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How Israel handles airport security

thestar.com

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Re: How Israel handles airport security

#121

Post by shimonamit »

I was once late to the airport (in Israel) where I was scheduled to pick up my mother. I parked the car and ran towards the gate.

A guard was standing at the entrance with her hands crossed doing nothing by observing. When she saw me coming she made a few quick steps towards me and signaled me to stop and stand aside for questioning. I felt a bit uncomfortable, first because it was abrupt and I was being singled out, but also because she was behaving like a shepherd dog trying to seize my eyes (which I later understood why). She was very polite and dismissed me after presenting my ID and answering a few short questions.

This got me thinking about the silent perimeters, and how smart it is they were only engaged when triggered. The take home lesson for me was: smart earns respect. They were a step ahead of me and I was responding, not them.

Re: How Israel handles airport security

#122

Post by roel_v »

coffeemug wrote: post #103

I cannot believe people bring up Israeli airport security as an example of a system the U.S. should model. The security agents are neither intelligent, nor well trained, nor polite. The entire system is based on racism and I would take TSA security over the Israeli model any day. People were complaining here about a pat down search in public by a TSA agent equaling sexual harassment. I was actually taken to a public…

"...but in reality is extremely ineffective, flawed,..."

Well, the data disagrees with you.

Re: How Israel handles airport security

#124

Post by edanm »

jbooth wrote: post #71
yummyfajitas wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forced labor wages As for airport security not being done by soldiers, my mistake. I only visited Israel once, but I was under the impression the airport guys were IDF. I guess I'm misremembering the uniforms. Thanks for the correction.

It's only sort of forced -- conscription is there for cultural reasons, not out of necessity. From what I understand (which could be wrong), pretty much anyone can get out of the army there if they want. But people like the symbolism of "everyone serves". Certainly it doesn't behave according to standard "market" rules though, even in a situation where they abolished the "forced" part and left it to culture to enforc…

"It's only sort of forced -- conscription is there for cultural reasons, not out of necessity."

That's not exactly true. Conscription is necessary (consider that Israel is a tiny country, but has a lot of enemies.) The symbolism is important too, but it's not the root cause, it's just a nice added benefit (there are a lot of other benefits to this, by the way.)

That said, I don't think you can consider it forced labor. Soldiers are paid a salary, which is tiny, but they get a large amount of money at the end of their service. Plus, they theoretically get every expense paid for by the army (theoretical because most soldiers do go home to their family, either every day or every few weekends.) Soldiers who do have a hard time economically (no family, or a family with a hard time supporting them) get a lot of other benefits, which range from higher salaries, paid-for living quarters, and having lots of time off to go work at a second job and make more money, if they need it.

Re: How Israel handles airport security

#126

Post by prawn »

devinj wrote: post #72
prawn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always wondered re knives - couldn't you just take on carefully pre-fractured plastic that you snapped once on board?

No, you'd take a ceramic knife most likely. Much sharper, and still wouldn't be detected. I suspect the test is more for guns than knives.

Haven't planes been hijacked with Stanley knives (or box cutters or whatever Americans call them)? And if the response to that is locking the cockpit, then what will guns do differently? (Shoot the windows? Could they get the exit row and open the emergency door?) Surely, now, the response to either would be to rush the assailant?

Re: How Israel handles airport security

#127

Post by chris_j »

tzs wrote: post #65
aplusbi wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly - if they don't really think they are explosives, then why are they confiscating them in the first place? Either dispose of them properly or just let people on the plane with bottled water.

They don't think they are explosives. They think they might be precursors to explosives.

It's more subtle than that. They don't think they are explosives. They are merely ensuring that no liquids are taken through security. If no liquids are taken through security then no liquid precursors to explosives are taken through security. What's more, if it is known that no liquids can be taken through security then the bad guys won't even bother to take liquid precursors to explosives through security. This begs a number of questions but, in the meantime, security personnel can throw confiscated liquids into the trash without worrying too much about it.

Re: How Israel handles airport security

#128

Post by epo »

koevet wrote: post #111

The same article was commented by Bruce Scheiner on his blog. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/01/adopting_the_i... Very interesting comments, bottom line "Israel model does not scale well".

True but no one is suggesting that the USA should mimic the Israeli system slavishly, they should however learn from it and devise their own system with the intention to detect and deal with the potential bad guys as early as possible while disrupting every one else as little as possible.

Henry Ford did not invent car manufacturing nor did MacDonalds invent the beefburger, they just made mass manufacturing scale well. The USA needs a transport security system which works at American scales and doesn't tick people off.

Re: How Israel handles airport security

#129

Post by maurits »

So, I have been to this airport traveling as a press photographer, which means you have an interesting itinerary and lots of interesting bits of kit in your luggage.I can add a little human aspect to this article. Last time the guy in front of me at the for mentioned first shielded baggage screening was suspected of having an explosive prompting the entire security machine to life and an evacuation. A false alarm and 30 odd minutes later I am again standing in line, pretty wasted at 5 in the morning. During the whole process the staff stayed very polite and very efficient, making the process quite painless.

Every time I get treated rude and unpleasant by security staff/goons in my own home-country airport for really no good reason what so ever, I think about this. I feel that a little manners & humanity would go a long way in getting support for security measures.

Re: How Israel handles airport security

#130

Post by thesz »

There are two notions of directing people, named after German words: Auftragstaktik and Befehlstaktik.

Auftragstaktik: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission-type_tactics Befehlstaktik stands for "detailed order control".

It looks like Auftragstaktik is used in Israeli airports and TSA employ Befehlstaktik.

To quote an article about Auftragstaktik: "Ironically, since WW2, only the Israeli Defence Force seem to have come close to matching the Wehrmacht of WW2 in the exercise of command in this style".

So, they just use their military training and applied it to another field. And people from military works as screening officers at airports, for that being very good first job after military. Very clever.

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