RSS Feed MenuWith air travel a mess after the Christmas day underwear-bomber incident that Northwest Airlines passengers thwarted, it’s time to re-think airport security.
Instead of the present system of patting down everyone, removing shoes (next, will passengers have to remove underwear?), one carry-on bag, no toilet visits in the last hour of flight, no blankets in the last hour, no using a laptop computer, and three-hour lineups for airport security, why not emulate Israeli airport security?
Israel is the world’s most threatened country.
It has more direct experience with terrorism than any country.
Yet the last time an Israeli airliner was attacked was in 1972 when 24 people were killed by Japanese Red Army terrorists. Since then, Israeli airport security has been such that no fatal incidents have occurred.
How do the Israelis do it – and why can’t we learn from them?
The “layers” of Israeli security at Ben Gurion airport (some 11 million passengers a year – small by U.S. standards) are more intense than in Canada or the U.S. They include uniformed and plain clothes security, nervous or odd-behaving individuals.
To Israelis, individuals are more important than baggage. We check baggage more than we do people – ever fearful of “racial profiling,” which is illegal.
The Israeli Supreme Court must deal with civil rights groups that argue security measures violate Israeli law by singling out Arabs or Muslims for tougher scrutiny. Terror experts point out that Israel’s security precautions are effective precisely because they factor in ethnicity, which our system does not.
Israel’s Association of Civil Rights accepts that screening is necessary but wants it done equally on all passengers. Terror expert Ariel Merari has been quoted saying “It’s foolishness not to use profiles when you know that most terrorists come from certain ethnic groups and certain age groups. A bomber on a plane is likely to be a Muslim and young, not an elderly Holocaust survivor.”
Saving lives justifies inconveniencing certain ethnic groups.
The U.S. has concentrated on devising technology to detect weapons, and tended to avoid profiling people likely to use these weapons. This is an ass-backwards approach, that eventually will have to change. It’s people who are dangerous, not weapons.
Over the years, the Israelis have absorbed the reality that the person is more important than his/her luggage, which explains why some passengers quickly pass through security. In North America we don’t have the extensive expertise of the Israelis who are ever on the alert at Ben Gurion, observing, noting, assessing – and chatting with “passengers of interest.”
Anyone flying in our country can hardly be reassured by security measures.
Our planes don’t even have the armored luggage compartments, reinforced cockpits, or armed sky marshals that Israeli airliners boast. Nor can frequent flyers be assured a fellow passenger isn’t another Muslim radical like Richard Reid the shoe-bomber, or Umar Abdulmutallab the would-be underwear bomber.
While racial profiling is illegal, “reasonable suspicion,” which cuts across ethnic differences, is acceptable in law for a trained security officer to question a passenger. After all, the 1972 terrorists who attacked Ben Gurion airport were Japanese, not Arabs.
“Profiling” should analyze behavior, as well as ethnicity.
Israel won’t reveal some security measures, but Arabs and Jews are treated differently when boarding Israeli planes. Low risk passengers may get cursory checks, but their hand baggage goes through a pressure chamber aimed at detonating explosive devices.
We could learn a lot from the Israelis.
sinz54 // Dec 29, 2009 at 5:48 pm
Yes, I would like to see some form of profiling, but that’s a lost cause as long as liberals are running the U.S. government.
Our security policies operate on the principle of egalitarian terrorism–that it’s equally likely that a Muslim from Yemen with light luggage who pays cash for his flight, an Orthodox Jew from Brooklyn whose ticket was paid by his Yeshiva, a blonde lesbian from San Francisco, and a Hispanic mom with two young children from Texas are all equally likely to commit suicide-bombing.
You don’t need to have a degree in mathematical statistics to laugh at this. We don’t do it because it makes technical sense. We do it out of some fealty to equal opportunity or something. And because if we start doing it, the usual civil libertarian types will run down their database of sympathetic judges and go scurrying off to one such judge to issue an injunction to stop it.
mlindroo // Dec 30, 2009 at 8:30 am
For all the hysteria surrounding Northwest Airlines Flight 253, U.S. precautions against terrorism have a good track record during the past twenty years. Since the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 that killed 270 in Scotland, there have been many foiled plots and 9/11 involved essentially unarmed terrorists who managed to carry out the attacks mainly by deceiving the flight crews and pilots.
It seems to me that the obvious security “holes” were plugged already during the late 1980s and it is now extremely difficult to hijack or bomb a U.S. airliner. The failed suicide bomb plots of 2001, 2006 and 2009 will realistically raise the bar even higher.
Ethnic profiling at the airport seems less useful as it would not detect terrorists such as Richard Reid. Covert profiling by anti-terrorism agencies seems much more promising, e.g. the 2006 transatlantic aircraft plot was foiled before the suspects made it to the airport.
