Feral Jundi

     “Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don’t take s— from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, ‘We’re not going to do this. You’re going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport.”

     That, in a nutshell is “Israelification” – a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death. 

     First off, I will say that I can totally relate with what the TSA guys are going through. In this business, you will find yourself doing pat downs and screening folks on some contract at some point in your career. Believe me, it isn’t fun for the guys that have to do it and I am sure police and military folks can relate as well. The folks you are screening can get testy and annoyed as well. But that is our job, and our primary objective is to protect our people, and stop the bad guys from doing harm. We still think about alternatives though.

     So is there a system that protects life and limb without annoying people to death? That is the million dollar question, because even if this latest protest against TSA pat downs and revealing full body screenings actually causes more airports to choose the privatization route of security, the screening force will still be up against this very question.

     Or perhaps there is something else. Maybe private companies can better maintain customer service and satisfaction?  Maybe they can be as intrusive or as thorough as the TSA, and still not annoy travelers to death? Because at the end of the day, they still have the same job to do as the TSA, and that is screen out the bad guys and bad things.

     Now in the past, I have discussed the same issues that have been brought up currently, and it seems like every year travelers just get ticked off more by the new rules at airports. We are also experiencing record unemployment, foreclosures, and a recession and this has no doubt caused some folks to be angry and lash out at stuff like this.  Al Qaeda and company is not helping things out either by implementing their ‘system disruption’ attacks. All of these factors provide the perfect storm for outcry and protest, and I am wondering where it will all lead too?

     What will be interesting is if this outcry will translate into more privatization or even the ‘Israelification’ of airport security?  If this does happen, and private companies will be tasked with implementing this more mentally intrusive form of screening called ‘profiling’, then what will be the possible outcome there?  Will US travelers be alright with someone asking them twenty questions before boarding a plane, versus getting their ‘junk’ viewed or groped via full body scanners or pat downs?

    I have also had the opportunity to experience Israeli airport ‘profiling’ that everyone talks about, and I was impressed. For the most part, they just ask you a bunch of questions to see how you react to them. No one touched me, and no one put me through a full body scanner.  The big difference here is that I did not feel like I was mindlessly going through a screening system. I felt like there was a thinking security apparatus that really wanted to know what I was up to, and that they knew how to read me and all of my behavioral cues very well.

    If things do switch to behavioral profiling, or some form of profiling, and it is done by private security, then I think the training for such a technique would be pretty damn interesting. Who would teach the techniques, what legal mechanisms would be in place for protecting a screener/guard or the traveler, and how long would it take to achieve this proficiency are all questions I have.  Most important though, is it scalable and can we achieve the same quality of screening that the Israelis have?

    For that, I wanted to really emphasize the federal-private model below, because this is important. We have already witnessed the federal-private model as it applies to overseas contracting, and the issues have been identified as to how to properly regulate it.  But the problem for the overseas model has always been a lack of legal mechanisms and a lack of sufficient oversight and regulation (either due to poor funding, poor training or lack of manpower). Also, Best Value contracting would be the optimum way to contract companies for this, if any airport authorities are reading this.

     With that said, the TSA would have to switch to being more of a regulatory body than an actual security/screener provider. They will be up against the same scrutiny and issues that plague any of the other various government groups that deal with private industry, both domestically and abroad. The TSA has many lessons to learn from in order to get that federal-private model just right, and because they are still a relatively new agency of government, they still have time to get it right. –Matt

Opposing view on air security: Expand federal-private model

The ‘Israelification’ of airports: High security, little bother

National Opt-Out Day

Opposing view on air security: Expand federal-private model

By John Mica

When Congress established the Transportation Security Administration after 9/11, I helped craft airline passenger screening provisions.

Two models of screening were established. The principle model established an all-federal TSA screening force. The second model provided that TSA would certify, regulate and oversee private contractors to perform screening functions.

Initially five airports — one in each size category — were selected for the federal-private model. Those chosen and operating successfully since 2002 are San Francisco; Kansas City, Mo.; Rochester, N.Y.; Jackson Hole, Wyo.; and Tupelo, Miss.

The Government Accountability Office independently conducted performance evaluations of both models. GAO’s initial evaluations found that the federal-private model performed statistically significantly better than the all-federal model. Subsequent evaluations have shown the federal-private model performing consistently as well as the all-federal model.

Two years following the 2001 law’s enactment, all airports were permitted to apply to opt out of all-federal screening. Under this option, airports qualified by TSA can also take over screening functions, as Jackson Hole has done.

Sixteen airports currently operate successfully under the federal-private model. More airports have submitted applications, and others are considering opting out.

While TSA has argued the federal-private model costs more, the agency did not properly account for private-sector cost efficiencies, federal retirement costs, taxes paid by private companies, at least partial elimination of a huge bureaucracy and more.

