sa国际传媒 is buying full-body scanners that will allow airport security staff to see right through passengers' clothes. Big deal. I got X-ray glasses that promised the same thing in 1970. Ordered them out of the back of a Sgt. Nick Fury and His Howling Commandos comic book.
Alas, the glasses didn't work. Doesn't seem likely the body scanners will be much use in fighting terrorism, either.
Nor, for that matter, was there much point to the security guy at Vancouver International groping my boots -- with my feet still in them -- when I flew to that well-known terrorist target of Haida Gwaii. "In some cultures this would mean we're married," I told him, earning me one of those baleful stares that usually end with the sound of a latex glove snapping around a wrist.
We North Americans have become adept at the knee-jerk reaction, ducking bullets that have already passed, reacting to every scare by adding another layer of cumbersome security, which the public dutifully accepts. "Oh well, things are different today," bleat compliant air travellers moments before being shorn of their wool. Canadian airports need border collies, not border guards, to herd the sheep through the gates.
Perhaps, instead, we should follow the lead of people with more experience in fighting terror -- such as the Israelis.
It seems Israel, of all places, has airport-security measures that are far less time-consuming than those in sa国际传媒. People familiar with international travel speak wistfully of "Israelification" -- a magical process where passengers are whisked from airport parking lot to duty-free lounge in under an hour.
Unfortunately, North Americans seem unwilling to consider the Israeli experience.
"Since 9/11, they don't want to listen to us," Rafi Sela said yesterday, on the phone from Israel. Sela is president of AR Challenges, a global security-consulting company with offices in Israel and the Washington, D.C. area. He says we're doing things all wrong.
sa国际传媒's airport security is dictated by the U.S., where standard practice is to try to chase yesterday's terrorist scare with some form of mitigating technology, Sela says. "They are running after the events instead of being in front of them."
Security plans should flow from threat analysis, but we don't do that, he says. We just throw up checkpoints in static locations, where passengers and their luggage are poked and probed in manners as ineffective as they are embarrassing and invasive. "The full-body scanner, in my opinion, is a waste of time and money," Sela says.
In Israel, security personnel move around and are harder to evade. Usually, you don't even know you're going through a series of screens, says Sela, who is intimately involved in security at Ben-Gurion Airport.
The focus is on screening people, not baggage. Luggage is X-rayed, but the real key is simple human contact, looking people in the eyes and seeing how they react to questions, initially while they're still in their cars on the road to the airport, then in the check-in line inside.
First, the Israeli interviewers verify your identification, which should raise any red flags in a constantly updated intelligence system -- what we call the no-fly list. The interviewers then ask questions until they're satisfied you're a "trusted traveller." It's behavioural, not racial, profiling, Sela maintains, though in the next breath he says tourists and Arab-Israelis might face more questions, and take a bit longer to go through the process.
Once you are established as trustworthy, off you go. The Israelis don't molest your shoes or force you to pour your Starbucks down the sink before entering the departure area. They quickly examine your hand luggage, but aren't terribly bothered by what's in it, Sela says. "If you want to fly with wine, fly with wine. What do we care?"
The system works. Ben-Gurion, where the threat of terrorism is just a teensy bit higher than that at, say, Haida Gwaii, has been free from attack since the 1970s.
Sela will fly to sa国际传媒 to talk to aviation and security officials in a couple of weeks. Whether they listen is another matter.
