, first allowing passengers to purchase duty-free products over 100 ml outside Europe and to transfer through a European airport without having the item confiscated. Meanwhile, a full removal of the restrictions has remained subject to intense discussions among aviation stakeholders. Airport owners, in particular, have been lobbying against a procedure for easing the restrictions, pointing out that the state-of-the-art screening technology is unable to screen high volumes of liquids, has generally low processing times, and cannot be integrated into the limited space of the airport. The debates between the aviation stakeholders take place in the context of the so-called Statement of Intent expert group. The group was established after the first deadline for scaling back the liquids’ restrictions failed to materialize due to heavy lobbying from the airports in the European Parliament and resistance from EU member-states. It consists of representatives from industry groups (airport, airliners, tax-free shops, and equipment manufacturers), the US Transport Security Authority (TSA), and the European Commission. The group serves as a space where (secret) technical matters are debated, such as the state of the new screening equipment, false-alarm rates, the type of substances the technology is able to detect, and the list of questions security staff are supposed to ask in case of a (false) alarm (“are you a terrorist?” being one of them) (interview, June 2013). This analysis is based on semi-structured interviews conducted with the main participants in this group (with the exception of the US representative) and other aviation stakeholders. In addition, the analysis builds on informal talks with manufacturers during fieldwork at security trade fairs in London and Paris, as well as on an investigation of policy reports, media coverage, and (publicly available) airport business publications. The argument proceeds in four steps. I begin by examining how the liquid bomb plot was mediated as an event beyond risk. Drawing on the notion of the “seam,” I will then focus on the spatial dimension of the event and ask how the “eventness” of the liquid bomb plot was directly linked to the importance of reconciling mobility and security across airspace and at the airport. The paper proceeds with a more detailed analysis of the ways in which, in response to new security regulations, the airport space is currently being reimagined to allow for mobility and security. This section builds on an analysis of two future checkpoint initiatives developed by the aviation industry: Smart Security and MorphoPass. I will conclude by reflecting on questions of the constitution and government of security events. An Event Beyond Risk To make sense of the ways in which the liquid bomb plot was constituted as “an event unlike others,” I first turn to a short essay by Adey, Anderson, and Lobo-Guerrero on the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption and its consequences for global air travel (Adey, Anderson, and Lobo Guerrero 2011, 340). To understand how the eruption became a significant event, Adey et al. suggest that we place emphasis on the ways in which it disrupted, or threatened to disrupt, “the networks, infrastructures, and systems through which life is organized” (ibid.). For them, the volcano disruption “revealed a tightly coupled, complex and quite fragile network of airline movements, logistics chains, insurance products, and the complex supra-national organization of European airspace” (ibid., 388). At the same time, the event was constituted by these different elements. For example, part of the problem of dealing with the volcano disruption was that it appeared difficult to forecast the ash cloud’s course, development, and potential. Even though no aircraft had actually crashed, speculation over the way in which the ash would spread and its consequences for aircraft turbine engines dominated the initial responses to the eruption. In this context, the cloud’s potential effects and the consequences of a possible crash were actively present in the worries and doubts about air travel. Another element that amplified the disruption caused by the volcano was the specific organization of European airspace. In Europe, the coordination of airspace has remained a task of national governments, and this considerably weakened European governments’ capacity to develop a coordinated and effective approach in the wake of the ash cloud. Arguably, the effects of the ash cloud would have been far less disruptive if a central body had been in place to coordinate the responses of individual states. According to Adey et al., the disruption of air travel, then, emerged “as the shifting, imprecise, materiality of the ash cloud combined with airspace, insurance, and other system.” What constituted the event was an assemblage, or “an ‘environment’ of people, things, and technologies that amplified and cascaded the ash cloud’s eruption” (ibid.). For Adey and his colleagues, this understanding of the volcano eruption raises a number of important questions about the event’s initial causes and consequences. They ask, “if the event is constituted as much through the organization of European airspace as wind currents, then where does the event begin and end” (ibid.)? In addition, “how to think about the causality of an event when a set of complex elements that cross boundaries between the natural and technical, infrastructural and affective make an event more than troublesome, threatening, and disruptive” (ibid.)? My own approach is similarly broad, in the sense that this paper seeks to map the different elements that contributed to the constitution of the liquid bomb plot as a disruptive event. At the same time, I am quite skeptical of these descriptions of air travel as a “tightly coupled, complex and quite fragile network of airline movements” (ibid.). I consider such representations to be performative in the sense that they do not simply name, describe, or define relations, but produce the effects that they name—that is, the (highly mobile) network or system. This is not to say that these network representations do not have real effects. The remainder of this section asks how, and with which effects, the liquid bomb plot was mediated as an event beyond risk. No actual crime or murder had been committed; however, speculation over the grave and irreversible violence, which the plot would have caused, overshadowed the responses to the plot. Accordingly, the future consequences of a successful attack, as Adey and his colleagues put it, “were present in the here and now as worries, doubts, and anxieties about air travel” (ibid., 340). In particular, the “eventness” of the liquid bomb plot depended on the way