Postal Strike: Spotting Mailbombs

A mailbomb addressed to a moderate Muslim leader exploded in Jakarta today exploding and wounding 4 people

as police attempted to remove cables from a detonator to defuse it. In the past three months, embassies, government buildings and homes of 14 Pfoliticians across Europe have been attacked by anarchist groups with a series of parcel bombs and devices containing bullets, one almost reaching the German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s office and two of which have caused serious injuries.

The most recent device, was packed so full of explosives that, had it been successful, it would have killed the Greek Justice Minister, Harris Kastanidis. An extreme left wing group called Conspiracy of  Fire Nuclei has claimed responsibility for the parcel, which was sent the day before the resumption of the trial of 13 suspected members of the Group.

This latest wave of attacks serves to remind readers of the ease of which an explosive device and/or hazardous substances can be delivered via the mail system, and the importance of employing effective screening methods to intercept and deal with them.

How then has postal terrorism changed and developed in the last 10 years and how has technology developed to deal with these threats?

If we go back to 2001, while the world was reeling from the attack on the World Trade Centre, a new threat appeared just 3 weeks later which quickly spread across the world’s media. Overnight, the fear of anthrax gripped the nation.

These so-called Anthrax Letters arrived in 2 waves and were mailed to several news media offices and two Democratic US Senators, killing five people and infecting 17 others.

Outside the lengthy investigations and conspiracies and the $300 million spent cleaning buildings from just a fraction of a gram of anthrax spores that had seeped out of the letters, the direct result of the Anthrax Letters in 2001 was that the public's awareness of and reactions to strange substances found inside crank and anonymous letters changed enormously.

Government offices rushed to implement biohazard screening of their mail, mailroom workers wore facemasks and gloves in an effort to protect themselves and irrational panic caused thousands of buildings and factories to be evacuated. The impact was heightened by timing, only weeks after the American society was experiencing an unprecedented sense of vulnerability and fear after 9/11 and augmented by extensive media discussions of the use of anthrax as a weapon.  Opportunistic pranksters and others quickly found ways to exploit the mentality. For example, anti-abortion extremist Clayton Lee Waagner reportedly sent more than 500 hoax “anthrax” letters to abortion clinics across America in November 2001.

Other pranksters followed suit, and anthrax hoax letters containing "white powder" , frequently talcum powder, cornflour or coffee whitener, become a common occurrence with an ongoing ability to create panic.

This fear of chemical and biological weapons should not be trivialized and is not totally unfounded -- as attacks in Iraq using chlorine based vehicle-borne IEDS attests. But this fear can be controlled with general awareness, and sound mail screening procedures.

As a result of the Anthrax Letters biohazard screening technologies costing millions of dollars were developed and to detect and kill biological threats carried inside mail. Ten years on, hundreds of suspicious substances on and hundreds of thousands of hoax white powder letters on, the legacy of those 2001 letters continues to have an impact.

The biohazard solution market is now vast and complex. There are 82 extremely toxic chemicals that exist in powder and crystalline format which explains the host of detection devices and analytical test kits for recognising biological organisms available to customers. Some are excellent at detecting substances such as ricin whilst others have been developed specifically for biological weapons agents such as anthrax or smallpox. Others look for proteins whilst some of the newest technologies seek out specific organisms based on their DNA signature or use fluorescent detection methods that bind to the cellular components found in microbes, causing them to change shape and fluroresce.

To some extent, white powder detection became the dominant force for mailroom security policy after 2001 as Government bodies moved towards offsite mailscreening in custom built cabins containing hepa filtration systems designed primarily for bioresearch laboratories. Mailroom workers started to open mail inside special glove boxes that protect them from anthrax exposure in the event of a white powder spilling from a letter and low kv x-ray technology was further developed to specifically visualise and enhance powders inside packages.

In January and February 2007, the explosive postal device made a reappearance. A bomber calling himself "The Bishop” sent several unassembled bombs to financial firms in the United States, and was arrested in April 2007. The bombs had vital parts missing, and are believed to have been meant as warnings.

In the same year over in the UK primary school caretaker Miles Cooper, from Cambridge, carried out a letter bomb campaign which injured eight people. Devices were received at seven locations across the country, and all but two exploded causing injury. The letter bombs did not contain "conventional explosives", but were made up of pyrotechnic material designed to shock or cause only minor injury.

These attacks served as a stark reminder that the postal IED is still very much a part of the crimcranks toolkit and continues to be an easy method to deliver a potentially lethal message.

The news continues to report casualties of roadside IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan where peacekeeping forces encounter them on a a daily basis. Yet in comparison to the incidence of white powder letters, the postal IED largely appears to have fallen out of favour over the last 10 years.

