When it Comes to Airport Security, We Should Be More Like Israel

Stop the pat-downs and body scans. It's time to talk it out.

To mark National Opt-Out Day in the U.S., a column reposted by the National Post American writer George F. Will slams the new genital-patting, naked body-scanning airport security measures as fundamental violations of America’s founding principles. Worse, they’re useless, unless you happen to own shares in an airline. “What the TSA is doing is mostly security theatre,” Will writes, “a pageant to reassure passengers that flying is safe. Reassurance is necessary if commerce is going to flourish.” He also blasts the “amiable nonsense of pretending that no one has the foggiest idea what an actual potential terrorist might look like.” If Will does know what a terrorist looks like, he doesn’t say. Perhaps that’s because the 9/11 hijackers looked like your average Saudis, and the Underwear Bomber looked like 83 per cent of Detroit. That’s not really an effective profile.

No matter how tight security gets, airport officials continue to miss the point, writes Sun Media’s Peter Worthington. He perceptively points out that the Underwear Bomber, the Shoe Bomber, and that Asian guy wearing the fake head were all caught by fellow passengers after fooling security. Worthington suggests that we stop scanning for weapons and start profiling travelers themselves, but not based solely on race. “If FBI profilers can identify potential serial killers, surely suicide bombers fit a certain profile,” he writes.

Both Worthington and the National Post’s Tasha Kheiriddin suggest North America follow the Israeli model of airport security, in which travelers have to pass through several checkpoints before reaching the boarding area. At each juncture, passengers have to look a security official in the eye and answer a series of questions, which is apparently very effective at weeding out suspicious folks. At the risk of being associated with more controversial aspects of Israeli security, this seems like a fantastic idea, not least of all because it is completely independent of whatever method the terrorists try to use. They could stuff explosives in their underwear or up their nose, but they’d have to do it without breaking a sweat.