WBO-BORDERPOL
Ottawa
On
K2G 2Y9
Canada
| Tel: | +1 509 278 1660 |
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The Changing Face and Future of International Border Enforcement With the demise of the Communist bloc, and the end of the cold war, a sudden surge of people and goods began to flow back and forth across many borders. From 1990, travel restrictions out of the post communist states almost evaporated. Simultaneously entry restrictions were significantly eased in the U.S., Canada and most western European countries. As appropriate as these changes may have been politically, they were conceived by policy makers with little regard for the advice provided at the time by the intelligence community. The criminal community and organized terrorist groups began to exploit these freedoms almost immediately. Eastern bloc crime syndicates, whose roots were directly associated with the former Soviet military and political leaderships, laundered their former state assets into newly minted enterprises ranging from classic banking and investment scams to the establishment of new global networks for trafficking in drugs, weapons and people. These businesses rapidly proved successful. Terrorists similarly embraced the ease of travel regulations and reduced border controls. Obstacles to their movement were reduced significantly and they exploited open immigration and benevolent refugee screening programs. Passport and identity fraud were treated as misdemeanours by most western governments. These criminal activities flourished as a result of the evisceration of border controls by most countries. In the early 1990’s, the political wisdom was that border controls were redundant. Conventional political approach was that the general law enforcement community and the associated justice systems were well-enough equipped to deal with such criminal elements. By mid 1990, the few remaining members of the western intelligence community were raising alarm bells. The international criminal community had clearly become the major catalyst in the extraordinary number of cases related to a broadly connected series of crimes associated with trafficking in human beings, drugs and small arms. Passport and identity fraud were skyrocketing. Radical religious groups were using immigration programs to expand their influence in European and American metropolitan communities. These intelligence warnings went generally unheeded and were in some instances openly derided by senior domestic law enforcement officials in Canada, the US and in Western Europe. A recession had forced cutbacks in government spending and many countries reduced the size of their border services. The continued growth of international traffic both in terms of persons and goods - brought about the streamlining of screening procedures that, coupled with the reduction of border officials at borders and embassies, made for a perfect storm, whose winds filled the sails of the global criminal community and their financial coffers and influence. Trafficking in women and minors was on the rise, travel document fraud was endemic but there existed neither broad network nor protocols for the exchange of information on this increase in crime. Fortunately, necessity being the mother of invention, BORDERPOL exists today because it was recognized over a decade ago that there was such a need to facilitate and provide secure travel channels between like-minded states. Late in 1997 a three day meeting was held in Riga, Latvia which examined the effects of the liberalization of the border controls. It was made clear to all that the existing global institutions such as Interpol, the World Customs Organization or International Organization for Migration did not possess the necessary mandates to cooperatively challenge border related crime. Against this backdrop, a group of law enforcement officials from the Americas and Europe determined that the time had come to form a unique body to challenge this type of criminal activity. In 1998 a genesis study was commissioned by the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in Vienna, Austria. It was to produce a proof of concept document for the European Commission (EC) to develop an intelligence based institution that could challenge cross border criminality at a trans national level. The study called "Project Solomon" concluded in 1999 that there was an immediate need to establish a network of like-minded states that would share information through an automated system about the cross-border movement of persons. This report was reviewed in 2000 by the EC and was immediately shelved due to data protection concerns. However, its overall recommendations were accepted as part of a genesis program that would eventually lead to the creation of European Union border agency in 2004. With "Project Solomon" effectively dead, the authors were determined to proceed with the establishment of a fraternal body of border enforcement officials to examine ways in which to gather the necessary support from "like minded" states to establish BORDERPOL. World events overtook the process. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 both helped and, ironically, hindered the progress. The attacks on 9/11 galvanized public attention and effectively put an end to the ill-conceived post cold war liberalization of border control policies and programs. Resources became available for the replacement of obsolete equipment, the addition of more human resources and recognition that the intelligence community, to monitor the movement of persons and goods, had to be re-established. Almost immediately the compartmentalized border enforcement community and its legacy agencies were subsumed into large bureaucratic institutions. The need to rebuild counter terrorism capabilities in like-minded states also brought with it an unprecedented level of secrecy and insularity. This, ironically, made establishing an intelligence based global institution extremely suspect. Despite this difficult climate, BORDERPOL was officially created in March of 2003. Founding members from Canada, the United States, and a number of European Union states received its charter from the Government of Canada to operate as a non-profit organization. Since its incorporation, BORDERPOL has been actively pursuing its original purpose while working to meet the needs of the international border security and border management community with 21st Century approaches. Hence the birth of the BORDERPOL developed SAFEBORDER NETWORK. This global law enforcement extranet initiative is a global extranet designed for sharing information between countries and between the agencies involved in border security. BORDERPOL Executive Director Thomas Tass said, "In any given country, management of border security can involve a number of agencies. Each agency is responsible for its own particular aspect of border security and operating its own independently developed computer network. This makes effective information sharing, even within the same country, difficult if not