Mas sobre la seguridad aérea

Lecciones que los israelíes le pueden pasar a la TSA. Read the whole thing.

Many people point to the Israeli aviation security system as a model for what the U.S. system should be. Others say that this is a bogus comparison because Israel operates only 43 planes serving 48 destinations. U.S. air carriers, in contrast, complete an average of about 28,000 flights per day. Nonetheless, there are still a number of helpful lessons that the United States can learn from the Israelis.

The backbone of the Israeli system is the profiling the Israelis use of each passenger. The profiling is accompanied by an interview during which a well trained security agent carefully questions the passenger, inquiring about such matters as to why he or she is traveling to Israel, where he/she is staying while in Israel, and who does he or she know in the country.

It was this patient methodology that unmasked the pregnant Irish woman with a bomb who attempted to board an El Al flight in London in 1986. The father of the unborn child was a Jordanian named Nizar Hindawi, who had told the woman that he wanted her to come to Israel to meet his family before they were married. He was not traveling with her – but it was he who had packed her bag. Sewn in the lining of the bag was an expertly crafted bomb packed with Czech-made Semtex explosive. The bag had been x-rayed several times, and nothing suspicious had been detected – but the security agent at the gate was nonetheless convinced, from her interview with Anne Mary Murphy, that there was something wrong. It was not until the security agent cut the lining of the bag open that the explosives were discovered.

[...] Indeed, the Israelis learned long ago that not all passengers should be accorded the same amount of screening. The real key to effective airport security, in their view, is reducing to a minimum the size of the pool of people being more than perfunctorily screened, and then spending whatever time is necessary on those individuals who fit the terrorist profile and/or fail the initial screening process.

In contrast, the U.S. aviation security system is far more egalitarian – primarily because of political correctness, it seems obvious – than the Israeli system is, which means in practice that everyone receives more or less the same treatment. If a Muslim is pulled out of line for secondary screening, one observer commented, TSA (the U.S. Transportation Security Administration) employees will then select a dozen or more blonde women and/or harmless senior citizens for secondary screening so that no one can complain that he or she had been singled out by profiling or that the system is prejudiced against Muslim males in a certain age group.[...]

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