This article is about the difference between what we in the U.S. and the Israeli's call airport security. It's about actually addressing the problem (keeping bad people out of airports and off flights) instead of inconveniencing everyone except the bad people. You can find the Toronto Star article here. The word of the day is "Israelification."
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.
Where the US/Canadian approach to airport security is reactive and focused on however the last bad guy attempt was carried out, the Israeli method is to keep people behaving (or potentially behaving) badly out of the airport. That's why we're still removing our shoes to get through the security line, and why we're now facing limits on having things in our laps during the last hour of a flight. Because the American security approach assumes that the bad guy has gotten on the plane. The result is escalating inconvenience for travelers and little or no real obstacles for bad guys. The Israeli's don't care if you're black, white, Arab, Jew; they care how you're behaving and whether that behavior is suspicious.
The Israeli security expert in the article outlines three "security perimeters" travelers must get through before they even get to the airport terminal. Checkpoints on the entrance road, parking lot, and terminal entrance are staffed by trained personnel who are looking for odd behaviors. One word repeated throughout the article is "trained." The Israelis spend the money on training personnel to look passengers in the eyes to detect nervous, potentially dangerous behavior. Identification of suspicious behaviors requires lots of training. Americans avoid looking each other in the eyes in the grocery store, no less at the airport.
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 suspicious or not. It takes 20, 25 seconds," said Sela.
There's that word again: trained. The questions asked at various points aren't terribly important; what's important is the traveler's reaction and behavior when asked. If you act suspicious, you'll get searched. And even then, the Israeli approach is preventative, not reactive. For example, if a possible bomb is found inside the terminal in the inspection area, that small area is all that has to be "evacuated." It's bomb-proof and can withstand the detonation of 100 kilos of plastic explosives. There's no need to try to evacuate an entire airport terminal. Every time some idiot in the US wanders in through an exit, our response is to try to evacuate the terminal and find said idiot. Most often, the evacuation takes hours and the idiot has left the building along with Elvis. If the intruder was planning to detonate something he has more than enough time to do so.
Why do Americans "settle" for such lousy security? The Israeli security expert says it's because we're "nice:"
"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."
I think it's more because we collectively have the attention span of a gnat and we've been trained by our so-called leaders to go for the cheap, shallow, and largely ineffective approach to solving problems so we can refocus our attention on the latest celebrity gaffe. We should be demanding better from our leaders and our government. Much better.
On a lighter, related note, humorist Andy Borowitz has a plan, merging airport security with American health care reform: Full Body Scans to Double as Annual Checkups.
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