U.S. says threats against airlines remains high

U.S. says threats against airlines remains high

www.reuters.com

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - The United States is likely to keep a high threat designation for the airline industry because militants still see air travel as a target, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

Chertoff said the orange, or high, threat level assigned to the airline sector -- one level higher than the overall alert level for the United States -- was based on a general assessment rather than a specific threat.

"We've seen again and again interest in this sector," he said, pointing to an alleged British-based plot to blow up transatlantic flights using liquid explosives in 2006 and an attempted car bomb attack on Glasgow airport last year.

"So people think of aviation not only in terms of the aircraft but the whole infrastructure including the airports," Chertoff told Reuters at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

The Department of Homeland Security was itself created in response to the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, when al Qaeda hijackers commandeered four planes, slamming two into New York's World Trade Centre and one into the Pentagon outside Washington, and crashing the fourth in a field in Pennsylvania.

More than six years after the attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people, "there continues to be a focus on air travel as a target," he said, adding the threat level was unlikely to be changed in the near future.

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More fear-mongering from Homeland Security. Perhaps they can ram through some more laws to take away some more of our rights while instilling their latest news of dread and gloom how we're all being targeted.

Although I don't doubt entirely that there are a record number of ME people that hate us now, after all that has been done to them.

www.reuters.com
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