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Frankly, most airport security is an absolute joke and exists solely to add a certain amount of discomfort to all travelers including potential terrorists. The

Frankly, most airport security is an absolute joke and exists solely to add a certain amount of discomfort to all travelers including potential terrorists. The new TSA rules (like most of the old TSA rules) are utter theatrics. If anyone really wants to see how security should be done just go to an international terminal which ElAl flies to and watch how they screen passengers at their check in. The ground staff are not there to frisk you or ask you to take your shoes off. They work directly for the airline and have received extensive security training. What they do is actually ask you a battery of questions designed to flush out inconsistencies. ElAl also pays much closer attention to so called "no fly" lists. I think it's safe to say, and I'm sure the majority of us would agree that ElAl knows a thing or two about how to keep their planes in the sky with a maximum degree of confidence in their security. Would it really be that hard for other airlines to take a page out of their playbook? If not for the profiling (which I'm sure they do) then at least the questioning by ground staff.

kgrin 17y ago
El Al is often cited as an example in these discussions, and it's a pretty flawed one. The reason why profiling works (or at least works better) for El Al is that the demographics of the average traveler to Israel are pretty consistent and predictable, which greatly reduces the search space. For instance, many travelers to Israel go for at least tangentially religious reasons; it's common practice for El Al security to ask those folks some basic questions about the faith (logic: if the guy claiming to be making a religious trip doesn't know something any observant pre-teen would, that guy deserves a closer look). That doesn't mean that everyone traveling to Israel is Jewish (clearly not the case!), or that it's really all about profiling. But having a more homogeneous and constrained baseline (in addition to a smaller country) makes the "let's ask you some questions and see if your story makes sense" approach considerably more scalable. Why does country size matter? A guy says "I'm visiting friends... where? Comstock - it's near Sargent." Without Google Maps at the ready, it would be hard to know if that's a plausible travel plan; whereas in a country that's only 8,000 sq. mi., with fewer people than NYC - a security agent is more likely to know shenanigans when s/he hears it.
- siculars 17y ago
  Everything you mention is true including the readily apparent line of questioning for those traveling to Israel. What you should note, though, is not the acute subject of questioning but rather the method. A screener in any terminal in the world knows at the least two facts. One, the city of embarkation and two, the destination. With these two facts alone and not including any other known information, both overt and covert, a trained screener can weave together a battery of questions that would be quite difficult to answer untruthfully without rousing suspicion. I've had it done to me many times and no two times are the same. Always different. Again, it is the method that is important. A specific answer to a specific question in itself is not important, rather the exchange as a whole is what paints a picture of the one being questioned. Lets take your line of questioning - A guy says "I'm visiting friends... where? Comstock - it's near Sargent." Now the screener may not know where that is so lets go with that... Oh, Comstock? Where is that from (lets say) New York? How are you getting there? Is someone picking you up or are you renting a car? Who is picking you up? Do you have a rental car reservation? Where will you be staying when you get there? And on and on. This is how screeners are trained to question. They use the answers that you supply to continue probing until they are satisfied with the story as a whole.
  - gommm 17y ago
    That would suck for people like me who love going to a country to visit without making plans whatsoever :-)
    - yardie 17y ago
      I believe at a minimum most VWF countries require you to have a place of stay while you are their. If you arrive without any hotel reservations, place to stay, or cruise itinerary, be prepared for 20 questions and an anal probe.
      - gommm 17y ago
        Sorry what does VWF mean? In my limited experience most asian countries don't really ask much when the address is not known...
coffeemug 17y ago
If anyone really wants to see how security should be done just go to an international terminal which ElAl flies to and watch how they screen passengers at their check in. From my anecdotal experience, El Al has security personnel that appears trained to a naked eye, but in reality is extremely ineffective, flawed, and unethical. I had the misfortune to go through El Al security four times. These all occurred in a span of two weeks, roughly in the same circumstances (I had to fly into Israel, fly out, fly back in, and fly back out). I can tell you that the outcome of their screening is heavily inconsistent and highly dependent on the prejudices of the particular agent doing the interview, and not necessarily on advanced training procedures. I had the same answers for their questions every time. Two of the times the agents were Israeli jews who immigrated from Russia. Since we share a common background, both let me pass after very few questions because my trip details seemed perfectly reasonable to them. The other two times, I was interviewed by jews of clearly middle-eastern descent - both had no understanding of my cultural background, and both thought my trip details were extremely suspicious, subjecting me to a detailed search. So the outcome of the interviews was effectively random, which means they might as well perform random searches. The interviews were highly unethical, inappropriate, and degrading. Even more importantly, they were completely ineffective, resulting in a random outcome highly dependent on each agent's personal prejudices. I don't know what good security looks like, but I can tell you that this most certainly isn't it.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
fuzzmeister 17y ago
I would argue that security at the gadgetry level still has its place. Millimeter-wave imaging and consistent explosive-detection swabbing, when combined with x-raying bags, would provide rather good protection.

