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What Israeli Security Could Teach Us

[Boston Globe] Jeff Jacoby - U.S. airport security remains focused on intercepting bad things - guns, knives, explosives. Israelis understand that the best way to detect terrorists is to focus on intercepting bad people. To a much greater degree than in the U.S., security at El Al and Ben-Gurion depends on intelligence and intuition. Israeli airport security officials constantly monitor behavior. Profilers - that's what they're called - make a point of interviewing travelers, sometimes at length. Only when the profiler is satisfied that a passenger poses no risk is he or she allowed to proceed to the check-in counter. By that point, there is no need to make him remove his shoes, or to confiscate his bottle of water. Because federal policy still bans ethnic or religious profiling, countless hours have been spent patting down elderly women in wheelchairs, toddlers with pacifiers, even former U.S. vice presidents, instead of concentrating on passengers with a greater likelihood of being terrorists. It is illogical and potentially suicidal not to take account of the fact that so far every suicide-terrorist plotting to take down an American plane has been a radical Muslim man.
2006-08-25 01:00:00
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