TSA has grown from a pre-9/11 force of 16,500 screeners, that then lacked proper federal regulation or oversight, into a massive, growing force of 62,000. TSA’s bureaucracy includes more than 3,500 administrative personnel in Washington and 7,000 supervisory employees throughout the nation.

It would be far better for a streamlined TSA to focus on setting and checking security standards and auditing performance, rather than spending much of its time, resources and energy on managing a huge ballooning bureaucracy.

Rep. John Mica of Florida is the top Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Story here.

——————————————————————

The ‘Israelification’ of airports: High security, little bother

December 30, 2009

Cathal Kelly

While North America’s airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification.

That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel’s, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience.

“It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago,” said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He’s worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world.

“Israelis, unlike Canadians and Americans, don’t take s— from anybody. When the security agency in Israel (the ISA) started to tighten security and we had to wait in line for — not for hours — but 30 or 40 minutes, all hell broke loose here. We said, ‘We’re not going to do this. You’re going to find a way that will take care of security without touching the efficiency of the airport.”

That, in a nutshell is “Israelification” – a system that protects life and limb without annoying you to death.

Despite facing dozens of potential threats each day, the security set-up at Israel’s largest hub, Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, has not been breached since 2002, when a passenger mistakenly carried a handgun onto a flight. How do they manage that?

“The first thing you do is to look at who is coming into your airport,” said Sela.

The first layer of actual security that greets travellers at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport is a roadside check. All drivers are stopped and asked two questions: How are you? Where are you coming from?

“Two benign questions. The questions aren’t important. The way people act when they answer them is,” Sela said.

Officers are looking for nervousness or other signs of “distress” — behavioural profiling. Sela rejects the argument that profiling is discriminatory.

“The word ‘profiling’ is a political invention by people who don’t want to do security,” he said. “To us, it doesn’t matter if he’s black, white, young or old. It’s just his behaviour. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I’m doing this?”

Once you’ve parked your car or gotten off your bus, you pass through the second and third security perimeters.

Armed guards outside the terminal are trained to observe passengers as they move toward the doors, again looking for odd behaviour. At Ben Gurion’s half-dozen entrances, another layer of security are watching. At this point, some travellers will be randomly taken aside, and their person and their luggage run through a magnometer.

“This is to see that you don’t have heavy metals on you or something that looks suspicious,” said Sela.

You are now in the terminal. As you approach your airline check-in desk, a trained interviewer takes your passport and ticket. They ask a series of questions: Who packed your luggage? Has it left your side?

“The whole time, they are looking into your eyes — which is very embarrassing. But this is one of the ways they figure out if you are suspicious or not. It takes 20, 25 seconds,” said Sela.

Lines are staggered. People are not allowed to bunch up into inviting targets for a bomber who has gotten this far.

At the check-in desk, your luggage is scanned immediately in a purpose-built area. Sela plays devil’s advocate — what if you have escaped the attention of the first four layers of security, and now try to pass a bag with a bomb in it?

“I once put this question to Jacques Duchesneau (the former head of the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority): say there is a bag with play-doh in it and two pens stuck in the play-doh. That is ‘Bombs 101’ to a screener. I asked Ducheneau, ‘What would you do?’ And he said, ‘Evacuate the terminal.’ And I said, ‘Oh. My. God.’

“Take Pearson. Do you know how many people are in the terminal at all times? Many thousands. Let’s say I’m (doing an evacuation) without panic — which will never happen. But let’s say this is the case. How long will it take? Nobody thought about it. I said, ‘Two days.'”

A screener at Ben-Gurion has a pair of better options.

First, the screening area is surrounded by contoured, blast-proof glass that can contain the detonation of up to 100 kilos of plastic explosive. Only the few dozen people within the screening area need be removed, and only to a point a few metres away.

Second, all the screening areas contain ‘bomb boxes’. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation.

“This is a very small simple example of how we can simply stop a problem that would cripple one of your airports,” Sela said.

Five security layers down: you now finally arrive at the only one which Ben-Gurion Airport shares with Pearson — the body and hand-luggage check.

“But here it is done completely, absolutely 180 degrees differently than it is done in North America,” Sela said.

“First, it’s fast — there’s almost no line. That’s because they’re not looking for liquids, they’re not looking at your shoes. They’re not looking for everything they look for in North America. They just look at you,” said Sela. “Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes … and that’s how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys.”

That’s the process — six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.

This doesn’t begin to cover the off-site security net that failed so spectacularly in targeting would-be Flight 253 bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab — intelligence. In Israel, Sela said, a coordinated intelligence gathering operation produces a constantly evolving series of threat analyses and vulnerability studies.

“There is absolutely no intelligence and threat analysis done in Canada or the United States,” Sela said. “Absolutely none.”

But even without the intelligence, Sela maintains, Abdulmutallab would not have gotten past Ben Gurion Airport’s behavioural profilers.

So. Eight years after 9/11, why are we still so reactive, so un-Israelified?

