Read the whole thing!http://www.economist.com/news/internati ... al-no-more
It could be that both security measures are so effective that they have completely deterred would-be terrorists from trying these methods again. Or it could be that they are essentially a performance to reassure passengers. Most experts incline towards the latter view. Philip Baum, a security consultant and editor of Aviation Security International, calls it “security theatre as opposed to security reality”.
America’s Transportation Security Administration (TSA), an agency of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has a budget of more than $7 billion a year; it also has access to the most advanced scanning technologies money can buy. Critics say it has not foiled a single terrorist plot or caught a single terrorist in the past decade.
Bruce Schneier, the chief technology officer of Resilient Systems, a security firm, points out that whereas the TSA catches plenty of guns and knives inadvertently packed by passengers, it is less good at spotting more determined attempts to get bad stuff onto aircraft. In June its acting head was “reassigned” after a so-called “red team” appointed by the inspector-general of DHS succeeded in getting fake bombs and weapons through the screening process in 67 out of 70 tests carried out in airports across America.
Why such a dismal record? “My guess is that it’s a combination of things,” reckons Mr Schneier. “Security screening is an incredibly boring job, and almost all alerts are false alarms. It’s very hard for people to remain vigilant in this sort of situation, and sloppiness is inevitable.” Mr Schneier also points to technology failures. Screening technologies are poor at detecting PETN, an ingredient of the explosive Semtex, carried by the underpants bomber. A disassembled weapon has an excellent chance of getting through airport security. Mr Schneier reckons that the only worthwhile security changes that happened after the 2001 terrorist attacks were the introduction of locked, blast-proof cockpit doors (the al-Qaeda terrorists used knives to take over the planes) and the willingness of passengers to intervene if they see somebody behaving oddly.
[...]
The main reason why airport security is so bad, says Mr Baum, is that it tries to find things instead of focusing on the people who might carry them. Issy Boim, a former Shin Bet officer who worked closely with Israel’s airline, El Al, argues that whereas the Americans are looking for weapons, the Israelis “are looking primarily for the terror suspect”. Mr Baum is a strong advocate of what is known as “profiling”— building a picture of both passengers and airline staff. He rejects the idea that this has to be based on crude stereotyping (being suspicious of all young Muslim men, for example). It should be based on behaviour both prior to flying—for example, when, how and where a ticket was purchased—and at the airport itself.
El Al employs people who have been trained in psychological observation techniques to interview every passenger before he or she is cleared to go through physical screening. Anyone who arouses their suspicion is subjected to a further grilling and may well not fly. El Al is thought to use some profiling techniques that would be politically unacceptable in Europe or America. Hebrew-speaking Israelis can expect to get off more lightly than Arabs and single white women, for example. But as Mr Baum points out, customs and immigration officers at airports in the West commonly use profiling, “and it works”.
But the most important thing of all might be to keep a sense of proportion. Many people travel on buses and trains, go to sporting events and attend open-air concerts. All are potential targets for terrorists, yet they receive not even a fraction of the attention that air travel gets.
http://www.economist.com/news/internati ... al-no-more
" ... it's like they don't understand English.