Flying in Europe? Don't fear a pat-down. European Union governments take different approach ...

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/european-union/101125/airport-security-pat-down

But Europeans don’t need a rallying cry to resist what the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) calls “enhanced pat-downs” and aggrieved travelers are calling “government-approved groping” — it’s not happening in Europe.

Despite escalating warnings about terror attacks in or originating in Europe — Belgium arrested almost two dozen suspected terrorists this week, for example — none of the 27 EU governments have instructed airport officials to employ extra-rigorous pat-downs on travelers who set off alarms on the normal metal detectors or opt out of full-body scans in the few airports where they’re used.

Todd Curtis, an American aviation safety analyst and founder of the travel-information site AirSafe (www.airsafe.com ), said he’s taken a good long look at how Europe and the U.S. have responded to their threat levels. Curtis said he finds the Europeans’ more discreet approach to terror surveillance “more compatible with a risk-management approach that accepts that these kinds of threats can be reduced and controlled, but not eliminated.” The importance of that practical posture, he said, is that “if someone does take out an airplane or kill people in some kind of attack, it would not be a political disaster.”

Curtis said the American goal “to stop 100 percent of the attacks 100 percent of the time” has given birth to the much-maligned enhanced pat-down, because such an unforgiving aim justifies — to security planners — whatever extreme measures will achieve it.

But even that won't be 100%, because while they are obsessing over invasive procedures on passengers, someone will be finding other ways to get explosives on airplanes.

Europe's risk management procedures make much more sense than the US belatedly over-reacting willy-nilly to every threat.

So that'll never work here.