Why American Airport Security Is Really So Horrendous
This post was written by Barry Rubin and is reposted here with permission.
Why American Airport Security Is Really So Horrendous
By Barry Rubin
Security checks at American airports have become the most controversial topic in the United States. This debate is so full of mistaken assumptions and misleading ideas that it is hard to know where to start in analyzing it.
Let’s consider the terrorist threat within the United States. The opening point must be that the threat of terrorism on airplanes within the United States is very low in frequency. That doesn’t mean a successful attack might not be horrendous, but that the number of attacks the terrorists can mount is going to be small.
Ask yourself this question: How many terrorists will try this year to get on board internal U.S. plane flights? The answer might be zero and it is almost certainly lower than five.
Why is this? It is hard to mount a sophisticated attack from within the United States in the post-September 11 period. The number of people ready to be suicide terrorists in this manner is limited in the U.S. population, as is the number of good bomb-makers. Terrorists also have many other targets and, indeed, the greatest danger is an individual attack using simple technology on very easy targets, as happened at Fort Hood and on many other occasions.
The goal of U.S. internal airport security, then, is to be so impressive that it scares off terrorists, to catch any terrorists who are trying to board, and to persuade the citizenry that the situation is well in hand and that the experts know what they are doing.
Yet here’s the reality. At a railroad station in California, one of my colleagues was asked by a security screener to show his driver’s license. He started laughing and asked, “Why?”
The guard said back sarcastically, “Haven’t you heard of September 11?”
But that’s why my colleague was laughing. All of the September 11 hijackers did have valid drivers’ licenses. And a terrorist who is going to blow up something can easily get a phony driver’s license. Thus, asking for such a document makes the guard (and the public) feel better but it is utterly worthless.
No doubt, the U.S. government will claim that it has achieved the goal of keeping terrorists out of airports. But this is misleading. The TSA has literally never caught a terrorist at an airport. And why go through an airport nowadays with any reasonable level of security when you can look for relatively unguarded targets? That’s what terrorists do.
What is the strategy of a smart warrior? Get his enemy to send all of his troops to guard someplace and then hit at a weak point.
For good reason, then, the terrorists have moved to other methods and targets. Attackers have boarded planes outside the United States and put bombs on cargo planes.
As an experienced counterterrorism expert put it: “If our national security professionals bothered to read the recent Al-Qaida strategic publications they would see that the shift in Al-Qaida strategy makes most of this security theater worthless. Will the terrorists take another shot at a plane full of Americans at some point? Probably, but just like last year the threat for the next period will come from an inbound foreign flight.”
If the terrorists have shifted their priorities why should the budget, personnel, stringency of an abandoned tactic be continually intensified?
In short, this massive security force and procedure is costing hundreds of millions of dollars and harassing tens of millions of passengers in a futile attempt to locate possibly one or two terrorists a year.
One terrorist puts a bomb in his shoes that doesn’t work. Forever after, all shoes must be checked for millions of people? Terrorists plan an aborted attack using a gel. Forever after all liquids and gels must be banned and thus seized from millions of people?
When dealing with counterterrorism, resources will always be limited. If huge resources are thrown away on low-quality, ineffective, and misdirected tasks that means less attention can be paid to the real threats.
That’s why the Underpants Bomber and the Shoe Bomber and also the Times Square Bomber, and yes even the Fort Hood shooter, and others were not caught by the security system. It was too busy paying for people to pat down or x-ray Americans randomly.
People in authority don’t want to admit this because if there ever is a successful attack on a plane they don’t want to be quoted as having been wrong. But read that paragraph above, it’s the truth.
Indeed, the response is: If we don’t have this strong security what will happen if a plane blows up? Everyone will ask who let this through. Prediction: The next time there’s a real threat or-may it not happen-a plane blows up the investigation will discover that the current system wouldn’t have stopped it. That’s not speculation: it’s what has happened every time before.
Checking passengers is about the passengers themselves. If the system doesn’t do one kind of (effective) profiling it does another (silly profiling). I used to be stopped in the United States for special inspection every single time. Why? Because I was loyal to my Jerusalem travel agent, who arranged my flights. Buying a ticket outside the United States was profiled as likely to be a terrorist. So in the “dangerous” line I was usually behind the Chinese grandmother.
