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Yeah, it's hilarious how they spin it now when the baseline TSA checks haven't changed in years (relatively frequent flyer here).
Well, I know for a fact this was talked about a lot here years ago. What really funny about this thread for me is that Yonivore now wants the departments abolished when he argued fiercely that they needed the powers they now have.
Yeah, it's hilarious how they spin it now when the baseline TSA checks haven't changed in years (relatively frequent flyer here).
I've been random searched a lot. But to be quite frank, when I have a full beard grown I could very easily pass for more like a person of Arabic/Persian or general middle eastern descent so it never really shocked me. I've no desire to be felt up any more so than I've already been felt up in the past. There are TSA employees that should owe me a dinner.
I'm also wondering if it wouldn't be cheaper for the airlines at this point to buy insurance on the flights. I mean, I know, it's no consolation to get a chunk of change if a loved one blows up, but the reality is that with basic security the occurrences of an accident are probably higher than those of an attack.
It's re ed, plus you're basically creating an incentive. You could have the entire capacity of two or three planes in line waiting to be checked in an airport here (tri state area). You can walk to that area unimpeded and without having to go through any checks.
Plus this whole thing has created a big marketing opportunity, which I think it's a major driver for keeping all the way it is. All stores have now moved to the waiting areas near the gates, meaning that they can charge an arm and a leg, because if you want to go out, you have to go through security again.
It used to be that if I had a 3 hour layover I could go out and maybe visit the area around the airport to kill time, and there's no way in you can do that now. They've really made traveling a miserable experience. And don't even get me started with flight attendants thinking they're cops now...
This wont protect pilots/stewardesses/civilians on the ground/large buildings from terrorists, so it wouldn't work.
In principle, none of us can be reliably protected from terrorists. None of it will work.
Prudent countermeasures will fail, years will pass and millions be expended preparing for the previous attack, before we are overtaken by the next one.
See the pattern?
Airlines already do not protect those people/things unless they're within the 'secure' area. So that point it really moot.
America is so ing ed, ed by itself, ing itself more every day, and the insane, suicidal ing is unstoppable.
TSA is doing nothing but costing business for airlines. i never fly anymore.
I disagree. By keeping the airplane secure, they protect the public at large from the airplane-as-a-missle scenario. Which is why the release falls short.
Yup, DHS isn't going anywhere, too many fingers in too many pies. Don't think TSA is going anywhere either, and I'm not sure it should. In theory, it's a good idea for a department; it's just that the implementation of security practices are asinine.
To protect from that scenario all you need is the crew armed and the cabin locked shut. You don't even need insurance for that, nor invasive scanners.
I'm not against metal detectors, or an xray of bags, but that should be where the buck stops though.
Airport security at the airports never failed on 9/11 to start with.
Box Cutters were legal items at the time, its not like the terrorists boarded the planes with illegal objects, why not just make them illegal and be done with it, instead of all of this ing bull .
O rly?
One would think someone would have said, "Hey Shirley, there's an unusually high amount of Arab looking dudes taking box cutters on board today. Should we say something?"
Wasnt illegal though.
The problem wasnt at the airport itself, all you had to do was make them illegal and move on.
Its not like the screening at the airport itself failed. Why overhaul a system that wasnt failing? I guess with that logic I should go overhaul my engine just for the of it.
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/ar...-little-bother
It's better than the TSA but still unnecessary here, IMO.The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
Published On Wed Dec 30 2009EmailPrint
While North America's airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification.
That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel's, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience.
"It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago," said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He's worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world.
"Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don't take s--- from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all broke loose here. We said, 'We're not going to do this. You're going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport."
That, in a nuts is "Israelification" - a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.
Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel's largest hub, Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that?
"The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport," said Sela.
The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: 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.
Officers are looking for nervousness or other signs of "distress" — behavioural profiling. Sela rejects the argument that profiling is discriminatory.
"The word 'profiling' is a political invention by people who don't want to do security," he said. "To us, it doesn't matter if he's black, white, young or old. It's just his behaviour. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I'm doing this?"