MARCU$
oldgal // Dec 30, 2009 at 8:47 am
I just find it interesting that the attacks and attempted attacks that have occurred have originated at foreign airports, yet it is American airports that get all the added security.
sinz54 // Dec 30, 2009 at 9:38 am
oldgal: I just find it interesting that the attacks and attempted attacks that have occurred have originated at foreign airports, yet it is American airports that get all the added security.
The Dutch have announced that henceforth, passengers on all flights inbound to America will have to pass through body scanners.
Strict new security rules were just implemented at all British airports.
What’s interesting about these rules, is that these foreign airports are employing their most stringent security rules on passengers flying to America.
It looks like a two-tier security system is evolving.
aDude // Dec 31, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Back in 1987, a red-haired, blue eyed, freckle faced 7 month pregnant young woman was found to have an explosive device in her luggage. She didn’t know it was there (it was planted there by her boyfriend – I suspect they have since broken up). Profiling would not have discovered the device.
For years, Columbian drug lords have been sending their products into this country by secretly planting them in someone else’s luggage. After all, if you are looking for drugs, would you spend a lot of time looking through the luggage of a sweet, grey haired 87 yr old grandma? No wonder there’s no shortage of drugs in this country.
If I were a terrorist, that’s exactly how I would get my devices through security. Once profiling becomes wide-spread, you can do a rectal search of every person whose skin isn’t lily white and terrorists would still be able to get their weapons through by copying the tactics of the drug lords. They could put powder “A” in the carry-on bag of Granny, and liquid “B” in the carry-on bag of that professional looking 45-yr old blonde male bank executive. Then retrieve them on the far side of security and take them on the plane.
It’s not just civil rights concerns that argue against racial profiling. It’s also that the bad guys are more sophisticated than that.
sinz54 // Jan 2, 2010 at 9:30 am
aDude:
In the case of Israel, what you predicted has not come to pass.
Israeli officials have told the U.S. that even after all these years, profiling remains their most important weapon against terrorism.
It is harder to “retrieve them on the far side of security” these days. Luggage is watched and scanned constantly from the moment you take it to the airport, to the time it gets on the plane. A terrorist attack that requires the terrorists to take materials out of TWO different pieces of luggage and assemble it would be unlikely to succeed these days.
al-Qaeda’s main tactic continues to be suicide-bombing, in which the bomber smuggles the weapons on board with him. These terrorists are capitalizing on the West’s refusal to do full-body scans or pat-downs due to privacy concerns. Further, they know that the West will never do cavity searches of passengers.
That Russian jetliner that exploded was thought to have been brought down by Chechnyan female terrorists who had actually secreted the explosives in their bras. They knew that security guards weren’t going to feel their breasts–so they made the most of it.
aDude // Jan 2, 2010 at 6:34 pm
My point about planing devices on little old ladies and retrieving them on the other side of security was concerning carry on luggage. Exactly the sort of thing a suicide bomber would do.
Again, you could strip search every person who fits a profile, and it wouldn’t help if they use someone else to smuggle devices through security.
Now behavioral profiling is something that should be looked at. It’s not whether someone is dark skinned, but rather how they are acting. (And, yes, things like buying a one way ticket for cash fall into that category). There is training available for spotting certain kinds of actions that can indicate someone with possibly nefarious intent. Since even Islamic terrorists can be white, black, brown, or Asian, profiling based on looks or even name just isn’t going to work. Actions (facial expressions, body language, etc) are what you should be looking for.
RLHotchkiss // Jan 6, 2010 at 1:33 am
Comparing Israeli security to security in the United States is folly for a number of obvious reasons. Israel is a tiny country with few airports. The Muslim and Jewish populations in Israel are largely segregated and speak different languages. Israel’s primary terrorist threats have come from Arab and Muslims.
The United States is of course the opposite of all these things. If you were going to use profiling than what profiling would you use. If you focused on Arab individuals would you miss the blue eyed blond haired German convert to Islam. What about that Veteran who’s been reading the Turner Diary.
Though the eco-terror threat has yet to claim in lives in the US plane travel would be an ideal target. International air travel releases a lot of CO’2. But that doesn’t even count the other people who may be out to get us. Remember the Serbs, yeah they’re still pretty angry at us. Do you know what a Serb looks like.
And what about the drug cartels. Homeland security has only a so many people. Why not hire a few junkies tell they are mules and have them carry unbeknown to them bombs. Blow a few planes out of the sky and see which holes open up for smuggling.
We aren’t Israel. We got a lot more airports, a lot more diverse terrorist threats, and an economy that is much more dependent on airline travel.
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