When bloggers write, thousands read. When Parade, the Sunday supplement, publishes a story, it reaches millions. Today's issue contained a piece called "The Wrong Way Protect Airports?", with a title phrased as a rhetorical question to which many of us answered "yes" even before it was asked.
Writer Lyric Wallwork Winik compared Transportation Security procedures, which since the agency was established have involved an increasing amount of technology (X-rays, metal detectors, chemical sniffers, "puff portals" and such, with the Israeli system. She wrote:
"Israel, home to many of the world’s most devastating terror attacks, has a
different approach to security. Liquid sizes are restricted, but first-class
passengers are given steak knives. Travelers in Israel are interviewed by highly
trained security experts.
In the U.S., billions are spent instead on scanning machines and other
technology to detect weapons. 'The Israelis ask questions, and they profile the
situation, not the person,' explains Seth Cropsey, a former Defense Department
official. 'It’s often a much more thorough approach to
security.'”
The TSA, she writes, "is rolling out new procedures that it says will keep us safer when we fly... Some specifics? New shirts and headsets for checkpoint workers, plus two days of specialized training in how to keep passengers calm."
Winik reported that the agency stationed placed "more than 2,000 behavior-detection experts at airports across the country,' but critics say U.S. security strategy still focuses too much on finding bombs rather than bombers." Israel is certainly a far smaller country than the US and it has a small fraction of the total number of America's airports and airplanes, but it also has a far smaller popular from whom to draw security personnel and train them in "behavior detection" -- and I'm willing to bet that the training takes longer than two days or even the length of time US agents are trained in these skills.
TSA defenders claim that the near seven-year period between 9/11 and now proves that the agency's policies have been effective. Others of us would argue that international terrorism has gone after non-US targets to keep everyone guessing -- or that the US government, with the support of sensationalist mainstream media, has fomented such a climate of fear that no further attacks on "the homeland" are necessary.
Seth Cropsey, whom Winik identifies as "Seth Cropsey, a former Defense Department official," told her, that we really don’t know if “the massive amount of technology that we have thrown at the problem actually works or whether it has been intelligence and other methods overseas that have prevented another air attack. I hate to speculate on that answer, because I fly.”
Whatever the reality, I glad that a mass-market publication has introduced this topic to the general public. Is the public buying the TSA line? Perhaps not. Parade included a reader poll asking the question, "Does America have the right approach to airline security?" As of now, 94 percent of the respondents replied "no" with only 6 percent replying "yes."
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