I used to think that the El Al system was brillinat. But I wonder how much of it is mystique and how much of it is reality.

I once read that El Al's security agents have local traffic reports. An interviewer might ask, "How was the traffic on 95?" If the passenger says it was smooth but there was a massive pile-up in the traffic report, the index of suspicion goes up.

Moreover, some of the interviews for US airlines in Europe and the erstwhile "three questions" were largely designed to identify the naive passenger carrying dangerous materials without his or her knowledge. There have been only two sabotage incidents involving naive or partially-naive passengers, so I wonder if this was a misguided approach.

After the Richard Reid incident, I rethought the value of the interviews. Reid, after all, was interviewed twice by ICTS agents prior to boarding.

Right now, the TSA is struggling to remain even remotely consistent and thoughtful with basic screening techniques. I don't think that a meaningful behavioral profiling plan will be logistically or financially plausible for quite some time.