Originally Posted by
studentff
Intelligence needs to be moved away from the checkpoint, not towards it. If you let a bad guy get to the airport and get in line for the checkpoint, the system has already failed. The bad guy can detonate his device or do his thing in the line to the checkpoint with equal or greater fatalities and damage as if he did it beyond the checkpoint or on the plane.
Take the vast majority of the $ that goes to TSA and divvy it up between CIA for foreign intelligence work and FBI for domestic (subject to all Constitutional restraints); use the remainder for a skeleton airport security operation consisting of metal detectors, hand wands, explosives trace swabbing, and baggage x-ray. You'd have a much safer and more secure commercial aviation system.
Lots of good points here -- I'd like to add comments from direct experience:
1) Screening for weapons deters the copycat bozos and makes it harder for the the professionals = longer attack prep = more time for intell community to do their work. The trick is to get the cost/benefit balance right... (ie., not necessarily big expensive machines that are inherently limited).
2) Screening for behavior does help and has delivered real world results (ie., guys with bomb parts) both in US and overseas. IF IF IF TSA can sustain a training program and employee retention for skilled behavior officers, it will be money well-spent, especially compared to expensive technology.
3) More money for intelligence community? Absolutely. But it would be smart to train TSA/CBP/airport police to recognize aberrations, because intelligence analysis is an imperfect art.
4) Screening for identity is a key piece of applying intelligence analysis to the real world of security operations. Doing that effectively on a mass scale of 750+ million passengers a year is hard -- name-matching, threat verification, identity authentication, etc.