in which it was understood as a network-type threat. In short, in media coverage, policy documents, and court cases, the plot was framed as familiar, sophisticated, and suggestive of a larger sequence and pattern related to international terrorism networks after the attacks of 9/11, and to al-Qaeda in particular. These framings were important because they produced a sense of urgency to intervene and stop the crisis before it would occur. Let us now turn to a more detailed discussion of the plot. First, the plot’s significance derived from the ways in which it followed on from the events of 9/11 and, to a lesser extent, those of 11-M and 7/7 (Closs Stephens and Vaughan-Williams 2009). Soon after its disclosure, media coverage and public statements began to address the plot as a “second 9/11,” highlighting the grave violence and irreversible change the attack, if accomplished, would have brought about. As US Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff pointed out, this was a terrorist scheme that stood out as being “of a very substantial dimension,” and of “a scale comparable to 9/11” (quoted in Dodd [2009]). The judge who passed sentence during the second trial in which the three prime suspects were sentenced to life imprisonment concluded that the plotters were involved in “the most grave and wicked conspiracy ever proven within this jurisdiction,” in which it had been “the intention … to perpetrate a terrorist outrage that would stand alongside the events of September 11, 2001, in history” (quoted in Dodd [2009]). The judge added that, had this conspiracy not been interrupted by the security services, “a massive loss of life would almost certainly have resulted—and if the detonation was over land, the number of victims would have been greater still” (quoted in Dodd [2009]). Second, the initial reactions to the plot indicated that the modus operandi was a familiar one that could be linked to the threat from global terrorism. Michael Chertoff claimed that this was an advanced, specific, and sophisticated plot, “suggestive” of al-Qaeda (Chertoff 2006). Counterterrorism experts from the United States and the UK said that the plot had all the signs of an operation by al-Qaeda, and that it was most likely conceived and organized in Pakistan (Burns and Sciolino 2008). The connection with a larger and coherent functioning terrorist network was based on the fact that the plotters had made several trips to Pakistan and were in possession of a phone with multiple sim-cards in order to make calls to Pakistan. Security officials speculated that one of the contacts they were corresponding with in Pakistan—Rashid Rauf—was the mastermind of the plot; he, in turn, was believed to put the plotters in touch with al-Qaeda’s leadership. What is at stake in these framings of the plot as suggestive of a larger pattern or network is the existence of an enemy that is dispersed, yet highly connected and global in reach. Moreover, this is an enemy that is embedded in, or accommodated by, the interconnected networks that constitute modern life in liberal democratic societies. In this sense, the very same conditions and systems that support our modern or mobile way of living (e.g., the airport, data and communication systems) also contribute to the formation of contemporary threats, such as global terrorism. Or, as Adey, Anderson, and Lobo Guerrero (2011, 399) put it, “both liberal life and threat are carried along by the same circulations and interdependencies.” Third, media coverage, police investigations, and court cases constituted the plotters as an innovative and sophisticated enemy. In a public statement delivered soon after the arrests, Chertoff (2006) claimed that these were not “a handful of people sitting around coming up with dreamy ideas about terrorist plots.” Rather, “the conception, the large number of people involved, the sophisticated design of the devices that were being considered, and the sophisticated nature of the plan” all suggested “that this group that came together to conspire was very determined and very skilled and very capable” (ibid.). By comparison, Xiana Barros (2012, 60) writes that whether an airplane could be brought down by mixing a limited quantity of liquids was in fact a question that was highly debated among EU member-states. The UK, hoping to upgrade the liquids’ restrictions to the EU level, claimed that intelligence information showed that it was indeed possible to produce these types of bombs and to bring down airplanes. British intelligence services also reported that the liquid bomb plot, while an isolated plot, demonstrated the willingness of individuals inspired by al-Qaeda to apply the same tactics and methods. Lacking this kind of information themselves, most member-states joined the UK’s efforts to impose EU-wide restrictions on liquids, aerosols, and gels. The Commission’s capacity to influence the agenda was at this point limited, Barros argues, due to “the lack of autonomous information or intelligence regarding the likelihood of a plane exploding as a result of a bomb made from small quantities of liquid explosives” (ibid.). Interestingly, the courtroom served as a space where the impact of the bomb the plotters planned to build, and their capacity to produce the concentrated version of hydrogen peroxide necessary to construct the liquid bombs, was performed and reaffirmed. In an attempt to underline what could have occurred if the plot was carried out successfully, the prosecution showed a video of the explosion of a bomb built by government scientists identical to those the suspects were accused of making. In so doing, the prosecutors appealed to the potential violence caused by the plot, even if, as the judge reminded the jurors, there was no evidence that the plotters had indeed fabricated such a bomb. “We need to deal with the fact that this is an allegation of conspiracy,” he said, “rather than the actual causing of explosion or murder” (quoted in Burns and Sciolino [2008]; see also De Goede and de Graaf [2013]). Moreover, in cross-examination, one of the government scientists testified that constructing these type of bombs required lengthy research, and that the preparation and transport of liquid explosive materials would in fact be extremely dangerous. The example of the bomb simulation illustrates the hard work that goes into performing the liquid bomb plot as a networked threat, long after the plotters’ arrests. Several elements, indeed, escaped these renderings of a coherent, connected, and sophisticated enemy. These included the doubts surrounding the technical skills of the plotters, but also what appeared to be a loose connection with al-Qaeda. As discussed, the idea of a network-type connection was mainly established