Posted by
Bill Crawford on Monday, November 29, 2010 10:19:08 AM
There is an odd thing going on these days: the right is blanching about a federal agency doing their level best to prevent air terrorism, and the left is the most vocal support base of some practices that are some of the most public personal invasions of privacy in our history.
Strange bedfellows. Both sides realize they are doing a twisted dance, and nobody seems comfortable with it. I feel for the TSA front liners, they are obviously under the gun to not have any more incidents. The problem is not them, it is the Homeland Security apparatchik.
Some people are saying that what they are doing doesn't really work, and it is simply security "theatre", to mollify the flying public. I agree that it largely doesn't work, but even the Homeland bosses aren't that cynical.
They just don't think the Isreali behavioral model is correct for us. We are too large, we can't possibly train that many people with that depth. So we do the American thing, and try and tech our way out of it. The problem the TSA is running into with the public is that everybody knows their "enhanced pat downs" are as much a security screening as they are a public humiliation, designed to discourage others from opting out of the scanners. THIS is on it's face, cynical, and there will be a price to be paid for that.
The Isreali system is not that difficult, but it doesn't work without concrete consequences. The screeners ask everyone a series of casual questions, and read eyes and body language, which they then add to a profiling (that nasty word arises again) like origin point, baggage, destination, one way vs. round trip, etc. to give you a number from one to six. One is reserved for people that the screener vouches for personally. Two and three mean you are approved, but will get further screening. Four and five mean you are going to get a rigorous going over, and you may not be flying today. Six means your level of freedom is about to get a mjor revision.
The point is, in their system, if the authorities decide you are a problem, what we regard here as Fourth Amendment rights would get flushed down the toliet pronto, and that would be the hardest part to sell to the traveling public here. It works in Ben Gurion Airport because Isreal is surrounded by countries who don't want it to exist.
Meanwhile, we are left with the two things added since 9/11 that do work: armored cockpit doors, and passengers that realize that, if you start doing stupid things in flight, they need to bum rush you and flatten you into submission. If that implies I think the TSA methods right now are "theater", so be it. I just don't think that was the intention behind it.
I'm not sure if Homeland has it in them to find a better answer than what the TSA is doing right now. Their problem is, when the public starts looking at you as the villian, you will have problems with everything else you do.