TSA Security Measures

When I was a kid back in Russia, my family would spend all our summer vacations in Yalta, a seaside resort on the Black Sea. One year, as we were driving to the airport for our flight back home, we were stopped by the police and diverted into the local botanical gardens. Together with several hundred other people, we spent the next several hours waiting for Brezhnev (the then Soviet president) and his entourage to drive from the airport to his seaside retreat.

The absurdity of treating everyone as a potential assassin resurfaced I my mind as I was reading about yesterday’s  security breach in Newark and the ensuing pandemonium. The sheer absurdity of rechecking thousands of people and grounding hundreds of flights, even those on the other side of the Atlantic, is a clear sign that the Transportation Security Administration lacked an advanced emergency scenario plan and was acting on the spur of the moment. At least they were considerate enough not to ground ALL air traffic in North America until the poor chap, who had wondered through the wrong door, could be found.

The new guidelines prohibiting travelers from getting up during the last hour of the flight together with the full body scan proposal are signs of panic. Each new terrorist attempt triggers a new set of arbitrary restrictions, whose only purpose is to signal that TSA is dong something to bolster security. The new security measures are so draconian it would seem that the agency is secretly hoping to discourage air travel altogether, wishing that the insolvable problem will resolve by itself.

American security authorities have only their own stupidity to blame. Instead of training bright, motivated agents to seek out the human element, TSA employs agents whose other choices are limited to Burger King or 7-11. Since 9/11, the US government has invested some $4 billion dollars in airport technology but failed to create a model for seeking out potential terrorists. Furthermore, it is completely beyond me how anyone could decry the civil rights’ violations inherent in the profiling of the few, when the other option is a full body scan for the many.

Two weeks ago, I traveled on an El Al flight from Tel Aviv to Moscow. My entire encounter with airport security personnel lasted no more than 20 minutes, including the questioning and luggage scan at the entrance to the airport and the metal detector scanning before passport control. This procedure, together with a set of unobtrusive peripheral security measures, has enabled Israel to create the highest level of airport security in the world (the last attack in Ben Gurion took place almost 40 years ago), without driving the overwhelming majority of travelers nuts.

In contrast, yesterday my mom flew from Montreal to Newark. In addition to the usual security checks (the no water, no shoes nonsense), she had to undergo a 20 minute search of her hand luggage and a body search (yes, the touchy-feely type). Luckily, she arrived in Newark early enough to miss the mayhem that broke out there in the afternoon.

So now you tell me, who enjoyed better security with fewer violations of privacy and human rights, me in Israel or my mom in the US?

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