Security Doctrine In Egypt

A Call For Change!

Approaches to security vary in different parts of the world. In the USA, the levels of security for doors and locks are  below those in Europe. This is probably attributable to easy access to guns. In the US, robbers are more likely to be armed;  secure locks won’t block automatic weapons. The approach to safety also differs; where the British have firemen who seek to contain fires from the outside inwards, the Americans have firefighters who storm into the fires with flame retardant clothing and breathing apparatus. The high death toll amongst American firefighters from 9/11 and nearly annual tragedies from forest fires are a consequence  of this American doctrine. In another contrast, the American policing doctrine of remaining apart from the threat while ordering: “get out of the vehicle, put your hands on your head, or I blow you to pieces” often results  in unnecessary deaths. These opposing approaches have historic and cultural roots which change over time.

Similarly, in Egypt, we can observe certain practices and contrast them with approaches from different parts of the world. I will focus on the following key points that can be seen in the Egyptian approach to security and safety: Rotations, Shift Structure, Crowd Concentration and Safety Overrides.  The Egyptian practices may have served Egypt well in the past but the nature of the present environment and threats highlights a dire need for change.

Rotations: Egyptian security agencies tend to rotate their officers across different provinces and assignments. An officer in charge of the passport office in Aswan may be transferred to combating crime in Alexandria, another who’s in charge of airport screening in Assiut may rotate into checkpoints in Sinai. There are historic advantages in a security force familiar with different parts of the country and different roles. In contrast, in the UK, for example, airports rely on private specialist aviation security firms and, in the US post 9/11, a dedicated governmental agency for securing airports was established. The nature of threats today has made specialist security personnel vital. In the USA and UK, those responsible for screening passengers are different from those responsible for the arrivals’ passport control. These are different careers, not just temporary assignments. The technology and training used to support these two groups are different since one screens for imminent threats while the other looks for future threats.  

Shift Structure: From Hong Kong and Japan to Germany and Switzerland, across Middle Eastern countries such as UAE and Jordan, I cannot recall ever seeing a guard on duty at an airport or road checkpoint drinking tea, smoking or holding a personal mobile phone. Yet, this is normal practice, observed routinely in Egypt. The issue is the length of a shift with no breaks and the absence of supervision. It is impossible to fault a an officer or a security guard losing concentration when assigned a full eight or twelve hour shift. These are critical roles that often combine surveillance, screening and response or intervention.

Crowd Concentration: Perhaps as matter of doctrine, Egyptian security often relies on creating funnels, whether at road checkpoints, metro stations, entrances to buildings or airports. These funnels create large crowds and these crowds make it harder to observe the threat through automatic means such as video analytics or trained specialists. It is extremely difficult to detect suspicious behavior or threatening objects in overcrowded areas. Terminal 3 at Cairo Airport has multiple doors, yet only  one or two are ever in use. These bottlenecks present an added security threat both to the operatives and to the public, for they could allow a hidden approach to the checkpoint with explosives or weapons. Japan and Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, have vehicular checkpoints for cars approaching major airports, yet both avoid creating funnels, by having multiple tollgate like checkpoints and keeping the number of lanes unchanged.

Safety Overrides: A significant investment in large modern facilities goes into safety. There are  systems to detect and extinguish fires, control spread of smoke and to facilitate egress of people in emergencies. The number of exits is often based on analysis of projected use. At Tahrir Square, in the very heart of Cairo, stand two examples of how safety can be set aside to create funnels as described above. Many of the doors to the Sadat Metro station are permanently locked and barricaded. Entrance to this extremely busy station is limited to a few crowded points, where security operatives, on long shifts, screen commuters. Should an emergency actually occur in the station, the result could be tragic as many exits lead to dead ends. Tahrir Garage, a modern underground parking, has the same problem. Many of the fire exits are locked and can’t be opened from inside. These real examples of limiting entry points, show how crowd concentrations result in the override of safety while not improving security!

