I think Homey is kidding. I sure hope so.

I dunno what I'd do if it were me. It wouldn't be good though. I honestly think I'd get violent at that point. Actually trying to steal from me while I'm standing there? Whoo boy.

Regards,
-Bouncer-

Maybe this is the wrong forum, but....

I just heard from a friend who travels world-wide, that you should not have batteries in your cameras, etc., as they will be confiscated?

All the electronics of my camera are linked to the battery. Do I really need to remove it and reprogram the camera when I get to my final destination?

Tom

Aside from the cocky smiley face, I know you're kidding because the FIRST thing anyone would eat is the Cinnabon! A little too sugary, but those things are irresistible.

I flew out of Manchester NH a week ago. I did not set off the detector, but I was subjected to a wanding and a full body pat by a female security guard. I averted my eyes because I was embarrassed, and she ordered me to keep looking straight at her. I am 5 feet tall, petite, and in my late thirties. I was also wanded and patted (less thoroughly) by a male guard on the return flight out of Orlando. He was very polite, but I'm beginning to think the "petite woman" theory mentioned above might just be true!

homey, you win the prize. Good one!!!

this is actually a serious post.

folks - i actually had a screener act kind of rude to me. i didnt like it, and i had a TON of time before my flight (you know, get there two hours early, then zip through in about ten minutes) so i thought i would push the envelope a bit. i did what i do whenever i have any trouble with customer service people, i said, "i would like you to get your supervisor here right now." the person stiffened, and i said, "i'm serious, you are being rude, and you are out of line. get your supervisor here immediately." the person said, "i'm sorry, it's been a long day." and i said, "i'm sure it has. you have a hard job, and get no recognition except when you fail. but that doesnt allow you to be rude to me. just wand me, and speak politely, and this will be over, and i will go to my gate." he says, "cool." and then it was soon over.

these people have a reporting structure and bosses like anyone else. you dont have to stand there and be treated poorly. get the supervisor. when they come over, explain in a calm way that you feel you were treated rudely, and would like a different person to screen you please.

regardless, be nice and polite and CALM to them at all times, and dont talk too much. just ask for their boss.

I'm amazed I haven't been selected yet. As a male, 30 yers old, brown hair and eyes, olive complexion, traveling alone with only 1 carryon and/or 1 laptop; I've haven't been subjected to any addittional searches. I did have my carry-on swabed and "sniffed" once for explosives, but no body or physical luggage searches since 9/11.

I think they are looking for easy searches rather than probable targets.

Yesterday at BWI I stood in line behind a mother with 4 children under the age of 5. Ther mother handed the security guard ,in front of the screening area, the 5 passports with the 5 boarding passes inside the appropiate passports. It took the man 13 minutes to check ID's to passes to bodies.
Not to mention getting thrugh the metal dectors...arrghh!

If the more matches you have, the more likely you get searched, I guess this explains why I get searched fifty percent of the time. I match fifty percent of the items and would match a majority of them if the ninth one added was a male. Pray tell, why are my travelling habits so suspicious? Well, it's a direct result of my employer. I work for the airlines. I'm young, I travel without luggage because my flights aren't guaranteed, so I always carry on, I travel alone because when I travel it is to visit family, and I have short notice travel arrangements because all it takes is a phone call before departure to make a "reservation." Three weeks in advance I'm not even thinking about travelling. But gee, I have my fingerprints on file with the US Postal Service, the FBI, and I've got a ten year background check completed. I guess I am a real threat because I travel a lot at the last minute.

As far as the sample threat assessment is concerned you are higher on the list than a 70 year old widow from Dubois, Iowa travelling on her once a year pilgrimage to graceland. And thus more likely to get searched. Or would you say she's as likely to be a threat as a young male travelling alone on a short notice ticket with little or no luggage?

which is it? We either treat them as identical threats or we don't. Right now the airlines treat these as identical threat levels.