based on the fact that the plotters had made several trips to Pakistan and were in the possession of a phone and international sim-card with which they corresponded with people in Pakistan. At the same time, the connection with a wider terrorist network was challenged by the local nature of the plot. As it turned out from the investigations, the plotters were all British-born, locally educated men, with family roots in Pakistan. Moreover, the bombs the plotters planned to build were based on everyday and easily available materials, such as hydrogen peroxide, batteries, flashbulbs to act as a power source, and a powdered fruit drink, called Tang, which was supposed to reinforce the liquid explosive (Dodd 2009). Indeed, in later discussions, it became the local and low-key character of the plot that helped constitute it as a particularly dangerous one. Above all, what contributed to the level of risk was the idea that the plotters appeared to be capable of producing homemade liquid explosives, using everyday materials. This made the danger of the liquid bomb plot in our midst and imminent, requiring immediate intervention. As a former senior security official at Heathrow airport pointed out during an interview, “until 2006, the threat and risk [of liquid explosives] was correctly categorized to be low and we accepted the risk. But then, as soon as the terrorists used homemade explosives, that whole risk changed, and this became a higher, much higher risk.” He added: “It was difficult to do, but, you know, I think sufficient tests have been carried out that show that what the terrorists claimed they were going to do was feasible. So, that changed the whole threat scenario” (phone interview, November 2013). The ways in which the liquid bomb plot resonated with the attacks of 9/11 in terms of scale, modus operandi, and sophistication significantly influenced the immediate policy reactions. My respondent drew an analogy with the Lockerbie attack to make sense of how US and UK authorities responded to the plot. His comments are worth quoting at length: I was at Heathrow at the time of Lockerbie, you know, in the immediate aftermath of Lockerbie, apart from introducing tighter measures for passengers and cabin bags going through airports, there was next to nothing done against hold baggage, and if you looked at the methodology of the attack it was a device hidden in a hold bag … In fact, the Americans didn’t take seriously until 9/11, and when the International Civil Aviation Organization set 2006 as a deadline for all airports globally to have hold baggage screening, that was from 1988 to 2006 that some states lived with the risk of a bomb in a bag. If you then look at the liquids incident the UK banned liquids the next day. They didn’t take any risk whatsoever, and the European Commission followed in November, I think. That was August for the UK, November for the EU. So the appetite for risk has completely changed. (phone interview, November 2013) According to this expert, the case of the liquid bomb plot illustrates how new calculations of risk have emerged to govern terrorism after 9/11. His remarks echo Louise Amoore’s discussion of former UK prime minister Tony Blair’s testimony before the Iraq Inquiry. Citing Blair, who claimed that “the crucial thing after September 11 was that the calculus of risk changed,” Amoore shows how, in a post-9/11 context, the actual presence of weapons of mass destruction became less important than speculation about any possible impact in the future (quoted in Amoore [2013, 24]). Or, as Blair put it, “they killed 3,000 people, but if they could have killed 30,000 they would have” (ibid.). “Any level of risk is now considered unacceptable,” Aradau and van Munster (2007, 103) argue in their analysis of the emergence of the precautionary principle in the War on Terror. According to them, precautionary risk is a form of risk management that is oriented not just toward immediate and irreversible danger, but also toward a “politics of zero risk,” where even the smallest chance of threat needs to be acted upon at the limits of knowledge (ibid.). For the analysis of the liquid bomb plot, this means that it does not strictly matter that there were doubts about the plotters’ intentions, their capabilities, and the possible impact of the bomb they planned to build. What mattered, instead, was that there was always a chance that a comparable event could still occur, and that if it did, its impact would be great. It was on the basis of this logic that the restrictions on liquids could be implemented in a solid and swift manner and without questions being asked about the costs and effectiveness of these measures. Thus far, I have pointed out how the plot was mediated as a coherent and sophisticated threat, suggestive of a connection with global terrorism, post 9/11. Speculation over the plot’s potential, however, was not limited to the way in which the plot would have caused mass murder on a global scale. Apart from a massive loss of life, the attacks were believed to have global economic and political consequences, posing a threat to the broader network of air travel as well. The next section analyzes the liquid bomb plot against the backdrop of a second characteristic of contemporary events discussed in the introduction of this paper—that is, the idea that these are events that emerge from, and are amplified across, the circulations and interconnections that make up contemporary, mobile forms of life. The event, in this sense, has an important spatial dimension: not only is it complex and spatially (and temporally) unbound, but it is also directly related to the importance of upholding airline connections and circulation. Building on Cowen’s analysis of logistics and the seam space, this spatial dimension of the event will be discussed in more detail in the section below. This section will also look at the new forms of technology, expertise, and modes of governing that are produced to constitute the airport as a secure seam space. In the Space of “the Seam” In her analysis of the security of maritime supply chains, Deborah Cowen (2010, 603) examines the way in which, for logistics, “the territorial border can be a problem rather than a solution.” According to her, the maritime border has become the paradigmatic space for experimentation with smart border initiatives because of the imperative of circulation and trade for the sector of maritime logistics—to the extent that the disruption of trade itself becomes a security risk. For the purpose of this paper, what is key is Cowen’s argument that in an era in which security aims to monitor and speed up flows of trade, the border is altered from an end point to a critical zone of circulation. Following