There are other such profiling rules like watching someone carefully if they buy a one-way ticket (knowing things like this, terrorists can afford to buy round-trip and lose their money posthumously on the second ticket), having a relatively new passport, and so on. Profiling, then, goes on but it is just the wrong kind of profiling. What is the right kind? Well, step one is to look at non-citizens who come from certain countries.
It is no exaggeration to say that the great majority of the TSA system is a waste of time, checking documented American citizens who have no motive for commiting terrorism. Put them through the metal-detecting portal, have them put their possessions on the belt that goes through the X-rated x-ray machine. That’s enough.
Here’s another counterterrorist truth:
Any security system that isn’t completely stupid—and likely to be ineffective-must put the bulk of its resources into looking at those most likely to carry out an attack.
This is not “racial” profiling since these people don’t constitute a race and aren’t being profiled because of their race any more than examining Germans in the United States during World War Two was a racial issue or looking most carefully at people from Communist states during the Cold War was racism. Yes, the Islamists will try to disguise themselves but that’s not so easy for them, though using Western converts is sometimes an alternative.
Does this inconvenience people who may seem to be Muslims, Middle Easterners, excessively nervous, not being able to account for themselves in a logical fashion, or having something suspicious in their bags? Sure it does. But does it contribute to the safety of the passengers to ignore all of these points and inconvenience one hundred times more people? Whether or not this accords with U.S. law is not my department. If it’s impossible, or wont happen for political reasons, at least have no doubt that this is the right way-and the safer way-to do things.
Rather than change and improve its methods, one trick used by the U.S. government is to reclassify certain attacks as not terrorism at all. For once the government admits that the problem derives from revolutionary Islamism, an ideology whose constituency has certain characteristics, it becomes much harder to line up everybody for potential pat-downs and x-ray machines which, by the way, don’t even detect plastic explosives but only metal, thus further reducing their value.
If I could use the specific, detailed examples given to me by friends involved in U.S. counterterrorism efforts about what’s going on behind the scenes you would be shocked at how bad the ruling experts are. They really believe that everyone is a threat and there’s no sense singling out potential Islamists radicals as the most likely terrorists. Since the Fort Hood shootings, the U.S. army has made zero progress improving its understanding of the threat and is still denying that radical Islamic sentiments might have anything to do with such attacks.
Many government experts aren’t just against profiling on moral or political grounds: they honestly think it is totally unnecessary and that random screening is better.
Here’s another point related to this kind of official blindness: Counterterrorism should never be in the hands of a bureaucracy. That work requires people who are very flexible, think outside the box, and are not tied down by institutional interests. The larger the bureaucracy the more wasteful and inefficient it is…which leads us to the Department of Homeland Security.
What’s needed is the kind of people who do special operations in the military, not those obsessed with forms and procedures. The latter are the kind of people who can say, after the Underpants Bomber got through the security and failed only because his bomb fizzled and the other passengers jumped him, that this proves the system worked.
If someone who thinks like that is in charge of protecting you, you are in serious trouble.
Critics of the existing system often cite Israel’s security procedures. The United States can learn a lot from these but, at the same time, there are also important differences. That’s another article.
But here’s the single most important and most easily adapted lesson:
Israel cannot afford the U.S. approach because it must have a system that really does stop terrorism, not just fool people into thinking everything’s okay.
In contrast, the United States can afford a gigantic, expensive system that achieves almost nothing, since the level of terrorism on passenger planes leaving U.S. airports would remain the same even if the TSA and its toys were to be caught back by, say, three-quarters or more.
The exception on this issue, as I’ve indicated above, is that it is worthwhile to invest in a high-level of security for flights arriving from outside the United States. Yet here, too, the focus brought by realistic profiling is needed.
As we saw recently, the terrorists are now working on sending cheap bombs on international cargo flights, which have not been fully checked by security. Now there will be a billion-dollar defensive program in this area as well.
So is the TSA going to check each railroad, bus, airport, and highway around the clock on the chance of finding some terrorist passing through at the same time as an army officer spoke openly of Jihad was ignored until he opened fire? Will there come a point where this all becomes too onerous, time-consuming, and expensive?