kgrin 17y ago

El Al is often cited as an example in these discussions, and it's a pretty flawed one. The reason why profiling works (or at least works better) for El Al is that the demographics of the average traveler to Israel are pretty consistent and predictable, which greatly reduces the search space. For instance, many travelers to Israel go for at least tangentially religious reasons; it's common practice for El Al security to ask those folks some basic questions about the faith (logic: if the guy claiming to be making a religious trip doesn't know something any observant pre-teen would, that guy deserves a closer look). That doesn't mean that everyone traveling to Israel is Jewish (clearly not the case!), or that it's really all about profiling. But having a more homogeneous and constrained baseline (in addition to a smaller country) makes the "let's ask you some questions and see if your story makes sense" approach considerably more scalable. Why does country size matter? A guy says "I'm visiting friends... where? Comstock - it's near Sargent." Without Google Maps at the ready, it would be hard to know if that's a plausible travel plan; whereas in a country that's only 8,000 sq. mi., with fewer people than NYC - a security agent is more likely to know shenanigans when s/he hears it.

siculars 17y ago
Everything you mention is true including the readily apparent line of questioning for those traveling to Israel. What you should note, though, is not the acute subject of questioning but rather the method. A screener in any terminal in the world knows at the least two facts. One, the city of embarkation and two, the destination. With these two facts alone and not including any other known information, both overt and covert, a trained screener can weave together a battery of questions that would be quite difficult to answer untruthfully without rousing suspicion. I've had it done to me many times and no two times are the same. Always different. Again, it is the method that is important. A specific answer to a specific question in itself is not important, rather the exchange as a whole is what paints a picture of the one being questioned. Lets take your line of questioning - A guy says "I'm visiting friends... where? Comstock - it's near Sargent." Now the screener may not know where that is so lets go with that... Oh, Comstock? Where is that from (lets say) New York? How are you getting there? Is someone picking you up or are you renting a car? Who is picking you up? Do you have a rental car reservation? Where will you be staying when you get there? And on and on. This is how screeners are trained to question. They use the answers that you supply to continue probing until they are satisfied with the story as a whole.
- gommm 17y ago
  That would suck for people like me who love going to a country to visit without making plans whatsoever :-)
  - yardie 17y ago
    I believe at a minimum most VWF countries require you to have a place of stay while you are their. If you arrive without any hotel reservations, place to stay, or cruise itinerary, be prepared for 20 questions and an anal probe.
    - gommm 17y ago
      Sorry what does VWF mean? In my limited experience most asian countries don't really ask much when the address is not known...

coffeemug 17y ago

If anyone really wants to see how security should be done just go to an international terminal which ElAl flies to and watch how they screen passengers at their check in. From my anecdotal experience, El Al has security personnel that appears trained to a naked eye, but in reality is extremely ineffective, flawed, and unethical. I had the misfortune to go through El Al security four times. These all occurred in a span of two weeks, roughly in the same circumstances (I had to fly into Israel, fly out, fly back in, and fly back out). I can tell you that the outcome of their screening is heavily inconsistent and highly dependent on the prejudices of the particular agent doing the interview, and not necessarily on advanced training procedures. I had the same answers for their questions every time. Two of the times the agents were Israeli jews who immigrated from Russia. Since we share a common background, both let me pass after very few questions because my trip details seemed perfectly reasonable to them. The other two times, I was interviewed by jews of clearly middle-eastern descent - both had no understanding of my cultural background, and both thought my trip details were extremely suspicious, subjecting me to a detailed search. So the outcome of the interviews was effectively random, which means they might as well perform random searches. The interviews were highly unethical, inappropriate, and degrading. Even more importantly, they were completely ineffective, resulting in a random outcome highly dependent on each agent's personal prejudices. I don't know what good security looks like, but I can tell you that this most certainly isn't it.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

fuzzmeister 17y ago

I would argue that security at the gadgetry level still has its place. Millimeter-wave imaging and consistent explosive-detection swabbing, when combined with x-raying bags, would provide rather good protection.