a phrase by US Army Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Goss in 2006, Cowen calls this new border space “the seam.” In this new zone, the maritime border exists as “a space in-between national territories,” transcending distinctions of inside-outside space (ibid., 604). This is also a space in which long-established divisions between military and police force and crime and terror no longer hold. As Cowen points out, in the seam, “it is precisely the blurring of tactics and technologies that is needed in response to insecurity today” (ibid., 603). Cowen’s conceptualizations of the seam are, then, not just applicable to the maritime border. Following her work, I argue that, likewise, the airport should be seen as a “paradigmatic space for experimentation and reform precisely because of the magnitude of the challenge of ‘opening and closing’ access to trade [and passenger] flows” (Cowen 2010, 603; see, e.g., Amoore [2006]; Salter [2008a]; Johnson et al. [2011]). According to Cowen, efforts to secure these flows should be understood in the context of a collective form of security, described by Collier and Lakoff (2015) as “vital systems security.” Crucial, here, is that “vital systems security has a geography that is network-based rather than national or territorial in form” (Cowen 2010, 611). This means that these systems function by virtue of their connectivity, which is very much a global connectivity. As Cowen writes, “although ‘systems’ offer rich insights on security … it is not just any system, but rather, global trade systems that play a pivotal role in the contemporary recasting of security” (ibid.). What the liquid bomb plot seemed to threaten was precisely this: a seamless and interconnected system of global airline movements and a mobile form of life. The event, in this sense, was directly related to the importance of protecting the airport as a critical node in an interconnected system of global airline movements. Whereas the plot caused chaos and disruption at airports worldwide in the immediate aftermath of the plotters’ arrest, at a later stage it was the restrictions on liquids, aerosols, and gels that threatened to obstruct passenger circulation and throughput at the airport. More specifically, the liquid bomb plot was understood as a threat to European airspace and the European system of air travel and, as such, it required a coordinating role for the European Commission Directorate-General for Transport. After September 11, EU member-states agreed that the intergovernmental settings in the field of aviation security did not suffice and that EU involvement was needed to impose common security standards and ensure compliance. In the aftermath of the liquid bomb plot, the European Commission emphasized once again that it had an important role to play in coordinating a common European approach. In particular, Commission officials pointed out that the so-called one-stop-security principle that is in place for flights within the European Union required common legislation with regard to the liquids’ ban (interview, May 2013). The one-stop-security principle implies that passengers departing from any EU airport do not need to undergo further screening should they connect at another EU airport. It is supposed to “speed the flow of transit passengers and baggage to their ultimate destinations,” while eliminating the “need for redundant security checks at transit stops” (Airport Council International [ACI] 2009). What this means, in practice, is that at every European airport the screening of liquid materials should be done according to common standards, in spite of different risk levels. In the Regulation that imposed the liquids’ restrictions, the Commission recognized the obstructions posed by the restrictions on liquids, stating that “developments in screening technology should, in due course, provide solutions to these problems” (Commission of the European Communities 2007). However, the new screening devices themselves created new problems. As the negotiations progressed and laboratory tests and trials exposed the new screening equipment’s weaknesses, European airports began to lobby to push back the initial 2010 deadline set by the Commission to lift the restrictions. Among other things, they pointed out that the existing technology was unable to screen high volumes of liquids, had generally low processing times, and could not be integrated into the limited space of the airport. The airports also raised questions about the high number of false alarms that the technology was generating. These would require an additional round of screening and restrain passenger throughput even further, but they would also distract checkpoint staff from their primary tasks. As one security chief pointed out, “they are not going to be concentrating on looking for terrorists” (quoted in Clark [2011]). The Airports Council International (ACI) Europe, an industry group based in Brussels, representing the European airports, stressed that a removal of the ban could only be based on a sustainable technological solution that would detect a wide range of liquid explosives, but also maintain passenger circulation and facilitation. This should be a type of technology that would “enhance the passenger experience, rather than complicate it any further”.1 In terms of equipment, four different types of screening machines are currently available for purchase. These range from a type of equipment that examines a sample of the liquid that is taken manually (type A), to a technology that screens each bottle individually (type B), and from a machine that detects a basket with a number of different bottles and tubes (type C), to one that screens liquids while they are kept in hand luggage (type D). Confronted with the first phase of the phased approach—allowing passengers to purchase duty-free products over 100 ml outside Europe and to transfer through a European airport without having the item confiscated—most airports have opted for a type B technology, given that this type of equipment is relatively accurate and appropriate for the screening of a limited number of bottles. Larger airports have chosen a type C machine, allowing them to screen more bottles in a shorter amount of time. The type C technology will also be more suitable for when the Commission decides to increase the volumes of liquid bottles passing through the checkpoint as part of the second phase of the phased approach. It is likely that when a new phase is adopted, airports that have thus far opted for the type B equipment will have no choice but to make new investments. To date, the content of the second phase remains subject to a discussion about the material properties of the variety of liquids, aerosols, and