TSA Announces ASAC Public Meeting – 12-7-21

Today, the TSA published a public meeting notice in the Federal Register (86 FR 62837) for the Aviation Security Advisory Committee (ASAC). The public meeting will be held virtually on December 12^th, 2021.

The meeting will include a legislative update as well as briefings by Subcommittees and working groups on the following topics:

• Air Cargo,

• Airlines,

• Airports,

• General Aviation,

• Insider Threat,

• International Aviation, and

• Security Technology

Commentary

It is interesting that the ASAC is not (and apparently has not) considering cybersecurity, and more importantly cybersecurity incident reporting. While the last two ASAC meetings have been closed, it seems unlikely that they considered the TSA’s announced plans to extend the pipeline security directive number 1 requirements for appointing a cybersecurity point of contact and cyber incident reporting to the airline transportation sector. SD01 was not classified and there would be no point for such an airline directive to be classified either. Even so, if the ASAC had been asked to consider such a requirement, I would have expected that a report would be forthcoming at the upcoming meeting. It is, after all, the ASAC’s tasking to provide industry input to the TSA regulatory decision making process. And the TSA would certainly want that input; Right?

TSA Announces Aviation Security Committee Meeting – 07-22-13

The Transportation Security Administration posted a meeting notice in today’s Federal Register (78 FR 41413-41415) for a meeting of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee (ASAC) on July 22^nd, 2013. This meeting will address some air freight security issues in addition to the standard passenger security concerns addressed.

The Committee will receive and act upon subcommittee reports. Copies of the reports will be available on the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # TSA-2011-0008) before the meeting. The reporting subcommittees are:

• General Aviation Subcommittee;

• Passenger Advocacy Subcommittee;

• Air Cargo Subcommittee;

• International Subcommittee; and

• Risk-Based Security Subcommittee.

TSA is soliciting public participation at the meeting, but there is no indication that the meeting will be web cast. Written comments may be submitted via the Federal eRulemaking Portal and must be submitted by July 15^th for them to be considered by the Committee. Those wishing to provide oral comments at the meeting need to register in advance as does anyone wishing to attend the meeting in person. Registration may be accomplished by email (Dean.Walter@dhs.gov),

TSA Announces Closed ASAC Meeting – 4-22-13

The Transportation Security Administration published a meeting notice in today’s Federal Register (78 FR 20685) announcing that the Aviation Security Advisory Committee (ASAC) will be holding a closed meeting on April 22^nd, 2013. The closed meeting will provide TSA the opportunity to provide classified briefings to the Committee on:

• Threat intelligence related to TSA's prohibited items list; and

• TSA risk-based initiatives pertaining to passenger prescreening.

Readers might recall that last month Rep. Thompson (D,MS), the ranking member on the House Homeland Security Committee, introduced HR 1204, the Aviation Security Stakeholder Participation Act of 2013. That bill would require this type of consultation with the ASAC prior to making decisions like the recent decision to allow passengers to resume carrying small knifes on board airliners.

I am a pretty creative guy, but I am hard pressed to be able to describe some sort of intelligence information that would convince airline industry representatives and labor groups that there are no terrorist organizations that would consider trying to hijack an aircraft with a box cutter. I mean the most effective airline hijackings in history utilized just such a weapon. And the likelihood of having to find an FBI informant to acquire one is really small.

No this is a political move on the part of the Administration to forestall action on Thompson’s bill that would provide some sort of editorial control over the security theater being played out at the nation’s airports.

HR 1204 Introduced – Aviation Security

As I mentioned earlier Rep. Thompson (D,MS) recently introduced HR 1204, the Aviation Security Stakeholder Participation Act of 2013. This bill would require the DHS Assistant Secretary for TSA to formally establish an Aviation Security Advisory Committee (ASAC) to advise the Department on “aviation security matters, including on the development and implementation of policies, programs, rulemaking, and security directives pertaining to aviation security, while adhering to sensitive security guidelines”{added in 49 USC §44946(b)(1)}.

According to a press release from Thompson, the ASAC was actually formed in 1989 but became inactive until it was reinstituted by TSA Administrator Pistole in 2011. What this bill would do is to require the Administrator to consult with the ASAC on the items listed above. Rep. Thompson noted that he hoped that such consultation would help to prevent actions like the recently announced TSA policy change to allow small knives to be carried by passengers aboard commercial airplanes.

