Why not put close relatives of those who attempt terrorist acts on the "no fly" list?
The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
21–30 of 107 posts
Re: The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
#22The problem with the Israelification goal is that while Israel's airport security method is second to none, it is not scalable, and therefore not applicable to the US (or many other countries), at least not without major restructuring. The problem of scale is manifested twice: 1. Manpower - Israel has a huge pool of very talented young men and women who already received very good training in the army and the security…
Airport security is indeed considered a good job in Israel, allowing El Al to pick and choose, but not because it is well paid - they probably don't make more than TSA workers.
The key is that the job allows employees to be assigned to a station out of the country after a year or so of working TLV. This attracts young people who want to study abroad - it's not uncommon that your El Al screener in JFK would be a grad student at NYU, for example. It also keeps them more motivated, since they see view it as a temporary job rather than a dead end McJob.
Of course, in Israel those young students also happen to have 2-3 years' military service behind them, but this isn't that big a deal. It's almost irrelevant for their job (unlike El Al's sky marshals, though, which are another key element)
Re: The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
#23Why not put close relatives of those who attempt terrorist acts on the "no fly" list?
Are relatives of terrorists commonly terrorists themselves? I thought they are typically outcasts. For example, the Christmas Detroit bomber was such an outcast his own father reported that he may be dangerous.
Re: The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
#24The problem with the Israelification goal is that while Israel's airport security method is second to none, it is not scalable, and therefore not applicable to the US (or many other countries), at least not without major restructuring. The problem of scale is manifested twice: 1. Manpower - Israel has a huge pool of very talented young men and women who already received very good training in the army and the security…
I don't think america has a shortage of "trained" security people, there is a fairly large pool of former enlisted military personnel who can be transitioned into airport security.
From what I understand, the criminal/terrorist probably would draw suspicion even if approached by relatively untrained airport staff "greeter", and draw further attention to themselves.
Remember that the Abdulmutallab came from Yemen, Paid Cash, and had a one-way ticket. Those factors alone, should have warranted further attention during screening, that others would not have recieved because of a benign profile.
Re: The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
one way to fix 1 would be to shift us spending from israel to internal security. 2 isn't clearly an issue; you need to consider something more like the ratio of airport / population.
It is an issue, because the marginal cost of analysing an Airport for vulnerabilities and devising ways to defend against them doesn't decrease when you cover more airports. You have to Israelificate each and every airport by developing techniques and training a workforce which is not easily transferable.
my point was that if you have more airports you may also be simply a bigger country, with more resources.
Re: The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is an issue, because the marginal cost of analysing an Airport for vulnerabilities and devising ways to defend against them doesn't decrease when you cover more airports. You have to Israelificate each and every airport by developing techniques and training a workforce which is not easily transferable.
Whaa? R&D on techinques and machinery should have economy of scale, not diseconomy of scale. And the Israelis would be happy to tell us how to do it.
If techniques and machinery alone were enough the TSA wouldn't have had any problem. Israel relies on information, design and training specific to Ben-Gurion airport and would have to repeat some of these steps if it ever needed to cover another one.
Re: The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
#27That only works when you have a tiny number of flights at a handful of locations are willing to spend through the roof. It would never scale. Their largest international airport is tiny by US size--it wouldn't even make the top 20. And that's just the US.
Not to mention that the US public would never put up with it.
Update: this puts it into perspective--El Al (the largest and most well known Israeli airline) operates only 37 planes which would make it the size of a small regional airline in the states. Allegiant Air is unheard of to much of the US and operates 49 jets. Delta has a cool 449 and flies to more countries than El Al has flights per day. Ben Gurion International Airport, the airport mentioned and the largest in Israel, is roughly the size of Kansas City International Airport. There's simply not a valid comparison.
Re: The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
#28Why not put close relatives of those who attempt terrorist acts on the "no fly" list?
Are relatives of terrorists commonly terrorists themselves? I thought they are typically outcasts. For example, the Christmas Detroit bomber was such an outcast his own father reported that he may be dangerous.
If someone is considering a terrorist act, he/she would need to consider the effect of it on his/her close relatives.
And close relatives would have a greater incentive to report him/her if they suspect something.
Of course, you could consider a different sort of penalty such as fines that would bankrupt his/her close relatives.
Re: The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
#29Why not put close relatives of those who attempt terrorist acts on the "no fly" list?
That's a wrong thing to do for two reasons.
1. It's collective punishment. Unethical unless absolutely necessary. 2. It would be ineffective. In most cases in the west the relatives of people who ended up blowing themselves up didn't know about their involvement in terrorist organizations and didn't condone their actions.
Re: The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
#30That only works when you have a tiny number of flights at a handful of locations are willing to spend through the roof. It would never scale. Their largest international airport is tiny by US size--it wouldn't even make the top 20. And that's just the US. Not to mention that the US public would never put up with it. Update: this puts it into perspective--El Al (the largest and most well known Israeli airline) operate…
What about the isolation of the suspected luggage in a bomb-proof area or container? All that would seem to require is investment in the containers and/or blast-proof shell. Why instead is the 'best idea' to try and evacuate a bustling airport terminal with 100's or 1000's of people?