gels that should be screened. While the European Commission has proposed to screen clear liquids in clear bottles, airports, airliners, and security manufacturers have raised interesting questions about what constitutes “clear liquids” in “clear bottles.” According to Ken Mann, vice president of security products at Cobalt Light Systems Limited and chair of the European Organisation for Security (EOS) working group on aviation security,2 the greatest difficulty in developing the detection equipment is related to the decisions being made on what constitutes a liquid in the first place: “Some of the challenges in screening liquids come from the fact that from a security point of view numerous items are considered liquids.” As Mann notes, “it quickly became apparent that, from a detection point of view, liquids also include aerosols, peanut butter, toothpaste, ice, and all manner of ointments and other things.” As a consequence, the algorithms developed by Cobalt Light Systems Limited had “to cope with a very wide range of materials in a very wide range of configurations.”3 Mann’s remarks show that the dangerousness of these materials is not self-evident. As Aradau and her colleagues (2014, 76) argue in their analysis of the liquid bomb plot and its implications for the study of discourse and materiality in security, the “dangerousness” of the liquid “is the effect of screening technologies and other instrumentation to detect the dangerous object.” At the same time, it emerges “through discourses of the threat of terrorism, surveillance and precautionary measures” (ibid., 62). More generally, this means that the materiality of the liquid “is a product of the co-constitutive relation between materiality and discourse: it is the product of both and neither one nor the other alone” (ibid.). Further still, the construction of the liquid as a security object is also the product of the difficult and ad hoc processes of developing, testing, and categorizing the screening technology. At the time of writing, the European Civil Aviation Conference (ECAC), an intergovernmental institution responsible for harmonizing civil aviation procedures and equipment among EU member-states, has tested and approved eighty-three different machines, a majority of them B and C types.4 However, as one official at a major European airport stressed in an interview, the problems with the technology are still manifold. He explained that during an unofficial set of trials at this airport with a type C technology in 2012, the equipment showed a particularly high number of false alarms. Among other things, juice boxes (containing aluminum wrappers) and almost all types of aerosols turned out to be difficult to screen. The same was true for relatively small bottles and containers, because these could not be stabilized in the accompanying trays. Furthermore, the equipment struggled to screen combinations of liquids if they were placed next to each other in the tray. In all these ways, the liquid emerges as a suspicious object “out of the details of what apparatuses can measure and what not” (Aradau et al. 2014, 76). During an interview with a senior official at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, he stressed that the equipment is still far from operationally viable. Tests with simulated passengers showed that with the type C equipment throughput, rates would decrease from two passengers per minute to one per minute. While the type D machines in principle promise less divesting and higher throughput rates, the processing times for this type of equipment are still relatively slow as well. At Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, where the authorities are currently carrying out tests with a type D technology, it further became clear that these machines are still quite large, heavy, and noisy, and, as such, difficult to integrate in the airport space (see Figure 1). Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide “Type D machine displayed at the Milipol worldwide exhibition of internal state security in Paris” (November 2013). Figure 1 Open in new tabDownload slide “Type D machine displayed at the Milipol worldwide exhibition of internal state security in Paris” (November 2013). At Schiphol Airport these problems were amplified by the fact that security screening until very recently still took place at the gate. Since the 1970s, security screening has generally moved away from the gate to more centralized security “filters,” allowing airport officials to make a distinction between “sterile” and “non-sterile” zones at the airport (see also Virilio [1986]). As argued by a number of scholars, this division of the airport space has enabled operators to centralize security screening in one site and to support and maximize retail opportunities in other parts of the airport (Lloyd 2003; Salter 2008b). While screening procedures have steadily intensified and the number of objects that need to be screened has increased, security at the gate no longer seems viable. At Schiphol Airport, a consequence of gate security was that passengers were asked to proceed for boarding well in advance, which restricted their ability to eat, shop, or spend money otherwise, and limited the airport’s revenues from retail and catering. Gate security also interfered with Schiphol’s ambition to remain an important international gateway between Asia, Africa, and North America since it increased transfer times. On top of this, the implementation of the EU’s one-stop-security principle meant that Schiphol needed to review its security concept in accordance with EU policy, which prescribes that transferring passengers traveling from a “clean” EU airport do not need to undergo additional screening, as they have already been screened by equivalent procedures in their country of origin (Aviation Security International Magazine 2013, 37). In 2013, the airport’s owner, the Schiphol Group, launched a large-scale program of renovations, moving security screening away from the gates toward new and centralized security filters. Among other things, this involved building separate, dedicated routes for transferring passengers that are screened according to EU standards (e.g., those passengers traveling from a country where Europe’s one-stop-security principle is in place), and passengers arriving from third countries. Their paths will run parallel, but on different levels. To make this possible, the Schiphol Group has been building additional levels and false floors in piers E, F, and G, as well as 28 gate houses that direct transferring passengers onto the correct route, depending on where they have traveled from (Aviation Security International Magazine 2013). Passengers traveling from an airport with a lower