Israeli air security experts insist their methods better than U.S.

By Janine Zacharia
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, November 26, 2010; 1:16 PM
JERUSALEM - Israel has long held the reputation as home to the world's most stringent airport-security procedures. But most passengers aren't frisked, there are no intimately revealing body-imaging scanners, and security experts dismiss as misguided the new, more intrusive American approach that requires pat-downs or highly detailed scans of every passenger.

"Taking the bottle of water from the 87-year old-woman at JFK, you will never find an explosive material that is coming from Bin Laden,'' said Shlomo Harnoy, head of the Sdema Group, an Israeli security consultancy that advises airports abroad. "You are concentrating on the wrong thing.''

Israel's approach allows most travelers to pass through airport security with relative ease. But Israeli personnel do single out small numbers of passengers for extensive searches and screening, based on profiling methods that have so far been rejected in the United States, subjecting Arabs and, in some cases, other foreign nationals to an extensive screening that comes with a steep civil liberties price.

"I know personally of people who came to Israel for a conference and were asked if they had met an Arab. After that, they were stripped and their laptop was confiscated,'' said Ariel Merari, a terrorism expert at Tel Aviv University who has researched aviation security. "There is a lot to be improved in this approach towards innocent, foreign citizens. Also, the attitude towards Israeli Arabs has to be reevaluated. The profiling system is good. But it has to be done with more sensitivity.''

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/11/26/AR2010112603025.html

:kick:

Since the scanner objection is based on civil liberties.

don't meet your racial, ethnic, or religious standards, it's just fine. That's what they do in Israel.

Israel does psychographic and behavioral profiling - not racial profiling.

Don't let these facts get in the way of your bs.

The OP link describes it. It is not just the traveler, but their friends!

You see, I checked. That's how I know it's not bullshit.

regarding Israeli security. Just what we need here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9633621

"just what we have here now"

my mouth. I'm quite articulate and careful about what I post.

except here it happens at "random" instead of just when it fits a threat pattern. Do you find that preferable?

El Al is heavily subsidized--forgot any new money, any time in the next 2 years, coming outta Congress.

El Al puts armed security on all flights. That will never happen in the US. It's not a case of political will. It's a case of logistics. If I'm reading the Bureau of Transportation Statistics info correctly, between September 2009 and August 2010, there were 8,780,028 passenger flight departures, or an average of 24,054 departures per day.

On average, Federal Air Marshals fly 181 days per year, fly 15 days per month, spend 900 hours in an aircraft per year, and spend five hours in an aircraft per day.

To put two FAMs (and they work in pairs) on each and every flight would require a massive increase in hiring of qualified personnel. Some have speculated it would require a Federal Air Marshal Service the size of the U.S. Marine Corps. We don't know the actual size of the Federal Air Marshal Service, but it's certainly much smaller than the Marines. However, given the many controversies associated with the Federal Air Marshal Service--an innocent man killed, violation of WPA, criminal convictions of FAMs for serious offenses, average $200 million per arrest--do we really want to grow the Federal Air Marshal Service?

http://www.bts.gov/xml/air_traffic/src/index.xml#CustomizeTable

http://www.tsa.gov/lawenforcement/people/index.shtm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Air_Marshal_Service#Controversies

Much better than the choice or radiation or genital gropings here in the US.

... mostly because it would mean putting young folks with recent combat experience into the role of law enforcement. The two are not the same.

However, FAM standards would not allow it. FAMs must have 5 years of existing LE experience. I know because I looked into the FAM program circa 2003.