And that, is just plain dumb. We need to stop being dumb about security. Terrorists aren't impressed by dumbness.

Regards,
-Bouncer-

[This message has been edited by Bouncer (edited 12-04-2001).]

bouncer - good point. i think they need to add elvis fans to the list of flags.

Everyone who talks about profiling is neglecting feedback effects. Any time a class of people is identified as a lesser threat, you can bet that such people will be used for terrorism. Some of us may have difficulty imagining an elderly caucasian woman carrying out a terrorist attack, but I'm sure that one can be recruited if they looked hard enough.

While this may be true in theory, these middle eastern terrorists have the lowest regard for women. These women clearly would not be impressed to sacrifice themselves for suicidal missions in the promise of being surrounded by 70+ virgins. Women are sequestered, heck they're basically slaves to their beastly masters.

Really?

Do me a favor and point out a SINGLE terrorist attack that has EVER used elderly woman to seize an aircraft or vehicle of any sort.

The average age of 74 suicide bombers in Israel is around 22.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/livin...ind010920.html

The average age of the captured Taliban members is around 23.

http://www.afghanradio.com/news/2001..._findings.html

Mohammed Atta was 33, and considered in the upper age bracket for terrorists.

Those are the facts. Not hypothesis about what terrorists might do. How do you recruit people who don't want to be recruited? How do you train the elderly to physically seize control of a vehicle? You have no proof they could even accomplish this. You would think by now, if it were easy to recruit retirees there'd have been one or two involved in attacks. But we're not seeing that.

Understand, it is fair and reasonable that we all go through some basic security. That I have no issue with, and never have. I'm not saying that the old or infirm don't go through basic first level security.

What I'm saying is that secondary or third searches of these people is a waste of time and resources if they don't raise any flags at the first level or by profile. Time and resources better used elsewhere. We do not have infinite resources, and every second we spend looking through grandma's purse is one second we're not paying attention to other, far more likely individuals.

Once past the basic security, we should be narrowing the field down until we are concentrating on the most likely group of individuals.

To be fair, unlike some I don't discount women. This is why I didn't put "Male" as a criteria. As long as they are physically capable I see no reason not to include women. I am well aware that women are capable of violence (having been hit by more than one in my time as a Bouncer). Ulrike Meinhof of the Baader-Meinhof gang was a female and perfectly capable of murder. If you look it up you will find women terrorists and women combat soldiers, including 23 female US Marine combat veterans from Desert Storm.

A great source for more information, and to me a decisive answer, as to whether women can be in combat is right here:

http://www.gendergap.com/military/Warriors.HTM

6000 years of history show that women can wield the sword. Let's not be dumb and ignore them.

Anywhoo, we do need a concentric series of security screens and profiling. The closer you get to the aircraft the more you should be scrutinized, and the more any flags should be noted. The idea isn't to panic over someone who sneezes but rather to focus on the people with the most likely combination of background and ability to try and seize the aircraft.

Regards,
-Bouncer-
(edited for spelling, as usual. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif )

[This message has been edited by Bouncer (edited 12-05-2001).]

You gotta love these "security professionals." Let's see...who's the most likely person to be looking to cause trouble?

And yet they are patting down elderly women and so on.

Ridiculous, but it's what you have to expect when you have a $7 an hour felon who got rejected from Starbucks doing security.

