How is the security provided by TSA when compared to El Al?
 

How is the security provided by TSA when compared to El Al?

How expensive will it be to have El Al guys take over airport security at every U.S. airport?

GREAT CNN Interview
 

If you didn't see the interview with Isaac Yeffet (former El Al security chief) this morning on CNN about TSA, watch during the day for it. This man knows what he is talking about and his quotes were really brilliant. His main point was that an El Al 747's security should not be better than on a US 747 because we claim that the US airtravel need is bigger. We manage to fuel, cater, service, load more planes individually we should be able to secure them also.

I remember why I feel so much safer when that star of david is on the tail!

TSA security is absolutely worthless next to ElAl. ElAl is the security model that we should look to as a model for our system. It encompasses not only the physical search, but also questioning techniques to determine if something is "off" with a particular passenger. Take a look at this article for some examples of the benefits to ElAl style screening:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/.../elal-usat.htm

Now, let me warn you since you brought it up... this will not go over too well with some of our more, shall I say, politically "correct" minded posters :D

As far as cost, it would be very expensive because the training required to do the job is much more involved than TSA, but isn't security worth the cost?

It was not a good interview. He sounded too aggravated and annoyed to paint a convincing picture of anything.

Sounded more like angry rhetoric than deliberative reason. That isn't to say there is not room for improvement.

Old "news".

Geez and I thought you would be one of the ones that loved it. He disagreed viahmently with TSA I thought that would make him almost popular on here!

I still think he made GREAT points!

We're developing a lot of competing El Al vs. TSA threads here so I've merged the two most recent ones into this earlier thread.
Thanks....


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Cholula
Travel Safety/Security Forum Moderator

We know that if you mess with the EL AL guys in LA that you have a strong chance of losing your life.

Geez, I guess I'm not a blanket critic. :D

I think he has great points. I just don't think his show worked. And he has some bad points too.

El Al security/Israeli security allowed a passenger to carryon a loaded handgun a couple years ago on a JFK-bound flight, IIRC. There was a thread on FT at the time. They apparently miss objects just like the TSA sometimes misses objects.

Israel's total number of airline pax is very, very small relative to the USA. Adopting their security model here would probably require a budget larger than the TSA's by several orders of magnitude. I doubt even the sheople would view that as a wise expenditure.

OTOH, if terrorists ever manage a September 11, Part Deux, then I could see Americans embracing the Israeli security system.

The term "mess" needs a bit of clarification & limitation. The incident to which you are referring was a direct response to a LUNATIC with a gun at LAX. No public prosecutor would send that to court.

Messing around with El Al guys in LA has not led to someone having a "strong chance of losing [their] life". I messed around with them a few years back and lived to tell the tale. :D

It would take a far smaller tragedy to convince the sheople to adopt a Soviet-era lock-down-type system -- even worse than the worst aspects of the Israeli "security" system.

My apoligies GUWONDER. I should have rephrased that.........I thought you may have been asleep and overlooked my post. :D

Some think I am awake 24/7. :D

How much cost is security worth?

Training tens of thousands of people to ask the right questions and read the responses accurately -- that's going to cost tens or hundreds of billions. And then tens of billions more each year to keep the program in operation. And tens or hundreds of billions in lost time when the waiting time at airport checkpoints goes from 5-10 minutes to 60-90 minutes.

And then there's the cost in terms of privacy and civil liberties if we have to be interrogated by a government agent who can arbitrarily decide whether we're allowed to travel or not.

It's pretty difficult to quantify the benefits we could get some such interrogations; are you sure it's worth the cost?

And let's not forget that already 98% of TSA's budget is going to airport security. That means it's spending 2% of its budget to work on security for all other modes of transportation. Not sure that we've got a good allocation of resources as it is, without making it even more lopsided.