The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother

[bpcmxr]

Interesting to compare and contrast:

... "It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago," said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He's worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world.

"Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don't take s--- from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, 'We're not going to do this. You're going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport."

That, in a nutshell is "Israelification" - a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.

Much more

[MadMaddie]

1. Thank you! I was just saying this in another thread

the excuse I hear is that Israel has one airport and it's easy for them to do. I say that's a bullshit excuse, America could certainly deploy an Israelie airport security plan at each and every airport.

The real question is why haven't we done this? Who loses money if we do this at every airport?

[bpcmxr]

4. Who loses?

Michael Chertoff, I'd guess, and presumably anyone else with a financial stake in the deployment of these new scanners.

[MadMaddie]

5. Bingo!!

Anything Chertoff is corrupt...I am betting you those machines fail safety tests and in fact are not as reliable as they say.

[pinto]

2. Really interesting article. Thanks for the snag.

I'd never heard just "how" it goes w/ security at Ben-Gurion.

[Hawkowl]

3. Yes, but Americans are cowards

The vast majority of us are simply hiding under our beds afraid of everything from our children being kidnapped to terrorists blowing up our airplanes. Land of the corporately enslaved and home of the chickenshit cowards. Our ancestors must be rolling in their graves.

[struggle4progress]

6. "... my experience leaving Tel Aviv was far and away the most unpleasant encounter I’d ever had with

airport security officials in the decade. Moscow in 1998 was worse. As best I could tell, things went pretty smoothly as long as you were (a) Israeli, (b) traveling with an Israeli, or (c) traveling with some kind of well-established tour group. I think this may be how the majority of people go through the airport, which may account for its good reputation. But it took me approximately three hours to get from the initial passport check through to the food court. I was told that I couldn’t take my iPad onto the plane, and therefore would have to check a whole bag that I’d been planning to carry on so that the bag could contain the forbidden device, and the same thing happened to two of the guys I was traveling with. Each individual item from the bad I was allowed to carry on had to be separately wiped down for traces of explosive residue and several items had to be wiped multiple times.

I was groped a couple of times, yelled at by surly Russian immigrants, accused of “lying” because I’d forgotten I had a second iPod charging cord in my bag, interrogated several times about who I’d talked to, etc.

What is true is that except for the Russian immigrants, who do bring the unique Russian approach to customer service, everyone is exceedingly polite. That said, the process took three hours! ..."

Israeli Airport Security
http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/2010/11/israeli-airport-security/