The feedback effects that Grandmasterflash mentions are a real concern and shouldn't be dismissed so trivially. I recall that there was a discussion some time ago about the sheer absurdity of searching Hasidic Jews for drugs. It turns out that drug runners were using Hasidic Jews as mules PRECISELY because they thought customs would pass them over as unsuspicious. That's the fatal flaw of racially-based or even criteria-based profiling. If you start searching people who look a certain way, Arab for instance, it's hardly likely that terrorists will use someone who looks Arab. It's not like the Taliban doesn't have white-looking or even white American zealots to use, as the case of John Walker Lindh or whoever demonstrates. Furthermore, if it becomes evident that little old ladies are not subject to search, they may be targeted as unwitting carriers of weapons or explosives by terrorists. As was mentioned before, terrorists are not dumb people -- to exempt certain classes of people because they don't seem suspicious is to invite terrorists to exploit the holes we create. The only way to combat this is to have some element of randomness in who gets searched, even if harmless little old ladies get searched as well. That way, terrorists know that no matter what they do, there is a considerable chance that their plot may be foiled. If you want to use criteria for profiling -- fine, but we need to keep in mind that profiling cannot be performed to the exclusion of random checks, and that certain criteria (including race) can be easily avoided by the terrorist of even average intelligence.

[Edited to insert a "don't"]

[This message has been edited by robinhood (edited 12-05-2001).]

I didn't meet ANY of the criterea mentioned by Bouncer.

I do not lightly dismiss the possibility, on the other hand I balance it against what is far more likely. You said:

"If you start searching people who look a certain way, Arab for instance, it's hardly likely that terrorists will use someone who looks Arab"

My response. Show me any proof you have this is more than pure conjecture. Here's what we know and is not a guess. We know that terrorists are small closed cells, usually ethnically very tight units. Not only the same religion, but indeed the same small towns. We know that almost all have some sort of familial or immediate personal connection with each other. We know there are THOUSANDS of Taliban members. So far we've seen exactly ONE Anglo-Saxon American. we know it took NINETEEN terrorists to seize those airliners. We know NONE of the terrorists was an older woman. We know they didn't use smuggled explosives. We know they were all of Arabic descent.

Now, however, you're presupposing an ability to recruit among the white elderly female crowd, and that such recruitment would be successful with no chance of compromise. I don't see any such ability and I've never seen any such ability and they've been at it for the last 30 years. At least.

The days of people carrying things for others basically ended on Pan Am 103 (excluding drug traffickers). We are all constantly reminded and asked if we're carrying something, did we pack our own bags, have they been under our control the whole time. There is an awareness there and if someone came up to you at an airport and asked you to carry something I daresay you'd run like hell to the nearest cop. I know I would.

Do you know what I want to see? I want every person walking through that metal detector and X-Ray machine to then walk right by a bomb sniffing dog. Once they've been X-ray'd, wanded and sniffed for explosives I want us to stop doing the whole second "random" (not random) search at the gate unless you are among a more focused group of people. More focused than being first in line or more likely to comply with less fuss.

I want to see some coherency to the security, and not this phoney baloney 'feel good', "Search the same person three times" crap. The only people they're really making 'feel good' are the terrorists. They now know that if they can get past the first layer of security they're NOT the focus of ANY more scrutiny than an elderly white female.

Think about it from this perspective. They and their buddy speaking heavily accented english and with passports from a foreign country known to support terroism just walked up and bought two first class one way tickets with cash and no luggage.

Do you really want to ignore these two fellows in order to check out the female retiree because she was "randomly selected"?

Regards,
-Bouncer-
PS: I want to thank everyone for the polite tone in the discussions. I may not agree with some of the views expressed by others but I do respect the honesty with which they hold them.

Anyone cleared scrutiny in CLE...it's a trip!

I knew I was in for it when I got there and no one was ahead of me except 2 very bored looking rent-a-wanders...(don't even get me started on the GI JOES flirting with the female strutiny staff off to the side)

No beep, buzz, or flash of light from metal detector.

"Sir, step over here for random screening."(I sigh my biggest sigh and comply.)

Hold your arms out, wand wand wand...

<<Notice step stool...is he going to step up there and scan me for lice?>>

Sir, please place your left foot on stool for a pat down...I comply by placing my right foot on stool...throws him a bit but he continues...then asks for "other foot"...at least he didn't say "your other left foot" in a feable attempt at humor.

Then he wands me again up and down my front...

SIr, fold your belt down.

I stick by thumb in there and reluctantly expose myself by pulling belt buckle away from tummy 1/2 inch.