level of security are now directed to the new floor, and, in the case of transferring passengers, they are screened in the new transfer filters, after which they will be allowed into the “sterile area” (Aviation Security International Magazine 2013, 37). The new security scheme has been in place since 2015 and was announced by the Schiphol Group in a page-long advertorial in the leading Dutch newspapers (see Figure 2). Under the heading “Schiphol Has Central Security. [Why] Does that Need To Be In The Newspaper?” Schiphol Airport promoted their new screening processes and security filters that “feel like a service.” Elsewhere, Schiphol explained that much attention has been paid to the “atmosphere” of the filter: “Schiphol is striving to provide a screening facility desgined to diminish stress levels; a streamlined Schiphol security service, delivered in a comfortable area with wooden walls, smooth lighting and a relaxed atmosphere” (Aviation Security International Magazine 2013). The passenger, in this sense, is above all a customer, and not a suspect (see Figure 3). At the same time, as Peter Adey (2008, 439) suggests, the affective expressions of joy, expectation, and contentment that the airport terminal seeks to trigger—together with the fear and nervousness that we experience when we pass through the checkpoint—”may not be as distanced from power and control as we might think” (see also Muller et al. [2016]). In particular, experimentation with the airport’s architectural design is aimed at encouraging passengers to conform to security regulations and to contribute, even if unconsciously, to a more cost-efficient security screening process (Allen 2006; Martin 2010; Leese and Koenigseder 2015). Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide “Schiphol has central security. [Why] does that need to be in the paper?” Advertorial published in NRC Handelsblad on June 9, 2015. Figure 2 Open in new tabDownload slide “Schiphol has central security. [Why] does that need to be in the paper?” Advertorial published in NRC Handelsblad on June 9, 2015. Figure 3 Open in new tabDownload slide “Passenger is customer, not a suspect.” News article on the new security filter at Schiphol published in NRC Handelsblad, May 28, 2015. Figure 3 Open in new tabDownload slide “Passenger is customer, not a suspect.” News article on the new security filter at Schiphol published in NRC Handelsblad, May 28, 2015. The way in which these discussions about the liquids’ ban are unfolding clearly demonstrates what is at stake for airport stakeholders. There is a continuous pressure on airports to intensify the flows of passengers moving through the space of the airport and the checkpoint. Airport operators have dealt with these problems, in part, by investing in new types of technology and by outsourcing security screening services to private security companies (Berndtsson and Stern 2011). But, the problem of screening liquids also opened up a broader set of questions about the effectiveness and sustainability of today’s checkpoint and so, in the aftermath of the liquid bomb plot, stakeholders such as the Schiphol Group have begun to reflect upon what the future checkpoint might look like. In particular, the aviation industry has been raising the question of the appropriateness of screening objects versus the growing relevance of conducting a form of passenger differentiation, for example through “known,” or “trusted” traveler programs. Below, I investigate two of these initiatives in more detail. Let us first, however, briefly return to the argument developed by Adey, Anderson, and Lobo Guerrero with respect to the 2010 Icelandic volcano eruption. We have seen how, for them, disruption is constituted by “an ‘environment’ of people, things, and technologies that amplified and cascaded the ash cloud’s eruption” (Adey, Anderson, and Lobo Guerrero 2011, 342). Likewise, in this section, I have demonstrated that what constituted the liquid bomb plot as an event was an assemblage of human and non-human elements, including, but not limited to: the European system of air travel, the material properties of the variety of liquids, aerosols, and gels that should be screened, the ad hoc process of developing liquid-explosives detection technology, and the limitations posed by the airport architecture. These elements, in combination with the discourses of terrorism, surveillance, and precaution addressed in the previous section, transformed the liquid bomb plot into an event that was “more than troublesome, threatening and disruptive” (ibid.). A Seamless Journey at the Airport Following the liquid bomb plot, a growing number of aviation experts have started to question the industry’s focus on detecting and screening dangerous objects at the airport. In 2011, the International Air Transport Organization (IATA), an industry group representing more than two hundred airlines, pointed out that the implementation of new security regulations cost the airport industry $7.4 billion per year. IATA’s director general, Tony Tyler, said: “We spend a huge amount of resources on screening of people who quite frankly do not need it” (quoted in Milmo [2011]). Tyler added: We need to find a better way of doing it. Apart from the costs, we are putting our customers through an immensely complicated, and most of the time, unnecessary, hassle. And airports are creaking at the seams to find the space and capacity to deal with this. (quoted in Milmo [2011]; emphasis added) Other stakeholders subscribe to this viewpoint and emphasize that airports are reaching their limits to the extent that the checkpoint may well become the bottleneck for further growth in aviation. “So, we might be able to have additional planes flying,” one European Commission official told me, “but we would not be able to the get the passengers there on time” (interview, May 2013). With airports “creaking at the seams,” new forms of technology are developed to manage, produce, and uphold connections at the airport. Together with ACI, IATA in 2013 launched the “Smart Security” program,5 to explore how the use of new technologies and procedures could make the checkpoint at once “more unpredictable,” and “adaptable to an increasingly dynamic threat environment.”6 Smart Security envisions a “continuous journey from curb to airside, where passengers proceed through security with minimal inconvenience, where security resources are allocated based on risk, and where airport facilities can be optimized.”7 It foresees the implementation of new types of detection systems, which are supposed to screen liquids, laptops, or metal items on a random basis, allowing security officials to “play around with algorithms so that people are actually subjected to a lesser level