sometimes impossible." He went on to say "The problem of information sharing becomes worse as you cross international boundaries. There is no formal mechanism in place for sharing information between nation states and their border agencies; this represents a major weakness in international border security. SAFEBORDER.Net is designed to address that weakness. In the 21st century we live in a set of global villages. The EU is perhaps the most advanced village, but others already exist in less formal settings in the Americas, Asia and Africa. That means that in many matters associated with international security we have little choice but to work collectively as citizens of these global villages. Criminal and terrorist groups have recognized this long ago. Our global villages are interconnected on many levels. The most efficient and secretive networks are those associated with criminality and global terrorism. Unlike government operations their networks have a high degree of interconnectivity and use the newest technologies. We are well aware of the fact that their criminal activities challenge the safety and security of every honest citizen both physically and financially every time he or she boards a plane or uses his or her credit/debit card. Today the principal challenge for border security officials is how to facilitate the movement of genuine trade, travel and commerce while effectively countering the terrorist and organized criminal threat without going broke doing it. The standard operational mantra since 9/11 has been for the intelligence and law enforcement community to “hunt for the needle in the haystack”. It is a Herculean effort to identify and track the bad guys all the while, year after year, downloading correspondingly massive operational compliance systems – with consequential financial costs to taxpayers, travellers and legitimate trade and commerce. This approach is not sustainable from a cost perspective or from a law enforcement perspective, but perhaps more worrisome is that there is a great deal of skepticism about it effectiveness. Considering the hundreds of millions of persons that have been screened at airports, border and seaports since 9/11 it can legitimately be asked how many terrorists acts have been prevented and how many have been caught? History shows us that each time there is an incident such as the most recent one on December 25, 2009 at Detroit, politicians, bereft of any really new or audacious approaches to reduce the threats, develop knee jerkitis. This results in the sudden purchase of sometimes untested technologies in the millions of dollars, (or pounds or euros) along with the introduction of a plethora of new rules that only serves to make cross border travel for yet more frustrating, time consuming and costly for the honest users. On December, 25th 2009, this problem was highlighted when a Nigerian Man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the so called, underpants bomber) was overpowered by passengers and crew after attempting to detonate a bomb on a passenger jet arriving in the US, having flown from Lagos to Amsterdam, before changing planes to Detroit, US. Mr Abdulmutallab, had a valid US visa, he was on a database indicating that he has “a significant terrorist connection, but, he did not appear on a “no fly” list. His father, a former minister and ex-chief executive officer of Nigeria’s First Bank, had also alerted the United States, Nigerian and Saudi authorities to his sons “out of charterer behaviour” his travel to UK, Dubai and finally Yemen, and of their concerns. Any single one of the above should have highlighted this man as being a substantial threat and risk and in an ideal world should have been shared between the various international border agencies. However, as it was not, this weakness was exploited to the full, and a major disaster was narrowly averted purely by the quick wittedness of the passengers and crew onboard this passenger jet. SAFEBORDER.Net will represent a major step forward in border security and will be a key tool in making global borders and international travel safer for all by cohesive collaboration of all Member States border security agencies. The planned development of SAFEBORDER.Net will be rolled out in three phases. Phase one of development is already well advanced and will see the launch of a global password protected extranet available to any law enforcement practitioner or agency involved in border security. Here they will be able to share information on education, training, doctrine, best practice and more specific information about criminal gangs, terrorist organizations, their structure and modus operandi. It will also include other useful features like a forum, equipment database and events calendar. Phase two will include an e-learning programme, the purpose being to set and raise standards across the global border enforcement community and create an internationally recognised qualification. Phase three will introduce "bad guy" information sharing. This will involve each member country and agency using the SAFEBORDER.Net interface to share profile information on known criminals and terrorists. SAFEBORDER.Net and other projects are primarily designed to make borders more effective in denying criminals and terrorists the ability to move unimpeded from one jurisdiction to another. At the same time, such programs will facilitate and begin a long-awaited standardization process that will ease border formalities for legitimate travellers. As a border focused organization, BORDERPOL actively promotes this combination of low risk facilitation and intelligence driven investigation because, in today's world, more security is not necessarily better security. Guided by the BORDERPOL Constitution, members or observers of the BORDERPOL Exploratory Committee (BEXCOM), provide strategic management and general oversight of all BORDERPOL activities. BEXCOM Member Organizations and Observers: United Kingdom (UK Border Agency, Ports Police) New Zealand (Department of Labour, Immigration Service) Republic of South Africa (South African Police Service Border Division) Hungary (National Police Service) Peoples Republic of China (Public Security) Norway (National Police Service) Republic of Maldives (Department of Immigration and Emigration) Singapore* (Immigration and Checkpoints Authority) United States of America* (United States Border Patrol) Azerbaijan*(State Border Guard Service) Burundi (Ministry of Public Security) *observer members WBO BORDERPOL provide specialist standard, or bespoke training programmes and workshops to ensure that Border Enforcement personnel have the skills and the knowledge sets they need to meet the exacting requirements of modern border policing. These training programmes are specifically designed to help government agencies improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the way they evaluate, implement and monitor policy to deliver modern border security and migration screening services. |
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