He proceeds to touch me in "that" region somewhere between my navel and nether regions

I look him straight in the eye and assertively announce...

"NO NOT TOUCH ME THERE!!!"

Rent-a-wander suddenly becomes very sheepish and apologetic..."Oh, OK, Oh, I'm Sorry...." hurries through rest of wanding just wanting to get me out of there...

One last indignity...

"Sir, would you please stand on your tiptoes?"

I look at him and raise my heels 1/2 inch off ground which seemed to please him because he moved on to his next fondling opportunity.

Very weird and what is this standing on your toes all about?...What's next...spin like a top and sing "I'm a little teapot short and stout"?

Went immediately to bar and had a beer...

My experience at SJC ticketed-passengers-only BS checkpoint today:

I hand over my ticket.

Screener: "No, you need boarding pass."

I: "This is a ticket. It's enough. All I need is a ticket."

Screener: "No. Go get boarding pass. You need boarding pass."

I: "May I see your badge please? And I'd like to speak with your supervisor."

Screener: [waves me on]

The lesson? Stand up to these people. Take them off their power trips. If nothing else, do it for the sake of infrequent flyers who are too intimidated to stand up to this stuff.

Bouncer -- thanks for your comments about the tone of the thread, and I indeed hope that it will continue.

I wanted to make a few more points. I would suppose that under your schema a pregnant middle-aged white woman would merit less scrutiny than a scruffy dark-complexioned male. But that would have been a fatal mistake if it had been the policy in place at Heathrow in 1986. You probably are aware of the case in which a bomb was planted in the baggage of a pregnant Irish woman by her "boyfriend" in an attempt to destroy an El Al flight from Heathrow to Israel. Fortunately, the plot was foiled when El Al security DID find this woman suspicious and searched her bag.

I think to assume that people should merit less scrutiny because of what they look like is a terrible mistake. No, I don't have "proof" that terrorists would turn to unsuspicious-looking substitutes (where would one obtain this proof short of asking Osama himself?). But the fact that it has happened before is suggestive, and I don't think it takes too much of a stretch to find it a reasonable "conjecture." And the sad thing about this is: it didn't take any recruitment. All it took was one guy and his sex appeal.

And to presume that the apex of terrorist strategy would be to do female recruitment pitches on Oprah or hang around the airport giving perfect strangers packages to carry aboard is significantly underestimating their intelligence, which you yourself warned against! In the case I mentioned above, the suitcase had a false bottom with a thin layer of plastic explosive underneath it. The girlfriend could have honestly said that she packed her bags herself and it had been under her control the whole time! There are numerous such imaginative schemes, which I won't outline lest it give anyone any ideas.

Ultimately, whether terrorists actually decide to commit an act hinges largely on its probability of success. By engineering weaknesses into the system (like giving grandmas (who incidentally may be carrying a "gift" from grandnephew just back from a "vacation" in Northern Pakistan) or pregnant women or whomever freedom from searches), we provide terrorists with opportunities to make their plots more foolproof. All they have to do is plant bomb on granny or pregnant girlfriend or American "jihadi" masquerading as white businessman. But if you have random searches, there is NOTHING a terrorist can do to increase the probability of success past the probability of not being randomly searched * the probability of being otherwise detected. And if the probability of being randomly searched is high enough, terrorists may choose to avoid terrorism in the air. Of course, by random I mean TRULY random, not whoever the screener wants to feel up plus the first person in line.

And nobody objects to appropriate profiling as a supplement. If someone shows up at the last minute buying full-fares using cash etc., they should be searched more rigorously. No one disagrees with that! But we should keep in mind that no matter what criteria we use, they can be circumvented. Terrorists have credit cards, and do advance purchase ticketing, just like anyone else. Therefore, profiling cannot totally supplant random searching. But most importantly, when we choose to use criteria for profiling that have implications for civil liberties -- we should recognize the marginal value these criteria have for enhancing security and weigh them accordingly against the rights we lose as a society.

