My favorite bureaucrat, Janet Napolitano, has published this piece in USA Today defending airport pat-downs.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/forum/2010-11-15-column15_ST1_N.htm
I'll dispense with all the talk about what a useless idiot Napolitano is and cut right to the chase. It's not that I object to pat-downs, full-body screens or any of that. I just object to the silly, politically correct way they go about things. This morning on talk radio, I listened to a tape of a man objecting to a TSA screener patting him down in the genital area. Apparently, the screeners are now subjecting small children to this procedure, and a lot of people are getting upset. I have a novel idea; let's set up a professional body of screeners as they do in Israel for El Al flights.
We all know that El Al is the safest airline to fly-in spite of all the crazies who want to blow them out of the sky. That's because they take their security seriously-as they have to. When you board an El Al flight, you can expect to be interviewed by a trained professional-not some person whose previous job was probably flipping burgers. These people know what signs to look for.
Of course, Israel has nowhere near the number of airports as in the US, and they only need to cover the destinations El Al flies to. Getting the number of trained professionals to cover our airports would be a monumental undertaking. Therefore, we at least need to use some common sense. Patting down 3-year-old girls whose parents are the proverbial Swedish grannies makes no sense at all. (How's that for an oxymoron?) Profile? To a certain extent, yes. If you're looking for bears, you don't go to the dog pound. At the same time, experienced professionals can look for other indicators before singling anyone out for closer scrutiny. It would be similar to how Customs officers choose which passenger to send to secondary. (Profiling by high-risk drug courier nationalities has also been used. Ask any Nigerian.) Similarly, DEA agents can stop and question domestic airline passengers for drugs or drug money based on behaviorial/travel profiles-not ethnic profiles. It is an exercise in developing probable cause.
As far as pat-downs is concerned, if you are going to do it thoroughly, you need to do it as a cop would. Using the underwear bomber as in example, one might assume that the groin area is the most logical place to hide a weapon. Therefore, patting down a male passenger requires the screener to not be shy. In other words, you need to reach in and "grab a pair" as they say.
One thing is clear. Ever since we instituted airport security checks, there has been a crying need to professionalize the screeners. How far we go depends on how much value we put on not having a plane hijacked or blown out of the sky.
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7 comments:
No doubt Findalis. Nothing like a nice loose flowing chador to hide a bomb under. Of course, long flowing skirts have served to smuggle weapons in Latin American in the past also, by heroines as well as terrorists.
Gary is right that we need a more professional TSA staff. Congress loves to pass laws which make them all look like "we're taking action," but don't like to look at practical considerations like, there weren't ten thousand trained security people hanging out in the unemployment line waiting for TSA to need them... so of course, we DID get people who were more likely WISHING for a job flipping burgers.
Gary also alludes to where our real security comes from. Good intelligence has done far more than stripping and searching. If more agents were assigned to connect the dots in communications and intelligence, the underwear bomber would never have gotten off the ground. There is a place for more intrusive searches: a small fraction of passengers, after selection by people who know the real indicia to watch for. Done carefully and methodically by a small body of really trained professionals, it wouldn't be quite so discombobulating an experience.
Trying to rush everything through all of this, it becomes a mad rush, poorly performed, and demeaning.
As to Napolitano, a conservative Republican resident of Arizona commented in mid-2008 "Our Democratic governor is great." There may have been a Peter Principle at work in her elevation. I've always thought it an error by presidents of either party to pull cabinet officers from the ranks of congress, senators, and governors. In 2009, it pulled some key Democrats who had shown a capacity to win elections in conservative states - not a resource to be prematurely pulled to Washington. More important, the administration of a cabinet department calls for different expertise than legislating does.
Here's the problem with your proposal of profiling and only more thoroughly screening more "suspect" passengers: as soon as we start doing that, all the terrorists have to do is use someone who doesn't fit the profile to sneak through security.
These terrorists may be vicious, but they're not completely stupid. Let's say you start focusing more on "Muslim" or "Arab" or "Middle-Eastern" -looking people. Well, once the bad guys figure that out, all they need to do is find some brainwashed white Islamist and voila, they get to bypass the tough screening.
That's the point of truly random screening that you seem to miss completely.
Not really. We all know the enemy is looking for just those people. That's where the behavioral profile comes in. That's where you need professionals.
The problem is that random screening is used to satisfy the demands of political correctness and refutte charges of racial profiling. That's why my 89-year-old father in law (a Mexican) was taken out of a wheelchair and forced to remove his shoes and belt at LAX a few years ago.
Gary, I just explained to you exactly why random screening is used yet you still are insisting that it's all just for "political correctness" when it's not. The second we stop screening a certain group of people is the second that Al Qaeda and their allies start trying to use someone from that group for one of their plots because they'll be able to fly under the radar. That is why we have to screen EVERYONE, randomly of course.
And Findalis' comments are laughable as always. No screening for Muslims? Really? I've heard from many law-abiding Muslims that they're always met with much more suspicion and screening when flying. Re-join reality, Findalis.
And I just acknowledged that. That's why we should look to Israel for guidance.
As for Muslims complaining about being subjected to more suspicion at airports, well, duhhh. It's the same reason Colombians and Nigerians got extra attention while flying because of the problem of drug couriers at ceratin times in the recent past.
I sympathize with both sides on this issue. Anonymous is right - they can find people who don't fit the profile. No doubt there are some white guys who look like me who might get sucked into extremist Islam.
But Gary's wheelchair-bound Mexican father in law? What are the chances that Al Quaeda is going to recruit a guy like that? Let's not forget about elderly ladies with rockers, four year old Chinese kids, etcetera.
I'm sure that there's a balance here where we can be realistic about who's a potential suspect without harassing every law-abiding Muslim citizen.
Not only do Muslims get extra screening, an Ethiopian friend of mine gets extra screening every time he flies. He skin is a bit on the brown side, he speaks English with a noticeable accent, and he has black somewhat curly hair. He could easily be suspected of Jewish ancestry, and his mother was part Falasha, although he is Christian, but then, religious faith per se is not easy to profile. Oh, and he's completely harmless.
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