On 1/4/06, Eugen Leitl <eugen@leitl.org> forwarded:

This year the U.S. Transportation Security Agency will begin behavior monitoring of airplane passengers at 40 major American airport, reports Ivan Eland, director of the Independent Institute's Center on Peace & Liberty. "The screeners," writes Eland in his latest op-ed, "will look for 'suspicious' signs that might indicate a passenger could be a terrorist: having dry lips or a throbbing carotid artery (I'm not kidding), failure to make eye contact with or say hello to the screener, or evasive or slow answers to casual questions asked by the screener."

I am so friggin' sick of the response of the so-called security community to these kinds of measures. Everything is greeted with derision and ridicule. I'm coming to believe that the real goal of the critics is to make it as easy and safe as possible for terrorists to fly. Years ago when the new security precautions were put in place, security experts had nothing but criticism. The model they said should be followed (obviously in the expectation that it was completely impractical for America), that they pointed to as successful, was the Israeli airline El Al. Despite Israel's place as the principle target for terrorist action, El Al has had an astonishingly good record at flying safely. What was their secret? Exactly the kind of intensive, personalized attention which is now being criticized. El Al investigators are trained to observe passengers closely, to ask them questions and watch for just the signs of nervousness and evasion which this Ivan Eland treats with such mockery. Security people can't win. Non-invasive surveillance is called "security theater". Intensive surveillance is now described as a way to force people to smile at TSA agents. Doing nothing will produce even worse results. And BTW while I'm on the topic of airline security, a comment on John Gilmore's doomed attempt to sue to be allowed to travel without identity or security screening of any kind. Gilmore was offered the chance to fly if he was searched! And he turned it down! He claims that this violates his rights, that a physical search to make sure he isn't carrying any dangerous materials is forbidden by the Constitution. It's unfortunate that this conflates two very different issues. On the one hand it makes sense to be able to travel without showing ID. But on the other it makes no sense to claim immunity from being searched! By trying to treat these two issues equally Gilmore ends up weakening his own case. CP

Years ago when the new security precautions were put in place, security experts had nothing but criticism. The model they said should be followed (obviously in the expectation that it was completely impractical for America), that they pointed to as successful, was the Israeli airline El Al. Despite Israel's place as the principle target for terrorist action, El Al has had an astonishingly good record at flying safely. What was their secret? Exactly the kind of intensive, personalized attention which is now being criticized. El Al investigators are trained to observe passengers closely, to ask them questions and watch for just the signs of nervousness and evasion which this Ivan Eland treats with such mockery.

Yeah, but there's a big difference. The Israelis probably have actual Agents doing this work. We've got minimum-wage, one-step-above-welfare high school dropouts doing the work. Witness the recent "screening" of a 4-year-old whose name was on the Do Not Fly list. That's the kind of quality individuals we have deciding who can fly and who can't. -TD