If we truly had a system where everyone is x-rayed thoroughly and sniffed by a 100% accurate dog (I personally love those dogs and would be happy to see a bunch of them hanging out at the airport), I think all this would be moot. Until then...

Perhaps.

If you want to play "what if" we can string out a series of events involving catering or luggage handling crew that would positively terrify everyone on the board.

El Al IS a unique target. The woman wasn't found by random search but rather by a standard hand search. To defeat that level of threat we would have to hand search every single person to include every piece of luggage. Ignoring the problems with time and cost, if we've done so why are we going to do so again at the gate on a non-random but not-profiled basis? That's simply not practical.

We have to do threat assessment. That means you have to scale the response. IF the searches are truly random then there may be a deterent but I'm still dubious. Granting that there is a deterrent (for the sake of argument) then the question becomes why are we not doing random searches? We're not you know. The searches are not random. You know it, I know it, and anyone who reads any major media outlet knows it.

So the whole point of random searches is now lost and a false sense of security gained. To me that's an even worse position to be in, because now you think you have a working system, when you really don't.

By example, at least two of the terrorists from 9/11 WERE picked up by a profile computer. Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Al-Midhar on AA 77. Profiling worked. But no one interviewed or searched them. Instead their bags were scanned. And then they were allowed to board.

By comparison now, we have airline pilots who get nail their clippers confiscated... but who we then hand a fire axe in the cockpit.

Doesn't make sense does it?

Regards,
-Bouncer-

hey don't take this garbage from anyone. THis is a security screening search. You are not a suspect, nor a criminal, nor an inmate. You are a free person, a CUSTOMER. You have the right to refuse any search (although you won't enter the secure area), you can observe any and all searches of your property. You can remain w/ your property at all times. And you can handle your property during the search (if you feel they might break it). And you **** well can look in any direction you please! Don't put up with this crap at all!

[This message has been edited by pointman (edited 12-06-2001).]

Well, time to jump on this particular bandwagon, I think. I have been through..lemme see..something like 14 different airport security areas in the past several months. Each one was different, nothing was standardized. Innocuous things (IMHO) were confiscated, while my haybale cutting jackknife rested in the bottom of my purse through 3 or 4 different airport security gates. (I had forgotten it was there, and only discovered it myself when switching purses between trips.) My long but round-ended nail file has been looked at several times, but not confiscated. I could stab somebody with it and do some real damage, if I needed to. But you see, it has a ROUND, not pointed, end. Always my laptop has to be removed and placed on the belt; sometimes there is no plastic tray in which to put it. At one airport security, my carry-on wheelie suitcase was messed up by digging hands, put back through the x-ray 2X and finally emptied of ALL its contents. AHA! It was my small flashlight that was the cause of the hold-up; it was not confiscated. Took a long time, tho, for me to get through security that time. And finally (altho this is not the end of my story), my Downs syndrome grandson and I were BOTH treated to double searches...once at the main checkpoint, and again at the "random" search area at the gate. This was at SFO on our way to Kona. In FC. And I am a 70-yr old PLTEXEC unassuming sweet LOL. I like the IDEA of security, but what we've mostly been experiencing is a joke. I DON'T necessarily feel safer with the way it is all done. 'Nuff said..at least for the moment.

thanks for helping to make my point. there are currently no standards in place. it truly is random. but because there are no standards in place, security personnel have absolutely no idea what to look for.

how hard would it be for the FAA to post a list of what is and what is not currently permitted on airplanes?

for example: nail clippers? yes!
ginsu set? no!

hair spray? yes!
propane tank? no!

how hard would it be to make a list of common items and publish it in every newspaper in the country. would it cover everything? no.... but would it stop a lot of this power-hungry, undertrained BS that we have going on now? of course it would....

you know, it's entirely possible that the people in charge of making things easier for travellers don't really want to do that? after all, we gave the imperial federal government all this power to "make us safe" after 9/11. do you really think they'll give it up without a fight?