Perhaps the ultimate weapon of terrorists is not to blow up America but to bankrupt it.
Is a government and establishment proclaiming itself horrified at the idea of checking documents when someone has been stopped for due cause by a police officer—the Arizona law—to see if that person is an illegal alien going to authorize stopping and searching of any American citizen for much less of a reason?
Ultimately, the current airport security system is crazy not only because it is excessive in terms of inconvenience or violating privacy but perhaps most of all because it is a terrible way to guard against terrorism. Of course, the public can be propitiated by little changes and big promises. Countering the terrorists requires something much different.
Now if you want to read something terrific that shows the devastating failures of U.S. counterterrorism policy, check out Patrick Poole, “Failures of the U.S. Government on the Domestic Islamist Threat.”
Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader
(seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East
(Wiley), and The Truth About Syria
(Palgrave-Macmillan). You can read more of Barry Rubin’s posts at Rubin Reports.
Technorati Tag: Terrorism and Airport Security.
Hamas-linked CAIR to Muslims: Pat yourselves down in airport security checks
“It’s all right, kaffir, I have checked myself and found nothing!”
From a press release sent out by Hamas-linked CAIR — a group that never saw an anti-jihad terror initiative that it could support — today (thanks to Twostellas):
If you wear the Islamic head scarf and you are selected for secondary screening, ask the TSA officer if the reason you are being selected for secondary is because of your head scarf. If the officer confirms you were referred to secondary because of your head scarf, before you are patted down, you should remind the TSA officer, who should be of the same gender, that they are only supposed to pat down the area in question, in this scenario, your head and neck. They should not subject you to a full-body or partial-body pat-down. You can always request to pat down your own scarf, including head and neck area, and have the officer perform a residue swab of your hands.
Why American Airport Security Is Really So Horrendous
Over the past few days you have read my take on the TSA mess, now read the take of Barry Rubin, my friend and teacher:
By Barry Rubin
Suddenly, and partly due to changes in procedure, security checks at American airports have become the most controversial topic in the United States. This debate is so full of mistaken assumptions and misleading ideas that it is hard to know where to start in analyzing it.
First, let me tell two anecdotes to establish my credentials as not being complacent. In 1986 I started what I think was the first public policy research center on terrorism, at Johns Hopkins University School of International Studies. I had obtained a one-year grant from the Ford Foundation for the purpose. At the end of that time, I met with the grants officer to seek a renewal. He rejected the application, saying, “We don’t believe that terrorism will be a problem in the future.”
Second, I was attacked in a publication for being an alarmist in being so silly as to say that revolutionary Islamism was a terrorist threat to the United States. That publication came out in the first week of September 2001.
So I don’t make the points below lightly. But let’s briefly consider the terrorist threat within the United States.
The opening point must be that the threat of terrorism within the United States, including airplanes, is very low in frequency. That doesn’t mean a successful attack might not be horrendous, but that the number of attacks the terrorists can mount is going to be small.
Ask yourself this question: How many terrorists will try this year to get on board internal U.S. plane flights? The answer might be zero and it is almost certainly lower than five.
Why is this? It is hard to mount a sophisticated attack from within the United States in the post-September 11 period. The number of people ready to be suicide terrorists in this manner is limited in the U.S. population, as is the number of good bomb-makers. Terrorists also have many other targets and, indeed, the greatest danger is an individual attack using simple technology on very easy targets, as happened at Fort Hood and on many other occasions.
The goal of U.S. internal airport security, then, is two-fold: to be so impressive that it scares off terrorists and to catch any terrorists who are trying to board.
Actually, there’s a third reason, too: to persuade the citizenry that the situation is well in hand and that the experts know what they are doing.
Yet here’s the reality. At a railroad station in California, one of my colleagues was asked by a security screener to show his driver’s license. He started laughing and asked, “Why?”
The guard said back sarcastically, “Haven’t you heard of September 11?”
But that’s why my colleague was laughing. All of the September 11 hijackers did have valid drivers’ licenses. And a terrorist who is going to blow up something can easily get a phony driver’s license. Thus, asking for such a document makes the guard (and the public) feel better but it is utterly worthless.
