ASFlyer,
I am sure as frequent flyer you have been in europe and have traveled around. You are correct that a passport is not always necessary for travel on buses and trains either. What I am not sure you notice is that profiling is constant in europe. Try to walk up near an embassey in paris with any type of bag and watch the GN come running up weapons at the ready if you are arab looking. Take a train across the spanish/french border and look non white, you had better have proper paper work. It goes on and on. Be Irish in england and watch the extra security looks you get. (being Irish is not as obvious, but when a person trys to enter a museum in the UK and speaks with an accent his bags are looked at just a little bit more. I know because I have worked with companies that provide that service.)

It is not the passport that will cause problems. It is the stupidity of trying to focus on everything/everyone. I say again and again, if you allow any carryon bags you will have items that slip through. That will be more likely if you spend your time trying to focus equally on all. !!I am not saying allow knives on board etc. What I am saying is that we need to set the new standard but not freak when we have something slip through.!! A security breach is never good but a terrorist needs a solid belief that he will succeed at a specific time and place not that a metal detector failed for an hour. The terrorists would not know in advance that it was going to be broke at a specific time and be able to take advantage of that knowledge.

I will not make a claim that I could do it better, but most of what we are doing is being done not at the request of the security professionals!!! It is being decided by politicians reacting to a media inflamed public reaction and a bit of self service. It is not taking into account what is possible and it is discounting some of the actions that the professionals want, such as profiling. Instead of checking all bags insure that we flag and check the bags that considered a security risk. That even includes (women don't scream) single females traveling alone. Reason being that some previous bombers were not suicideal but conned by boyfriends. They also have a history of smuggling drugs unknowingly.

I also disagree with mountain trader. While the people who lost brothers, sisters etc maybe would agree with him, the tragedy is that the politicians are the ones doing things that are making a joke out of the system. I also am tired of saying do as the Israelis. In many ways that is correct, but what most people are missing is that the average person would never take a domestic flight inside Israel. Until just recently it was also impossible for the average European to take a flight inside Europe because of the high costs. They also did not need to, because trains and buses are very effective. So while some parts of there system is worthwile not all of it is. America is too spread out and does not have the public transport system to take over for air travel. So while it is possible to make people leaving Israel to spend 3 hours for before a flight, or drop of their bags the day before that is not possible for the US economy. If we want a high systemic unemployment and weak growth follow them. The other thing that makes a mockery is that we are not really going to get new people enforcing the rules or really even new rules. Just new uniforms and maybe less turnover. That should be the thing that makes you most upset mountain trader!

the most effective thing that could have been done and should have been done is make security the responsibility of the airports themselves with federal oversight. The airports could have used a combination of contractors and uniformed employees/police. That would have allowed a new holistic security arrangement. Even now we are still going to have a system with multiple overlaps and therefore chances for weaknesses that can be exploited.



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Robert