The ASAC would not be just focused on passenger security issues. The bill would require the establishment of subcommittees to address:

• Air Cargo Security {§44946(d)};

• General Aviation Security {§44946(e)};

• Perimeter Security {§44946(f)}; and

• Risk-Based Screening of both passengers and cargo {§44946(g)};

Over the years many activist organizations have objected to the formation and activities of various federal advisory committees, complaining that they provide big business with too much influence over the regulatory process. Thompson’s bill seeks to pre-empt many of these types of complaints by mandating that labor unions, privacy organizations, minority owned small businesses and advocacy groups all have some representation on the Committee.

This is a motherhood and apple pie bill that will certainly pass with bipartisan support if it reaches the floor in both houses of Congress. The problem will be in ensuring that the leadership actually brings it to the floor. That problem may be avoided if this bill gets tacked onto an authorization bill. The most likely candidate would be the TSA authorization, but it could also end up attached to a DOT authorization bill.

TSA Announces ASAC Meeting – 9-18-12

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announces in this Tuesday’s (available on line yesterday) Federal Register (FR 53902-53903) that the Aviation Security Advisory Committee (ASAC) will be holding a public meeting on September 18^th in Arlington, VA. While airport security is not generally one of the major concerns of this blog, this meeting will include receiving a report from the Air Cargo Security Subcommittee and that certainly may affect chemical transportation interests. Oh, yes, there is a brief cybersecurity mention that may be interesting.

Air Cargo Screening

The report on the actions of the Air Cargo Security Subcommittee (Sorry this is a link to the link to the report. The folks at the Federal eRulemaking Portal, www.Regulations.gov, have made this as complicated as possible. Direct links to documents are no longer available.) is actually the minutes of the Subcommittee’s July 11, 2012 meeting. A number of interesting recommendations came out of that meeting, including:

• TSA should coordinate with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to establish a formal process that would permit industry stakeholders to identify and submit cargo screening technology capability needs into the Department’s research and development (R&D) process.

• TSA should work with the international community- including through the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), if appropriate – to promulgate harmonized, internationally-recognized standards for the development of air cargo screening technology.

• TSA should establish a formal process for receiving industry input on government policy at the earliest possible time. For purposes of this recommendation, “the earliest possible time” denotes the period of policy consideration, prior to its internal finalization and issuance for formal comment.

In many ways these motherhood and apple pie issues that few would have any serious concerns with. Yes there are those that decry any industry input into the rulemaking process, but no one understands the impact regulations would have on day-to-day operations better than does the regulated industry. As long as other impacted groups have substantial input in the regulation developing process there should be no real concern here.

Other Agenda Items

The other items on the agenda for this meeting are a report from the International Aviation Subcommittee and status reports on the following other subcommittees:

• Risk-Based Security

• General Aviation

• Passenger Advocacy

Presumably the Risk-Based Security Subcommittee deals with passenger screening actions. The other two should be relatively self-explanatory. No details on any of these three are available.

The International Aviation Subcommittee report does include a brief note about cybersecurity (page 2):

“Identification of infrastructure and procedural incompatibilities in security systems; identification of systemic vulnerabilities at the international level and how best to broadcast to appropriate parties. This would include among its primary targets the issue of cybersecurity [emphasis added], which could conceivably affect not just individual systems, but entire national infrastructures and their ability to communicate current threat and response information.”

I would like to commend the IAS report for including the affiliations of the subcommittee members. This was not done in the ACSS report.

Public Participation

This is a public meeting but since it will be held in a TSA secure facility, advance registration is required. That registration may be made by email to Dean Walter (Dean.Walter@dhs.gov). Space is limited and available on a first-come first served basis (actually the latter is my assumption, it is not stated in the meeting notice). A 30 minute public comment period will be held at the end of the meeting; 3-minute limit. Written comments may be submitted to Mr. Dean or by using the Federal eRulemaking Portal (www.Regulations.gov; Docket # TSA-2011-0008). Written comments must be filed by September 11^th, 2012 (an interesting coincidence that).