Mike,

A lady that I know in Ohio flew out here last Summer to visit and they took all of her cosmetics and threw them into a trash can. That included her tooth brush, comp, hair brush, and anything else she had in the small bag. Soon we will be flying naked and not allowed to ship any luggage. I don't care about the flying part but it may be worth while to spend a few hours around the air ports looking. :LOL:

OH, and I did see where Napalito (spelling) has admitted that airport security isn't really very good.

Ron

Serious question here regarding the Amsterdam Airport. I don't fly internationally very often so I am not sure, but when I have a layover in the US, I don't go back through security if I stay in the airport. Is this true on international layovers too? If the security was laxed in Nigeria, and he stayed in the "secured" portion of the airport, the talk of the Amsterdam security "Normally" being top notch is a mute point. The problem lies in Nigeria and it is a waste of time to even talk about the Amsterdam Security procedures.

As I understand the "list" he was on, it did not call for additional extra ordinary screening, such as EVERYBODY now has to go through as a result. In that regard, I'm not sure we can say any one point was "lax"? But perhaps they were, I just don't know yet.

Even so, short of a full strip AND cavity search how will we catch the next guy? The explosives could be inserted in the rectum, for instance. Removed in the rest room. More immediate and practical concern, how you going to "frisk" passengers in the groin area right now?

Ernie,

There are detectors now that would have detected that explosive. But if I had my way, instead of just detecting them, they would detonate them. Put the screening away from a lot of people and make one at a time go through. that way as the terrorists blow up, they won't hurt others.

Ron :D

mucho muy goodo

They don't admit it buddy, but I'm sure they do profile. Before , I travelled everywhere and with my friendly demeanor and disarming personality;), I rarely ever even got my luggage opened. Lately, with nothing changed but the climate of fear, I get the full treatment every time and looking in the mirror, I understand why. Even to me, I look like a friggin' radical. I kid with them and take it cheerfully because putting myself in their shoes, I would look me over too.

Now, having said that, this punk had everything going against his chances for success . His own father reported him and I don't care who it is - it usually takes a lot for most fathers to turn in their own sons. He was on the watch list, he paid cash and checked in no luggage on an international flight. How he managed to board without at least a thorough search needs to be explained. Somebody was either complicit or really phuckin' negligent and some heads need to roll.

Ditto big brudda. I was also thinking it might add a bit of spice to the tedium of international travel if they made everyone change into paper hospital style gowns before boarding, but it could also get a guy busted for attempting to board while trying to conceal a blunt instrument.

Buzz, paying cash, no luggage, YUP, you would think that factor alone would be cause for an extra security check. I'm not sure if he bought a ONE WAY ticket but if so, well DAM, there is just no question we got a major red flag going on here.

Ron, :) Having worked at Honolulu Airport for many years it sure can get boring. That would spice things up a bit!

So, these "detectors" do the foreign countries in question here have them?

Not everyone gets the puffer treatment.

Ernie,

The last that I heard the major airports all over the world are supposed to be installing all of the latest detection equipment but I haven't seen anything about for some time and doubt is they all have it. And I am sure the smaller ones don't have it.

Ron

Buzz .."get a guy busted for attempting to board while trying to conceal a blunt instrument " ... would the charge be .... assault with a dead weapon ??

Bob

Lol! Not at all Bob. But if you are so afflicted, there are pills you can take nowadays to help with that you know.:D

I fly often but most of the time short hauls. Going through security 50, 60, 70 times a year teaches one quite a bit. On occasion security is extremely thorough, especially in the small airports. Other times it is little more than a pain in the a$$. I have watched as an airport security agent spent 10 minutes checking an 85 year old grandmother in a wheel chair while in the next row over, a 25 year old questionable looking male breezes through.

The big problem is that everything that airport security does is reactionary, little or nothing is pro-active. 8 years ago some idiot tries to set off an explosive device in his shoe so the next day everyone has to take off their shoes. Several years ago another idiot tried to mix 2 liquids to make a bomb on a plane, the next day we couldn't take liquids, gels, or creams onto the aircraft.

Now this jerk tries to set off an explosion with stuff taped to his body so everyone has to go through a pat-down. As already stated, his father reported him to the authorities, he had a one way ticket, he paid cash for his ticket, and he did not have any luggage on an international flight. The bells should have been ringing and he should have been strip searched but instead he was allowed to board the plane. How can this happen?

Wayne

Wayne .... in my last job , I used to fly a lot , and security could get pretty anal sometimes .... not effective , just anal . It was complicated for me because of the hip replacement , which meant an automatic pat down . I was mentioning this to a customer of mine who was from Israel , and he made a statement that I thought was profound .... he said that Israeli security looked for terrorists while American security didn`t know what they were looking for . He also said the Captain and crew were actively involved in the security/screening process and had final authority on who did and did not get on their plane .
Looks like we still have a lot to learn and with the incompetent that is the current head of HS , we are in real trouble .

Bob

Nigerians attack again...
 

Yeah,it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.:rolleyes:

BAUCHI, Nigeria - At least 35 people died in a clash among Islamic militants in northern Nigeria, an official said Tuesday.

Bauchi state police spokesman Mohammed Barau said violence erupted Monday when members of the Kata Kalo sect accused each other of making their leader gravely ill.

He said violence spilled into the street and sect members attacked a military unit. Barau corrected earlier official statements that the arrest of the sect leader prompted the clash.

Officials said the militants were armed with spears and arrows.

Barau said at least one soldier died in the violence, as well as two bystanders. He said the fighting had stopped.

In July, fighting sparked by another Islamist sect in Bauchi began a wave of violence that left more than 700 dead.

The following is a Copy and Paste describing how airport security is handled in Israel. Sorry if it is a bit long but it is very interesting to see the difference between Israel and North America.


The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother
Cathal Kelly Staff Reporter

Published On Wed Dec 30 2009While 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 Airport (Toronto). 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."

Great post Wayne, a real insight to security.

I found this quote to be especially on target:
We have essentially three "watch lists" that we know off, there may be more.
1. Watch list, about 500,000 people on that sucker. Can you say, "We trust no one."

2. "Selectee" list. Not sure how big this one is, but you have to be on the 500K list to get here. There's a good chance you could "fly under the radar" and not make THIS list just because the first one is monster sized. Selectee's HAVE to go through additional screening. The Christmas bomber should clearly have been AT LEAST on the selectee list. He flew under the radar, even though he WAS a blip on the screen!

3. No fly list. Not sure how big that one is either. You could certainly make a case for moving the Christmas bomber onto THIS list just with the available data we all ready had.

And with all of those so called watch lists we can't stop anyone it seems. It may offend them if we question them. We should use the Israelis method and the devil with them if they are offended.

Ron

Well it goes against our very nature, to "look people in the eye", so I think it's a long shot we would incorporate that technique.

I think a more reasonable approach is to take a hard look at the first list of 500,000 people. WHO are these folks? You can bet a good 50% of them don't need to be there. With a smaller list we could more effectively target the real threats. The problem is figuring out who the "50%" are that should not be on the list! Well, then get to work on that, figure it out.

Agreed that is a long list to try and keep track of with our incompetence. You can't get on an airplane with a can of shaving cream, but they can get on with bomb making material. I still like the Israelis way and it has proven to be far more effective than our way.

Ron :o