Once you've parked your car or gotten off your bus, you pass through the second and third security perimeters.
Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behaviour. At Ben Gurion's half-dozen entrances, another layer of security are watching. At this point, some travellers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer.
"This is to see that you don't have heavy metals on you or something that looks su ious," said Sela.
You are now in the terminal. As you approach your airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer takes your passport and ticket. They ask a series of questions: Who packed your luggage? Has it left your side?
"The whole time, they are looking into your eyes — which is very embarrassing. But this is one of the ways they figure out if you are su ious or not. It takes 20, 25 seconds," said Sela.
Lines are staggered. People are not allowed to bunch up into inviting targets for a bomber who has gotten this far.
At the check-in desk, your luggage is scanned immediately in a purpose-built area. Sela plays devil's advocate — what if you have escaped the attention of the first four layers of security, and now try to pass a bag with a bomb in it?
"I once put this question to Jacques Duchesneau (the former head of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority): say there is a bag with play-doh in it and two pens stuck in the play-doh. That is 'Bombs 101' to a screener. I asked Ducheneau, 'What would you do?' And he said, 'Evacuate the terminal.' And I said, 'Oh. My. God.'
"Take Pearson. Do you know how many people are in the terminal at all times? Many thousands. Let's say I'm (doing an evacuation) without panic — which will never happen. But let's say this is the case. How long will it take? Nobody thought about it. I said, 'Two days.'"
A screener at Ben-Gurion has a pair of better options.
First, the screening area is surrounded by contoured, blast-proof glass that can contain the detonation of up to 100 kilos of plastic explosive. Only the few dozen people within the screening area need be removed, and only to a point a few metres away.
Second, all the screening areas contain 'bomb boxes'. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation.
"This is a very small simple example of how we can simply stop a problem that would cripple one of your airports," Sela said.
Five security layers down: you now finally arrive at the only one which Ben-Gurion Airport shares with Pearson — 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're not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you," said Sela. "Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes ... and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys."
That's the process — six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.
This doesn't begin to cover the off-site security net that failed so spectacularly in targeting would-be Flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — intelligence. In Israel, Sela said, a coordinated intelligence gathering operation produces a constantly evolving series of threat analyses and vulnerability studies.
"There is absolutely no intelligence and threat analysis done in Canada or the United States," Sela said. "Absolutely none."
But even without the intelligence, Sela maintains, Abdulmutallab would not have gotten past Ben Gurion Airport's behavioural profilers.
So. Eight years after 9/11, why are we still so reactive, so un-Israelified?
Working hard to dampen his outrage, Sela first blames our leaders, and then ourselves.
"We have a saying in Hebrew that it's much easier to look for a lost key under the light, than to look for the key where you actually lost it, because it's dark over there. That's exactly how (North American airport security officials) act," Sela said. "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. And that is something that the bureaucrats have a problem with. They are very well enclosed in their own concept."
And rather than fear, he suggests that outrage would be a far more powerful spur to provoking that change.
"Do you know why Israelis are so calm? We have brutal terror attacks on our civilians and still, life in Israel is pretty good. The reason is that people trust their defence forces, their police, their response teams and the security agencies. They know they're doing a good job. You can't say the same thing about Americans and Canadians. They don't trust anybody," Sela said. "But they say, 'So far, so good'. Then if something happens, all breaks loose and you've spent eight hours in an airport. Which is ridiculous. Not justifiable
"But, what can you do? Americans and Canadians are nice people and they will do anything because they were told to do so and because they don't know any different."
"When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all broke loose here."
As I said yesterday, the US sheeple have been so dumbed down, so intimidated, that they just bend over and let the govt bugger their lives.
Hear about the guy in CA who refused to be xrayed, then threatened the pat down guy not to "touch my junk"? Thrown out of the airport and threatened with $10K fine.
baaaaa baaaaa baaaa ... go the American sheeple.
I gotta say, the idea of a "bomb proof" area to check personal belongings makes sense.
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