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2005-04-12 Home Front: WoT

Dallas Airport Puts in New Bag-Scan System

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Posted by Steve White 2005-04-12 12:08:10 AM|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 All well and good, but when will we finally stop placing all our hopes in technology and hire intelligent, college-educated screeners like the ones El Al uses?

They've been doing it for 30 years, and it works: ask each passenger a few basic questions-- where are you headed, what are you doing there, why is it you have no baggage for your one-way ticket, Mr Atta? -- and ferret out the nervous and the liars. The screeners need some psychology training but not much else. Pay 'em maybe $60k each, hire a lot of psych and social work grads, maybe some ex-military as well.

Total annual cost might be 30,000 screeners nationwide x FTE cost of 100k/screener = ~$3B per year. Low-tech? Sure, and a helluva lot more effective.

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-12 12:26:46 AM|| 2005-04-12 12:26:46 AM|| Front Page Top

#2 I wouldn't argue against the principle, Lex. I'd vastly prefer the El Al approach to what we have at terminal 1 at O'Hare today. But you still have to screen the bags, and using some technology to sniff for stuff is good.

Posted by Steve White 2005-04-12 12:40:47 AM|| 2005-04-12 12:40:47 AM|| Front Page Top

#3 Agreed. But technology will never be more than 99% effective, and that failure rate's far too high.

Note that the other beauty of the screener approach is that focuses heavily on the target demographic groups without applying any racial profiling. Grannies need not be strip searched; nervous young men who can't get their story straight get further questioning.

OTOH you avoid false positives like the syrian musicians who flew from Detroit to Vegas and LA a couple years back. A screener at Detroit metro airport who's actually from Detroit and knows the local arab culture and music scene could have asked them a few music-related questions and would have determined quickly that the group actually were the musicians they claimed to be.

Works for the Israelis and can work for us.

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-12 12:52:35 AM|| 2005-04-12 12:52:35 AM|| Front Page Top

#4 Not just El Al. I took KLM to the Holy Land and met the same Israeli screeners at the Amsterdam Airport, Schiphol. They are good.

Posted by sea cruise 2005-04-12 4:12:51 AM|| 2005-04-12 4:12:51 AM|| Front Page Top

#5 Sea Cruise - what did the screeners ask you?

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-12 10:12:08 AM|| 2005-04-12 10:12:08 AM|| Front Page Top

#6 They've been doing it for 30 years, and it works: ask each passenger a few basic questions-- where are you headed, what are you doing there, why is it..

As long as a large and vocal number of people are more concerned with "sensitivity" than security, this isn't going to happen.

..focuses heavily on the target demographic groups without applying any racial profiling.

I can practically guarantee that any action that focused on a "group" would not go unchallenged.

Posted by Bomb-a-rama 2005-04-12 11:01:56 AM|| 2005-04-12 11:01:56 AM|| Front Page Top

#7 It's not focused on any group, rather individuals who appear nervous and/or whose story doesn't check out. As I mentioned, this works to the great advantage of not only grannies but also normal legitimate muslim travelers like those syrian musicians traveling from Detroit to LA a year ago

Posted by thibaud (aka lex) 2005-04-12 9:54:38 PM|| 2005-04-12 9:54:38 PM|| Front Page Top

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