An Israeli security agent grills a passenger at Ben Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv
What Israel Can Teach Us about Airport Security -Cathal Kelly
While North America's airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, the experts keep asking: How can we make our airports more like Israel's, which deals with far greater terror threats with far less inconvenience?
How do they manage that?
"[W]e went through this 50 years ago," said [Israeli] Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy.
The first layer of security that greets travelers is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked: How are you? Where are you coming from? "Two benign questions. The questions aren't important. The way people act when they answer them is," Sela said.
Armed guards outside the terminal observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behavior. Inside the terminal, as you approach the airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer asks additional questions. "The whole time, they are looking into your eyes. [T]his is one of the ways they figure out if you are suspicious or not," said Sela.
At the check-in desk, your luggage is scanned immediately in a special area.
Five security layers down, you now arrive at the body and hand-luggage check. "But here it is done completely, absolutely 180 degrees differently than it is done in North America," Sela said.
"First, it's fast - there's almost no line. That's because they're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes....They just look at you...and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys."
Sela maintains that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would not have gotten past Ben-Gurion's behavioral profilers. "You can easily do what we do. You don't have to replace anything. You have to add just a little bit - technology, training...but you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security."
(Toronto Star)
UPDATES:
The System -Daniel Pipes
[B]ecause U.S. security agencies refuse to take the sensible precaution of concentrating their resources on the small target pool of suspects, namely Muslims, about 1 percent of the population, hundreds of millions of passengers must bear the burden of extra cost, inconvenience, and loss of privacy.
What size disaster must occur to inspire a serious approach to counterterrorism?
[FrontPageMagazine]
While North America's airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, the experts keep asking: How can we make our airports more like Israel's, which deals with far greater terror threats with far less inconvenience?
How do they manage that?
"[W]e went through this 50 years ago," said [Israeli] Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy.
The first layer of security that greets travelers is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked: How are you? Where are you coming from? "Two benign questions. The questions aren't important. The way people act when they answer them is," Sela said.
Armed guards outside the terminal observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behavior. Inside the terminal, as you approach the airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer asks additional questions. "The whole time, they are looking into your eyes. [T]his is one of the ways they figure out if you are suspicious or not," said Sela.
At the check-in desk, your luggage is scanned immediately in a special area.
Five security layers down, you now arrive at the body and hand-luggage check. "But here it is done completely, absolutely 180 degrees differently than it is done in North America," Sela said.
"First, it's fast - there's almost no line. That's because they're not looking for liquids, they're not looking at your shoes....They just look at you...and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys."
Sela maintains that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab would not have gotten past Ben-Gurion's behavioral profilers. "You can easily do what we do. You don't have to replace anything. You have to add just a little bit - technology, training...but you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security."
(Toronto Star)
UPDATES:
The System -Daniel Pipes
[B]ecause U.S. security agencies refuse to take the sensible precaution of concentrating their resources on the small target pool of suspects, namely Muslims, about 1 percent of the population, hundreds of millions of passengers must bear the burden of extra cost, inconvenience, and loss of privacy.
What size disaster must occur to inspire a serious approach to counterterrorism?
[FrontPageMagazine]
Flight 253's Wake-Up Call -Jeff Jacoby
US airport security remains obstinately reactive -- focused on intercepting dangerous things, instead of intercepting dangerous people.
Unwilling to incorporate ethnic and religious profiling in our air-travel security procedures, we have saddled ourselves with a mediocre security system that inconveniences everyone while protecting no one.
[Boston Globe]
The American air farce -Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
[H]ere we are, just a few days later, and one of New York's three premiere airports is shut down because a man walked straight through a "secure" exit without being stopped. Nice to know we're being protected by the Keystone Kops.
They can install the most sophisticated machinery. They can X-ray our boxers, they can check for explosives in every bodily orifice, but we're still not going to be safe; it's not only people's bodies but their backgrounds, their nationalities, and especially their eyes.
Israel has the most secure airport in the world. Because they would have asked him some simple, direct questions with the purpose of studying his reactions. You're from Nigeria. You're going to the US. Why? How long are you staying? What is your purpose? And where is your return ticket? All along they would be scrutinizing not his bodily bulges but his twitches. What Israel excels at is not even ethnic profiling so much as psychological profiling.
I realize that Israel is a tiny country and has to secure only one major airport. But then again, unlike the US, it lives surrounded by terrorists yet has an exemplary record in protecting air travel.
[Jerusalem Post]
*
Unwilling to incorporate ethnic and religious profiling in our air-travel security procedures, we have saddled ourselves with a mediocre security system that inconveniences everyone while protecting no one.
[Boston Globe]
The American air farce -Rabbi Shmuley Boteach
[H]ere we are, just a few days later, and one of New York's three premiere airports is shut down because a man walked straight through a "secure" exit without being stopped. Nice to know we're being protected by the Keystone Kops.
They can install the most sophisticated machinery. They can X-ray our boxers, they can check for explosives in every bodily orifice, but we're still not going to be safe; it's not only people's bodies but their backgrounds, their nationalities, and especially their eyes.
Israel has the most secure airport in the world. Because they would have asked him some simple, direct questions with the purpose of studying his reactions. You're from Nigeria. You're going to the US. Why? How long are you staying? What is your purpose? And where is your return ticket? All along they would be scrutinizing not his bodily bulges but his twitches. What Israel excels at is not even ethnic profiling so much as psychological profiling.
I realize that Israel is a tiny country and has to secure only one major airport. But then again, unlike the US, it lives surrounded by terrorists yet has an exemplary record in protecting air travel.
[Jerusalem Post]
*
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