Looking Ahead: The evolution of the type and size of buildings and of the threats in Egypt, like elsewhere, requires the authorities to deal with security, safety and crisis management in new ways. This is an urgent matter, for the sake of protecting the security personnel as well as the general public.  Appreciation of the new types of threat, such as suicide bombing, requires a new security doctrine that abandons the deliberate creation of congestion and crowd concentration in favor of  the exact opposite. Since Egypt already invests in modern security and technologically advanced systems, it is critical that the human element is addressed. Specialization, training and monitoring of the officers and their personnel are of paramount importance. Finally, safety should not and need not be compromised to enhance security. With modern structures and present day threats, the consequences for marginalizing safety could be catastrophic.  

Ayman S. Ashour

The article was first published in Al Ahram here and also appeared in Egyptian Streets here.

Regeni: Questions of Security, Surveillance and Privacy

Last month, Egypt’s Public Prosecutor refused to hand over phone records requested by the Italian prosecutors for the ongoing investigation into the murder of Italian doctorate student Giulio Regeni in Cairo in January. The Assistant Public Prosecutor, Mostafa Suleiman, claimed that handing over the phone records would be “unconstitutional.”

Along with the phone records, Italy’s request to obtain footage from surveillance cameras in the metro station where Regeni disappeared was denied. Suleiman explained that such footage is automatically deleted.

I examine here the two key points addressed by the Egyptian Public Prosecutor in refusing to hand over the phone records and footage in an attempt to address the question of security and investigative practices, as well as the concept of privacy in Egypt.

In order to reinforce that Italy’s request is in fact reasonable, we need to understand the role of video recordings in security internationally and how it has evolved over the years. In the early days, security surveillance was based on Closed Circuit Television (CCTV), where a security guard monitored few screens, watching for suspicious activity. Some systems employed a switcher that rotated the images from various cameras on one or more screens and most security systems employed a limited number of cameras, as cameras were expensive to acquire and install. Few systems used time-lapse video recorders. VHS tapes would last up to 72 hours and were typically stored for up to a year to be used to review any suspicious activity in retrospect to help investigate problems.

The inventions of the chip or solid-state camera and the introduction of IP cameras made cameras cheaper, smaller and easier to deploy. Security designers became reliant on video as a critical element of electronic security rather than just ancillary to security. Systems that typically employed five cameras 20 years ago now employ 50 or more. While this many cameras can be overwhelming for human operators in a live monitoring situation, the huge number of video images present security designers with an unprecedented wealth of data.

The challenge is to derive useful information from this huge body of data.

Analytical software systems allow for the detection of suspicious activity automatically. In train stations, for example, someone falling to the floor, dropping an object, jumping over a turnstile or loitering could be amongst the patterns of behavior that would constitute a possible threat and trigger alerts to direct guards to monitor certain cameras or to respond. Such systems remain relatively expensive and are not consistently effective, which leads us to the widest use of video surveillance: Recording.

VHS recorders have been replaced with DVRs (Digital Video Recorders), storing terabytes of data. NVRs (Network Video Recorders) allow for even more efficient video storage. Most systems are designed to store 90 days of data.

The questions that must be asked of the Cairo Metro are: What are all the cameras for? How secure is the metro if the critical component of security storage is defective or being mishandled? How can recordings be erased in such a short period of time? If video recordings are being erased every few days, it would call into question the worth of the systems. The request made by the Italians is logical; the Egyptian position is difficult to understand and smacks of obfuscation.

As we move to the mobile phone logs, Italian authorities had requested records of over one million phone calls made in the area where Regeni disappeared. It appears that they are aiming to identify mobile phones that were in the vicinity of Regeni that operated in unusual patterns, for example repeatedly or sequentially calling certain numbers. This is not “looking for a needle in a haystack”; it is, rather, looking for the relevant haystack. The investigators would typically be seeking to narrow down their sample from the alleged one million. They might request additional call details for numbers that seemed to behave out of statistical norms or patterns and could eventually ask for information regarding the owners of a very small set of numbers.

It is hard to understand how such a request would violate the privacy of Egyptian citizens, as the Egyptian authorities claimed. Surely numerical analysis of mobile phone numbers that have not been associated with individual users does not violate the privacy of anyone. Indeed, it is not unlikely that this sort of investigation is carried out as a matter of routine in Egypt, particularly in sensitive areas with the ongoing threat of terrorism.