of security, but they are not aware of it” (phone interview, November 2013). Other ways of incorporating unpredictability at the checkpoint involve passenger differentiation on the basis of random selection, behavioral analysis, or differentiation across passenger groups or flights (something which, it seems, is already in place in the context of Europe’s one-stop-security principle).8 Smart Security also comprises “smart lane design” initiatives to help passengers divest and repack more efficiently, including “ergonomic design features and aesthetics, automatic tray handling, and parallel loading procedures.” Smart lane design, a project brochure points out, “can also be an important element in keeping the X-ray occupied at all times and to minimize passenger flow constraints and the industrial look and feel of security.” This would, then, have “a positive effect on both the passenger experience and operational efficiency of the checkpoint” (see also Adey [2008]).9 Similar initiatives to enhance the passenger experience at the checkpoint are now promoted by the manufacturing industry. An interesting example is the MorphoPass border control system, developed by Morpho, a high-technology company in the Safran Group and world leader in identification technology and biometrics. First demonstrated at the 2013 Paris Air Show, MorphoPass is “an integrated airport security system,” consisting of three main parts: biometric identification, detection of illicit and dangerous substances, and an “integration layer,” the latter allowing for the development of “an anonymous unique identifier” and “flow management applications” to manage passenger progress and flow at the airport.10 MorphoPass envisions passengers traveling through the space of the airport in an efficient and seamless manner, a journey that begins with the creation of a “temporary, secure, and biometric fingerprint.”11 This “virtual identifier” becomes associated with the passenger and her boarding pass and can be used to follow and optimize the passenger’s progress or path as she travels through the airport (phone interview, November 2013). Ultimately, the virtual identifier enables airport operators to direct the passenger to a specific security lane, or to ask passengers not to proceed through security during peak times, thereby limiting the burden on the checkpoint. “So, basically,” it was explained to me, “you are being tracked in your security checkpoint process, and it is quite effective. You can really optimize the [throughput] time” (phone interview, November 2013). Another important feature of MorphoPass is that it combines biometrics and explosives detection. This implies that as passengers move through the checkpoint, their passport, boarding pass, and hand luggage will all be checked in one single passage and without divesting. To develop a system that could carry out both functions, Morpho acquired another company in 2009, called GE Homeland Protection. GE Homeland Protection provides equipment and services for the protection of airports, ports, borders, and critical infrastructure, specializing in tomography-based technology for the detection of explosives in checked baggage. Before this acquisition, the Safran Group had little exposure to the checkpoint. Hence, adding GE Homeland Protection was supposed to strengthen Safran’s position in the emerging market for homeland security technology, a sector that is believed to make up 20% of the Group’s total revenues in the medium term.12 More specifically, Safran’s decision to acquire GE Homeland Protection was informed by a high-level meeting with the European Commission in 2009. By then, it had become clear to the Commission that the first deadline for lifting the liquids’ ban in 2010 would come too soon. As a result, Commission officials arranged a meeting with the Safran Group to ask the company to develop a more innovative (type D) form of technology. Safran, then, invested heavily in this enterprise with the aim of having the new screening technology in place by April 2011 (phone interview, November 2013). This goal turned out to be too ambitious, not least because of the airports’ opposition to the new technology. Indeed, security manufacturers in this domain often complain that the aviation security market is a conventional market that is not hungry for new technologies and, if so, only for cheap ones. Consequently, in recent years, they have begun to organize themselves in the European Organization for Security (EOS), a lobby organization for security equipment providers. Established in 2007, EOS currently represents over forty companies from thirteen different European countries, focusing on business opportunities in areas such as cybersecurity, border control, and critical infrastructure protection.13 For EOS, the airports’ refusal to purchase the new liquid-explosives screening equipment was an important first test case and, according to one speaker, it was for EOS that the manufacturing industry eventually proved able to develop a joint position and communicate a clear message to the airport operators about what the new technology was capable of and what it could not do (interview, October 2013). EOS thereby relied on close relationships with the European Commission. A case in point is the career of one European Commission officer, who left the Directorate-General for Justice, Freedom, and Security for a sabbatical and started working as the Senior Vice President, Government Relations, at Smiths Group, one of the larger industry players in airport security.14 As part of his new job, the former Commission official became the chair of EOS’s specific working group on aviation security, acting on behalf of the manufacturing industry in the liquids’ ban discussions. He has recently rejoined the Commission in the Directorate-General for migration and asylum. Ultimately, what Smart Security and MorphoPass have in common is that both projects emerge in the context of a transformation of the practices of managing, upholding, and producing connections and circulations. At the core of both systems is a desire to foster interoperabilities and interconnections between systems and organizations and, by so doing, to keep critical and large-scale systems such as airports at once open and secure. In this context, the concept of the seam gives analytical purchase not only to the airport border as a zone of flows and circulation, but also to the way in which this space becomes filled with new forms of technology, experimentation, and contestation. Indeed, the adoption and implementation of these security systems is by no means seamless. As this analysis has shown, even if new technologies at the airport are fetishized and the manufacturing industry is marketing