Bouncer --

As for El Al being a unique target, I would say that after 9/11, they're not so unique anymore. And incidentally, the bomb in the Irish woman's bag was not found as a result of hand searching every single person's bags. It was found after SHE in particular was questioned and subsequently deemed suspicious and HER bag specifically was searched. She had actually already gotten it past x-ray. My point is, that if she were given a free pass because she looked like a pregnant middle-aged white woman, that plane might have been blown up.

But I think everbody on this board agrees with one thing -- you can have the best security policies ever, but none of that matters if the frontline security personnel are a bunch of bozos.

I've been equally surprised I haven't gotten any attention. 26 yo male, I travel alone with only a carryon containing a LOT of strange electronic equipment, and had several last-minute one-way tickets purchased in the past few months (I had to get from south america back home for an emergency).

My passport is filled with middle-eastern and third-world nations. My most frequent travelling companion is Lebanese!

After sept 11th I figured I'd be in for a body cavity search if I went near an airport, but I've flown through security every time, even check in with the e-ticket kiosks. Never gotten a second glance in the US.

Going through Europe I always have a lengthy interview with an intelligent and clearly well-trained but polite security person, and they always make it a point to go through why I have these strange things with me and go the places I go...

[This message has been edited by artboy (edited 12-07-2001).]

hrm, dupe...

[This message has been edited by artboy (edited 12-07-2001).]

robinhood, you are both right and wrong. The Irish ladies bag was only discovered after she had checked in. She was pulled though and asked additional questions because she was a security profile risk. ie. She was profiled. No she did not fit the limited profile that has been posted on this list. That is not a professionals list. the reason she failed is that she was traveling on a ticket for 2 weeks and only had a carry on bag. Then she answered that she was only bringing what her boyfriend had told her to.

Buying a ticket on short notice or flying first class, were not even really done in this case. This case was really unique in that since the hijackers knew they would not actually have effective weapons they wanted to be up front. In the vast majority of cases, hijackers have started out flying coach.

Profiling is a continually evolving intelligence job. Actually a chess game between good and bad guys. An example is the baider-mainhoff gang. After europeans started watching people flying on one way tickets or the firt half of a round trip ticket more closely, they hijacked a plane by flying as couples to a resort area, spending the week and then on the return hijack it. So no profile is full proof, but using your drug muling? hassidic jews. That works better for drugs because someone willing to knowingly commit suicide is different from someone willing to break the law. Additionally drug dealers have watched profiling develop and with money search out mules that they think will pass, but they factor as cost of doing business that a percentage of the drugs will be caught up. !!!!!!!!Again and again, I say. Terrorists will only launch an attack when they have serious belief in success. Because they have only a limited number of effective operatives in reality. So lets say that someone comes to the US and builds a friend relationship with a little old lady. He then buys her a ticket(probably breaks a profile, by either paying cash for her ticket or his identity is still tied to the ticket). Her bag is spotted as it is going through security. He is now burned and either arrested or on the run. If caught he rolls up other contacts. A rollup like this occured in manila. Placing a bomb that is strong enough to take a plane down and sophisticated enough to detonate on time is extremely hard. It requires special explosives like semtex, very good electronics and special knowledge. Even then many bombs either blow up early or don't even blow up. Just as many american bombs fail to detonate. A terrorist also has usually only one chance. When (I believe) the greeks discovered a bomb made up of what looked like 2 bottles of wine in a security check, that info quickly went out to all security agencies. It has not been tried again. So professional profiling is the only way to maximise our resources..


Finally did anyone notice that the new estimate on bomb detection equipment. $5 billion for hardware. It is also been decided that the machinery can not be emplaced in current layout of airports. So aditional costs and reconstruction plus probably more delays. All to search 100% of bags when profiling plus a limited bit of randomness would be as successful


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Robert