Why airline security experts are calling for “Israelification”

US airline passengers accustomed to standing in line for hours must have been surprised to find Israeli travelers raised a ruckus recently when lines stretched to a half an hour. Their attitude: they were not going to put up with relatively long lines. Fix the problem but maintain security.
 

That in a nutshell is "Israelification" — a system that protects life without annoying travelers to death.
 

Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel’s largest hub, Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002. That harmless incident involved a passenger mistakenly carrying a handgun onto a flight.
 

There are a wide variety of new airport security measures being discussed. But will more technology and more intense screening really make North America air travel safer?
 

No, according to security expert Bruce Schneier.
 

None of the new measures — not the scans, not the pat-downs, not even anything that’s being seriously considered as an alternative — meaningfully improve airport security, he said.
 

"They’re more a result of politicians and government appointees capitulating to a public that demands that something must be done," he said.
 

Despite Israeli success stories, very few predict the US will adopt such a system. The reasons include political correctness and so-called profiling.
 

Even the head of the TSA admits that those issues are lingering American problems. TSA Chief John Pistole on CNN’s State of the Union admitted security features in Israeli are “top notch” but refused to consider them in the US.
 

“Americans don’t profile,” he told interviewer Candy Crowley.
 

But Israeli’s say what they do is not profiling.
 

How do they protect flyers without antagonizing them, TSA-style?
 

Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy, says the surest way to protect against terror threats is to watch the behavior of passengers more than what they are wearing or carrying.
 

“The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport,” Sela told Security News, which was among publications outlining in detail how Israeli security manages move passengers quickly while protecting them.
 

The first of six layers of security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv’s Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?
 

"Two benign questions. The questions aren’t important. The way people act when they answer them is," Sela said.
 

Sela says this is not “profiling.”
 

"The word ‘profiling’ is a political invention by people who don’t want to do security," he said. "To us, it doesn’t matter if he’s black, white, young or old. It’s just his behavior. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I’m doing this?"
 

Once passengers have parked their cars or gotten off the bus, they pass through the second and third security perimeters.
 

Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behavior. At this point, some travelers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer.
 

"This is to see that you don’t have heavy metals on you or something that looks suspicious," said Sela.
 

As passengers approach their airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer takes their passport and ticket. They ask a series of questions: Who packed your luggage? Has it left your side?
 

"The whole time, they are looking into your eyes — which is very embarrassing. But this is one of the ways they figure out if you are suspicious or not. It takes 20, 25 seconds," said Sela.
 

Next are technological checks for bombs or weapons that include areas where suspicious materials such as possible bombs can be removed and checked which isolate any threats and don’t threaten to close an entire airport.
 

"This is a very small simple example of how we can simply stop a problem that would cripple one of your airports," Sela said.
 

Five security layers down: passengers finally arrive at the body and hand-luggage check.
 

"But here it is done completely, absolutely 180 degrees differently than it is done in North America," Sela said.
 

"First, it’s fast — there’s almost no line. That’s because they’re not looking for liquids, they’re not looking at your shoes. They’re not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you," said Sela.
 

That’s the process — six layers, four hard, two soft.
 

The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.
 

Almost a decade after 9/11, why are North American security officials still so reactive, so un-Israelified?
 

North American airports could easily adopt similar procedures, though what might be called political willpower would be needed.
 

“You have to add just a little bit — technology, training. But you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security. And that is something that the bureaucrats have a problem with. They are very well enclosed in their own concept," Sela said.

Israelis have a different attitude towards terror. They are accustomed to living with it. Citizens trust their security people.
 

“You can’t say the same thing about Americans and Canadians. They don’t trust anybody," Sela said. "But they say, ‘So far, so good’. Americans and Canadians are nice people and they will do anything because they were told to do so and because they don’t know any different."
 

By David Wilkening