Why Granny Shouldn’t Get Searched

Fortunately, I’m not flying this week and won’t have to go through any awkward TSA screenings.  I don’t know how airport security will evolve over the coming months but we should anticipate a number of lawsuits.

Americans expect better airport security but I don’t believe the appropriate solution is for the government to treat us all like potential terrorists.  But this will be the new norm as long as the Department of Homeland Security refuses to identify and name the enemy.  Remember when Secretary Napolitano discarded the term “terrorism” in favor of “man-caused disasters”?

All of the terrorist attacks, including the attempted attacks, have a common denominator: Islamic extremism.

Yet, the Obama administration has chosen appeasement as its foreign policy and we must all pay for it with compromised privacy.  Defenders of the new security measures contend that we can never know who the next terrorist might be.

According to Washington Post columnist, Eugene Robinson:

“If we only search people who “look like terrorists,” al-Qaeda will send people who don’t fit the profile. It’s no accident that most of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were from Saudi Arabia; at the time, it was easier for Saudi nationals to get U.S. visas than it was for citizens of other Arab countries. If terrorists are clever enough to hide powerful explosives in ink cartridges, then eventually they’ll find a suicide bomber who looks just like you, me or Granny.”

Well, I doubt it.  I believe it will continue to be much easier to stuff bombs into ink cartridges than it will ever be to convince someone that fits my grandmother’s or my three-year-old nephew’s profile to smuggle explosives onto an airplane.

It would also be near impossible to identify a possible terrorist by appearances.  Recall that the Saudi hijackers on 9/11 were instructed to dress professionally and blend in.  (Regardless, racial profiling isn’t exactly the American way either.)

But security would be much improved if the Department of Homeland Security engaged in “behavior profiling” at airports.  Israel, which is an even larger target for terrorism, maintains sensible and effective security at its airports.

Rafi Sela, president of a global transportation security consultancy explains:

“The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport,” said Sela.

The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?

“Two benign questions. The questions aren’t important. The way people act when they answer them is,” Sela said.

Officers are looking for nervousness or other signs of “distress” — behavioural profiling. Sela rejects the argument that profiling is discriminatory.

“The word ‘profiling’ is a political invention by people who don’t want to do security,” he said. “To us, it doesn’t matter if he’s black, white, young or old. It’s just his behaviour. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I’m doing this?”

Once you’ve parked your car or gotten off your bus, you pass through the second and third security perimeters.

Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behaviour. At Ben Gurion’s half-dozen entrances, another layer of security are watching. At this point, some travellers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer.

“This is to see that you don’t have heavy metals on you or something that looks suspicious,” said Sela.

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.

Plus, it’s a more efficient system.

“First, it’s fast — there’s almost no line. That’s because they’re not looking for liquids, they’re not looking at your shoes. They’re not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you,” said Sela. “Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes … and that’s how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys.”

So how well does it work?  Israel’s largest airport, Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv, hasn’t been breached since 2002 when a passenger accidentally carried a handgun onto a flight.

Happy travels.