Yet, the very nature of the postal attack is its ability to be random and unpredictable. Two parcel bombs aimed at  UK Government targets, M16 and 10 Downing Street, were intercepted late last year.

Shortly afterward, the British security services warned  that the threat posed by dissident republican organizations like the REAL IRA had risen to its highest level. And in the first such incident in more than a year a parcel bomb exploded in January 2011 in a Royal Mail Office in Belfast.

The parcel bomb incident most publicised last year was the foiled al-Qaeda plot to blow up two cargo planes which experts believe indicate that the group's international operations will focus on relatively low-intensity attacks that damage American interests rather than on big missions such as 9/11 that have overwhelming worldwide reactions.

This parcel bomb plot understandably raised alarm in capitals across the world as parcel and cargo screening systems came into question.

The cargo screening system was been criticised for failing to detect the devices that was constructed using a well known explosive PETN. Explosives experts have responded that the disguise in this case was particularly sophisticated so that it would have been difficult for any visual screening technology to differentiate between an ordinary printer and the printer containing the explosives.

The key concerns that this incident raises is that if existing bulk scanning methods of outgoing freight is not 100% effective, and it most certainly appears not to be, and because postal carriers have similar challenges, using largely automated processes for bulk mailscreening  with little opportunity for intervention, then we cannot and must not rely on these carriers to screen mail and parcels destined for our own organisations.

The onus must be on the receiver, the person with the final responsibility for checking inbound packages to their organisation to  ensure that any suspicious items are intercepted before they have the opportunity to maim, injure or kill. To do this all mail handling staff need to be trained in threat awareness, be equipped with suitable screening equipment and be trained and retrained regularly to ensure a level of competence in intercepting and detecting suspicious packages.

Mailscreening technologies available for businesses today range from low cost desk-top electronic devices that will automatically detect postal IEDs and , through to more complex conveyorised x-ray systems used in the aviation industry.

Conveyorised X-ray equipment now offers a range of imaging capabilities with density alerts, organic substance colorisation, material recognition based on atomic numbers, liquid detection algorithms and more recently dual viewing technology where 2 x-ray generators provide a horizontal and vertical view of the object under inspection to improve throughput and object discrimination.

Cabinet x-ray machines carry out a similar job but in a smaller compact format. Although cabinet x-rays are not not generally equipped with the some of the sophisticated features of airport scanners, (because the contents of packages are generally less dense and less complex than the contents of passenger baggage) their advantage is that they produce a very large image on the screen so that suspicious features such as wiring and circuitry are more easily apparent to the viewer, especially in the advent of new super high resolution cameras and x-ray detector screens. Secondly, because they operate with a lower energy x-ray generator a cabinet x-ray is also much better at visualising powdered substances and low density incendiaries, whereas a high energy conveyor system is better for penetrating through steel.

Another layer of security that can be added in easily to any postal delivery point to complement x-ray screening  is explosives trace detection. There are a range of electronic IMS (Ion Mobility Spectometry) devices that take in tiny particles from the surface of packages and analyse them for the presence of explosives. Another recent innovation for mailroom security is single use explosive trace detection kits. These are disposable cards or “pens” that work on the basis of a sample being collected from the surface of a package and a reagent within the self contained test kit changing colour almost immediately in the presence of explosives. For the low volume user these are a very cost effective way to carry out explosives screening of a suspect package.

There is a tendency within organisations that install x-ray screening equipment to meet their duty of care responsibilities to rely on the equipment itself to fulfil the mailscreening task without fully understanding that a successful detection of a suspect package is largely dependent on the skills of the operator and the experience of mailroom staff.

Last month 2 people were injured by opening low grade incendiary devices containing a battery and an electrical match in State offices in Maryland USA . Both packages were similar. They were contained in a white cardboard shipping box the size of a video cassette.The exteriors of the packages displayed an excessive amount of holiday themed stamps. the mail to address was printed on a large self adhesive label. The return address was ficticious and printed on a smaller self adhesive label. The back of the package was sealed with a perforated cardboard pull strip.

A simple electronic mailscanner would have detected the device and to anyone that has undergone mail security training, there were key indicators present (remember the 7 S’s?) on these packages that should have raised the alarm even without any mailscreening equipment.

An experienced mailroom worker will have a feel for the mail entering the organisation. They will be familiar with the type of mail received by the organisation and will recognise anything out of the ordinary. It is clear that postal threats will continue to mutate and the technologies to deal with them may need to be adapted - for instance finding safeguards against new threats like sodium azide that, when mixed with water, changes into a highly toxic gas. But the most efficient security we have is right there at the core of our organisation - the well trained, competent mailroom worker  - and their experience and knowledge is what ultimately protects us.

 

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