and promoting the technology in new ways, governmental authorities and operators do not always have an interest in buying them. Conclusion: Governing the Seam Space This paper explored two sets of questions. The first question asked how the liquid bomb plot was mediated as an event that exceeded traditional frameworks for risk assessment. Building on an analysis of media coverage and court cases, it was argued that the plot became understood as in our midst and imminent, and as a coherent and sophisticated threat that was suggestive of a connection with global terrorism, post 9/11. In this context, the “eventness” of the plot was linked to a “changing appetite for risk,” to paraphrase one of my informants, or a precautionary form of risk management oriented toward the limitation or complete avoidance of possible risks. Speculation over the plot’s potential, however, was not limited to the way in which the plot would have caused mass murder on a global scale. Apart from a massive loss of life, the attacks were believed to have global consequences for the broader network of air travel as well. Drawing on the notion of the seam, the paper illustrated how the liquid bomb plot threatened precisely this: a seamless and interconnected European system of airline movements. The concept of the seam was also adopted to address another set of questions, concerned with the technologies, knowledge-forms, and modes of expertise that are developed to protect circulation at the airport in the aftermath of the liquid bomb plot. The paper examined two future checkpoint initiatives in the context of which technological innovations and new security procedures are imagined, developed, and tested. These were studied as projects around which new capabilities and opportunities are identified, and new relations between scientific and technical expertise and political action take shape (Barry 2006, 244). The formation of seam spaces, in this sense, leads to the formation of new alignments and divisions, and the drawing of new boundaries. Indeed, as this paper has intended to show, the seam is not a space that is devoid of borders, but one where borders are governed differently and new forms of containment are produced. Ultimately, with respect to the concept of the event, this paper places emphasis on “the ongoing, uneventful work” that is involved in constituting and governing security events (Anderson and Gordon 2016, 3). As Anderson and Gordon write, “it is by staying with the ongoing work of attempting to end events and their impacts and effects that we can problematize and expand what counts as an event beyond the sense of dramatic ‘overthrowing’, ‘shattering’ and so on” (ibid.). By studying the liquid bomb plot “in the middle of events,” this paper proposed to go beyond an understanding of the event as something that happens abruptly and by surprise, and to shed light on the many everyday activities, technologies, and sites that actively shape securitizing processes at the airport. 1 See http://www.airport-business.com/2011/12/aviation-security/, accessed April 27, 2017. 2 The European Organization for Security (EOS) is a lobby organization for security equipment providers. Established in 2007, EOS currently represents over forty companies from thirteen different European countries, focusing on business opportunities in areas such as cybersecurity, border control, and critical infrastructure protection (see also below). 3 See http://www.airport-technology.com/features/feature106879/, accessed April 13, 2015. 4 See https://www.ecac-ceac.org//activities/security/cep_of_security_equipment, accessed April 14, 2016. 5 Smart Security is a follow-up of ACI’s “Better Security” and IATA’s “Checkpoint of the Future” proposal. The latter in particular became subject to criticism, as it involved designing the checkpoint in such a way that known, normal, and high-risk categories of passengers would undergo different levels of screening (Tegenlicht 2014). 6 See http://www.aci.aero/media/cd4f98d8-79db-4d9d-932e-2b85b07be7a2/dvZ8iQ/About, accessed 27 April, 2017. 7 See http://www.iata.org/whatwedo/security/Pages/smart-security.aspx, accessed April 13, 2015. 8 Of course, we may ask ourselves, how random are these really? See for example Frowd and Leite (2013). 9 See http://www.aci.aero/media/cd4f98d8-79db-4d9d-932e-2b85b07be7a2/dvZ8iQ/About, accessed 27 April, 2017. 10 See http://www.morpho.com/news-events-348/news/morphopass-tm-the-checkpoint-of-the-future-is-coming-soon?lang=en, accessed April 13, 2015. 11 See http://www.morpho.com/news-events-348/news/morphopass-tm-the-checkpoint-of-the-future-is-coming-soon?lang=en, accessed April 13, 2015. 12 See http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/safran-acquires-majority-stake-in-ge-homeland-protection-bolstering-ties-with-general-electric-152499925.html, accessed April 13, 2015. 13 See http://www.eos-eu.com/Middle.aspx?Page=whatiseos&tID=1, accessed April 13, 2015. 14 See http://corporateeurope.org/revolvingdoorwatch/case/magnus-ovilius, accessed April 13, 2015. References Adam Barbara , van Loon Joost . 2000 . “Introduction.” In The Risk Society and Beyond: Critical Issues for Social Theory , edited by Adam Barbara , van Loon Joost , 1 – 31 . 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Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press . Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Salter Mark B ., ed. 2008b . “The Global Airport: Managing Space, Speed, and Security.” In Politics at the Airport , edited by Salter Mark B ., 1 – 28 . Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press . Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Tegenlicht . 2014 . “Het Veiligheidscomplex” [The Security Complex]. February 9. Virilio Paul . 1986 . Speed and Politics: An Essay on Speed . Trans. Polizzotti Paul . New York : Semiotext(e ). Google Preview WorldCat COPAC Author notes Author's note: I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their insightful and helpful suggestions. I would also like to thank my colleagues in the Politics Department at the University of Amsterdam, especially Marieke de Goede and Otto Holman. Financial support for this research was provided by the Dutch Council for Scientific Research (NWO), through the VIDI-grant European Security Culture, award number 45209-016. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com
TI - Governing in the Space of the “Seam”: Airport Security after the Liquid Bomb Plot
JF - International Political Sociology
DO - 10.1093/ips/olx010
DA - 2017-09-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/governing-in-the-space-of-the-seam-airport-security-after-the-liquid-25pHrZgPkt
SP - 308
VL - 11
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -