Originally Posted by PatrickHenry1775
Given that our resources for screening are limited, doesn't it make sense to concentrate those resources on individuals, such as those from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc., who are members of the groups that are the perpetrators of terrorism? Again, all passengers must be screened, but the intrusive measures that take more time and hence cost more money should be reserved for those passengers who alarm the baseline screening methods and those who are suspicious.
Part of why I keep pushing back on this is because people keep saying "group X should be subject to more scrutiny," then I say, "how do we know if someone is part of group X?" And they refuse to answer.
Above, people are saying we should "profile" based on religion, which I guess would mean that everyone would have to carry around some sort of religious membership ID card.
Here, you're saying we should do it based on country of citizenship. OK. So does that mean everyone should be required to carry a passport to travel?
Regarding passports, if someone at a checkpoint is jabbering away in a foreign language, I submit that such a passenger is more deserving of a secondary search than an obvious American speaking an American dialect of English.
And if they don't say anything? Or if they speak in English? Remeber, the 9/11 terrorists attended flight school and lived in the US for quite some time. I'm sure they spoke English. And what if Americans speak in a foreign language? This doesn't sound like it would work.
Using the Israeli method of asking a few questions to gauge the reaction of the passenger would also assist in determining which passengers may require additional screening.
Originally Posted by JM
This is exactly what needs to be done. Unfortunantly, everytime it is suggested the moronic, out of touch with reality, PC-crowd screams bloody murder
This would be more effective than the profiling suggestions made above in this thread, I agree. But is it worth the cost? It would also be incredibly expensive, and the questioning tends to be pretty intrusive (if it's going to be effective).
We're talking about billions to hire and train the people to do questioning, and tens, maybe hundreds of billions in lost passenger time each year waiting to be questioned. Are we ready to give up privacy and incur these costs? I doubt it. People already complain about waiting 10-30 minutes to get through the checkpoint. Questioning everybody for an average of 5 minutes, times 670MM annual pax = 56 million hours of time used. But that's just the amount of time people would spend talking to the TSA. If there are 10 people in front of you to talk to the agent, you'll have to wait 50 minutes before you get your 5 minutes of interrogation.
And we'd have to what, double, maybe triple the size of the TSA staff to have enough agents to handle the pax questioning?
The biggest issue with "Israeli style security" is that handling a couple dozen El Al planeloads of people each day (40 El Al flights vs. 35,000 US flights) is not a big deal. Scaling up from El Al's ~ 3 million passengers per year to the US's 670+ million passengers per year, on the other hand, is a big deal.
BTW,
PatrickHenry1775 you complained above about a "police state." You don't think that having to undergo an interrogation before being allowed to travel in this country counts as a "police state?"