The watching out for unusual patterns on roads, airspace, waterways or cyber space protects the public, rather than violating its privacy. The US intelligence community often refers to unusual “chatter” on mobile phones or Internet communication. Such “chatter” might be indicative of or follow acts of terror. Nations increasingly monitor their Internet traffic to protect from cyber attacks. Monitoring of patterns and scripts that have not been associated with individuals doesn’t violate privacy.

Privacy comes into play only when associating Internet data, IP addresses or mobile numbers with actual names and people and when looking into the content (beyond just patterns). In the USA, the infamous NSA program faced legal challenges over the retention of the records for lengthy periods of time and where no cause existed. In the Regeni case, there is a crime and the Italian request is for an analysis for those records surrounding the area of the crime and not an indefinite retention of the data.

Italian privacy standards are amongst the highest in the world. I would suspect the lawyers of the Office of Privacy of the Italian Ministry of Interior could become the best allies for Egyptian prosecutors if they understood and believed their privacy argument. In Cairo, cars are routinely stopped, for no cause, at various checkpoints; passengers are asked to explain where they are going, who they are with and how they are related. In the recent protests on Sinai Liberation Day, stories of police inspecting mobile phones of young people have been widely circulated!

The hypersensitivity to privacy displayed by the Egyptian side in response to Italy’s request is certainly odd. Most neutral security and privacy experts would be troubled by the positions articulated by the Egyptian prosecutors.

Ayman S. Ashour

This article first appeared on Egyptian Streets  

Airport Security in Egypt

I have always liked the expression that security is both an art and a science. In security in general, we must always balance multiple factors: the levels of risk or the efficacy of the security, the convenience of those who have to deal with the security be them employees or customers, the privacy of both of these groups, the ease of use of operating and ensuring that a security setup does not deteriorate over time and, of course, costs- both initial set up capital costs and ongoing operating costs.

Transport security is particularly difficult because of the large numbers of people involved and the transient nature of the customers or travellers. The challenge to secure mass transit systems such as buses and trains is formidable and they remain mostly vulnerable, as can been seen from terrorist attacks in many countries around the world. The Bombay railway bombings in India and the 7/7 attacks in London are among the many examples.

It is virtually impossible to design a truly adequate security system for buses, metros and train stations. The number of travellers is too large and the inconvenience would grind economies to a halt. Airports and air travel are seen as prized terrorist targets because they symbolise the global integration of a country and its people. Air disasters, with their inevitable catastrophic outcomes, tend to capture the attention of news organisations and instil fear in the public like nothing else.

In evaluating the security of an airport, a good place to start is the layers of security. Egyptian airports generally are among the best in the world in this: There are security checkpoints a mile or so as you approach the airport by road presenting the outer layer, then right at the entrance of the terminals, there is an initial scanning of the luggage to enter into the actual building itself and then further security scanning of travellers and their luggage as they enter the check-in area where passengers can then proceed to passport control, duty free shopping and so on.

Passengers generally undergo thorough security checks to get to “secure zones” by their individual gates. Only then, under tight control, can passengers access what is often referred to as “sterile zone” or the area where the actual airplanes are.

In the post 9/11 world, the approach to airport security changed to enhance security and minimise inconvenience. Most major airports have shifted towards having centralised passenger security checks immediately after the check in areas rather than at the gates. This has allowed the airports to have much larger “secure zones” well before getting close to the “sterile zone.”

Centralised security checks also mean that the supervision and auditing over those operatives performing the security checks is easier. It has also allowed the use of more expensive scanning equipment and systems but fewer as they are not required at every gate.

Since 9/11, employee security has also changed. Many airports have radically reduced the number of employees with access rights to the secure and sterile zones. It should also be noted that with CCTV and human surveillance a much larger and less crowded secure zone offer security operatives the opportunity to detect worrying behaviour.

The levels of searches and security checks for employees entering the secure or sterile zones should be no less than that for passengers. The confirmation of the identity of the employees who enter secure and sterile zones must also be no less stringent than that applied for passengers to access these areas.