Working hard to dampen his outrage, Sela first blames our leaders, and then ourselves.

“We have a saying in Hebrew that it’s much easier to look for a lost key under the light, than to look for the key where you actually lost it, because it’s dark over there. That’s exactly how (North American airport security officials) act,” Sela said. “You can easily do what we do. You don’t have to replace anything. You have to add just a little bit — technology, training. But you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security. And that is something that the bureaucrats have a problem with. They are very well enclosed in their own concept.”

And rather than fear, he suggests that outrage would be a far more powerful spur to provoking that change.

“Do you know why Israelis are so calm? We have brutal terror attacks on our civilians and still, life in Israel is pretty good. The reason is that people trust their defence forces, their police, their response teams and the security agencies. They know they’re doing a good job. You can’t say the same thing about Americans and Canadians. They don’t trust anybody,” Sela said. “But they say, ‘So far, so good’. Then if something happens, all hell breaks loose and you’ve spent eight hours in an airport. Which is ridiculous. Not justifiable

“But, what can you do? Americans and Canadians are nice people and they will do anything because they were told to do so and because they don’t know any different.”

Story here.

——————————————————————

**Alert: A very thought-provoking letter to TSA by Congressman Holt.  Be sure to to read. Thank you, Representative Holt, for asking the tough questions.

**Alert:  61% OPPOSE NEW SECURITY PROCEDURES see here.

Pollster John Zogby: “It’s clear the majority of Americans are not happy with TSA and their enhanced security measures recently enacted.  The airlines should not be happy with 42% of frequent fliers seeking a different mode of transportation due to these enhancements. It seems the airlines and TSA need to come together to find a solution before the American flying public abandons both.”

Wednesday, November 24, 2010 is:

NATIONAL OPT-OUT DAY!

It’s the day ordinary citizens stand up for their rights, stand up for liberty, and protest the federal government’s desire to virtually strip us naked or submit to an “enhanced pat down” that touches people’s breasts and genitals in an aggressive manner.  You should never have to explain to your children, “Remember that no stranger can touch or see your private area, unless it’s a government employee, then it’s OK.”

The goal of National Opt Out Day is to send a message to our lawmakers that we demand change.  We have a right to privacy and buying a plane ticket should not mean that we’re guilty until proven innocent.  This day is needed because many people do not understand what they consent to when choosing to fly.

The bottom line is that flyers are in a no-win situation: both the naked body scanners and the enhanced pat downs are grossly violative of our privacy rights and dignity, both make you feel like a criminal. At least when you choose a pat down you can look the at the government official eyeball-to-eyeball when you’re getting touched, and there are not lingering questions about safety and just what is happening in that back room.  Is there really no better way to provide aviation security than an inappropriate touching or a naked body scan?

Here are the details:

Who?

You, your family and friends traveling by air on Wednesday, November 24, 2010.  Remember too, as the TSA says, “Everyday is opt-out day.”  That is, you can opt out any time you fly.

What?

    National Opt-Out Day.  You have the right to opt-out of the naked body scanner machines (AIT, or Advance Imaging Technology, as the government calls it).  All you have to do is say “I opt out” when they tell you to go through one of the machines.  You will then be given an “enhanced” pat down.  This is a right given to you by the TSA. There is no intent or desire to delay passengers en route to friends and family over Thanksgiving.  People also need to remember to stay within the confines of the law and the regulations of TSA when exercising their right to a pat down.

Where?

    At an airport near you!

When?

    Wednesday, November 24, 2010.  Families should sit around the dinner table, eating turkey, talking about their experience – what constitutes an unreasonable search, how forceful of a pat down will we allow on certain areas of our body, and that of our children, and how much privacy are we will to give up for flying?

Why?

    The government should not have the ability to virtually strip search anyone it wants without cause. The problem has been compounded in that if you do not want to go through the body scanner, the TSA has made the alternative an “enhanced” pat downs.  There are reports from travelers across the country about how the TSA now touches the genitals and private areas of men, women and children in a much more aggressive manner.  Does the government have the right to look under your clothing or aggressively touch you just because you bought an airline ticket, with no other reasonable suspicion?  No.  Congress needs to act to ensure TSA respects the privacy of the flying public.

How?

    By saying “I opt out” when told to go through the bodying imaging machines and submitting to a pat down.  Also, be sure to have your pat down by TSA in full public – do not go to the back room when asked.  Every citizen must see for themselves how the TSA treats law-abiding citizens.

Be sure to write Congress to let them know how you feel!

To write your Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, please visit here.

To write your U.S. Senator, please visit here.

If you have experienced a problem with TSA when flying, file a complaint at your checkpoint, call the TSA at 1-866-289-9673, and also use the Electronic Privacy Information Center or ACLU’s incident report to lodge your complaint here.

Testimonials from travelers here.

Twitter here.

Website here.

Facebook here.