(no subject)

[winterbadger]

Ganked from reabhecc

An interesting comparison of Israeli airport security with North America's

Doesn't get into useful-to-terrorist details, just looks at the differences in underlying concepts, which demonstrate why Israeli security doesn't have the huge backups and massive delays that US & Canadian security have.

Ends with a pair of very telling observations

"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."

We don't trust anyone, but we do what we're told. Seemingly contradictory, but very true.

The Israeli system also relies on very well trained, very professional security personnel. Just based on surface impressions, I would class about 90% of the Canadian and UK security personnel I've seen in airports in that category. I would count about 90% of US CBP staff in that category, but only about 10% of TSA personnel, who do most of the security work at US airports.

Comments

[zoefruitcake.livejournal.com]

that was very interesting, I really wish the powers that be would consider a new approach like this

[winterbadger]

Everything here has to be about machines, even though machines are useless if not used properly by trained, alert, and professional staff.