A critical aspect of security is the human role, the operators of the scanning machines to enter the secure zone, to enter the check in areas, to enter the building and to drive through the checkpoint at the airport road. It is critical that these operators rotate every 20 to 30 minutes and not be expected to work eight or twelve hour shifts without frequent concentration breaks.

Most equipment manufacturers would admit that 20 to 30 minutes is a normal limit for operator concentration. Whenever you see an operator smoking a cigarette, or having a cup of tea while performing his security role, you need not blame him, but rather redesign the role to make it reasonable not to expect him to be in consumption mode while performing his duty.

The use of relatively inexpensive electronic or human surveillance monitoring the level of attentiveness of security operators particularly at employee entrances is critical.

While airports may have multiple security zones in the different terminals, the sterile zone in most airports tend to be one very large area. Once inside the sterile zone, a person can move from one terminal to another and to different aircraft with luggage, cleaning or catering services. Lax security at one terminal could allow an object or a person entry into the sterile zone and thus inside access everywhere.

Most travellers to Egyptian airports would have noticed that the level of security at a terminal such as the Seasonal Terminal is different from that of British Airways or Swiss flights. An airport is as secure as its least secure area, it is as vulnerable as it most vulnerable area, for threats can travel unhindered.

The sterile zones in airports are also vulnerable to penetration from their outer perimeters. Some highly secure airports treat their perimeters not unlike prisons. Perimeters are subject to three kinds of threats: jumping, tunnelling and direct penetration through cutting barbed wire or breaking through a wall.

Prisons have resorted to the use of double walls or fences to reduce the level of threat of jumping and break in with motion detection between the barriers, motion detection is achieved with human or electronic surveillance or both. Protection against tunnelling is particularly difficult in airports, in prisons ground vibration detection technology is used.

With airplanes landing and moving, the issue of unwanted alarms could render a vibration dependent system useless and accordingly they are rarely used. Reasonable substitutes include regular diligent surveillance and inspection of the airport grounds. The systems used for airport perimeters are not unlike those used to secure turbulent borders.

The number of employees accessing the sterile zone and their conduct within it is always a critical security risk. The risks extend to airport ground personnel: baggage handling, catering, cleaning, hospitality, transport and so on. The 2001 attempt known as the shoe bomber alerted security professionals to the risks of smuggling parts of an explosive device to be assembled onboard an aircraft or inside the sterile zone. This makes it critical to ensure high levels of monitoring of employees entering the sterile zone.

Modern airports employ sophisticated access control systems to keep close track of employee movements. New technology applies analytics to surveillance to warn of suspicious behaviour automatically. Turnstiles are often used in employee entrances to ensure that access to secure zones or the sterile zone is regulated and friendliness between security operators and employees does not translate into security lapses.

Much like security operators can’t be expected to do their jobs effectively with 10 or 12 hour shifts, those operators monitoring remote systems such as CCTV or access control need frequent breaks and they themselves must be subject to close monitoring.

One-hundred percent security in any airport is impossible, a casual reader may be able to glean the vulnerabilities of any airport from applying some of the above discussions.

Whenever I am at an airport, I assess its level of security by the level of discipline I observe from the minute I enter the building to the moment I board the plane. Is the operator of the luggage scanning equipment right at the entrance of the building speaking on his mobile phone? Is he fully focused on his job? Is the belt over full of luggage or will he actually be able to see threatening objects? Does he ever stop the belt for a close inspection? Is the employee driving disabled passengers in electric carts to their gate speeding and manoeuvring or is he concerned about being seen on CCTV? Are there cleaners approaching passengers for charity in the secure zone? Is the bus taking the passengers to the plane sticking to its lanes and stop signs or is it over speeding and cutting corners. Is the bus driver alone or is he accompanied by a colleague that should not really be there?

Egypt can attain very high levels of airport security because the foundation is good and the concept of layers is exemplary. I believe quick steps to address operator training and rotation will provide an immediate boost to security with minimal negative effect.

A more difficult but urgent requirement is for the drastic reduction of the number of employees with access privileges to secure and sterile areas and instituting the level of employee discipline that can be seen in many well run establishments in Egypt.

Ayman S. Ashour

This article first appeared in Al Ahram English - click here  to see