No doubt, the U.S. government will claim that it has achieved the goal of keeping terrorists out of airports. But this is misleading. The TSA has literally never caught a terrorist at an airport. And why go through an airport nowadays with any reasonable level of security when you can look for relatively unguarded targets? That’s what terrorists do.
What is the strategy of a smart warrior? Get his enemy to send all of his troops to guard someplace and then hit at a weak point.
For good reason, then, the terrorists have moved to other methods and targets. Attackers have boarded planes outside the United States or evaded detection. A lower level of better-quality checking within the United States could get the job of deterrence done better. Indeed, if the terrorists have shifted their priorities why should the budget, personnel, stringency of an abandoned tactic be continually intensified?
In short, this massive security force and procedure is costing hundreds of millions of dollars and harassing tens of millions of passengers in a futile attempt to locate possibly one or two terrorists a year.
One terrorist puts a bomb in his shoes that doesn’t work. Forever after, all shoes must be checked for millions of people? Terrorists plan an aborted attack using a gel. Forever after all liquids and gels must be banned and thus seized from millions of people?
When dealing with counterterrorism, resources will always be limited. If huge resources are thrown away on low-quality, ineffective, and misdirected tasks that means less attention can be paid to the real threats.
That’s why the Underpants Bomber and the Shoe Bomber and also the Times Square Bomber, and yes even the Fort Hood shooter, and others were not caught by the security system. It was too busy paying for people to pat down or x-ray Americans randomly.
People in authority don’t want to admit this because if there ever is a successful attack on a plane they don’t want to be quoted as having been wrong. But read that paragraph above, it’s the truth.
Indeed, the response is: If we don’t have this strong security what will happen if a plane blows up? Everyone will ask who let this through. Prediction: The next time there’s a real threat or-may it not happen-a plane blows up the investigation will discover that the current system wouldn’t have stopped it. That’s not speculation: it’s what has happened every time before.
Checking passengers is about the passengers themselves. If the system doesn’t do one kind of (effective) profiling it does another (silly profiling). I used to be stopped in the United States for special inspection every single time. Why? Because I was loyal to my Jerusalem travel agent, who arranged my flights. Buying a ticket outside the United States was profiled as likely to be a terrorist. So in the “dangerous” line I was usually behind the Chinese grandmother.
There are other such profiling rules like watching someone carefully if they buy a one-way ticket (knowing things like this, terrorists can afford to buy round-trip and lose their money posthumously on the second ticket), having a relatively new passport, and so on. Profiling, then, goes on but it is just the wrong kind of profiling. What is the right kind? Well, step one is to look at non-citizens who come from certain countries.
It is no exaggeration to say that the great majority of the TSA system is a waste of time, checking documented American citizens who have no motive for commiting terrorism. Put them through the metal-detecting portal, have them put their possessions on the belt that goes through the X-rated x-ray machine. That’s enough.
Here’s another obvious counterterrorist truth:
Any security system that isn’t completely stupid—and likely to be ineffective-must put the bulk of its resources into looking at those most likely to carry out an attack.
This is not “racial” profiling since these people don’t constitute a race and aren’t being profiled because of their race any more than examining Germans in the United States during World War Two was a racial issue or looking most carefully at people from Communist states during the Cold War was racism. Yes, the Islamists will try to disguise themselves but that’s not so easy for them, though using Western converts is sometimes an alternative.
Does this inconvenience people who may seem to be Muslims, Middle Easterners, excessively nervous, not being able to account for themselves in a logical fashion, or having something suspicious in their bags? Sure it does. But does it contribute to the safety of the passengers to ignore all of these points and inconvenience one hundred times more people? Whether or not this accords with U.S. law is not my department. If it’s impossible, or wont happen for political reasons, at least have no doubt that this is the right way-and the safer way-to do things.
Rather than change and improve its methods, one trick used by the U.S. government is to reclassify certain attacks as not terrorism at all. For once the government admits that the problem derives from revolutionary Islamism, an ideology whose constituency has certain characteristics, it becomes much harder to line up everybody for potential pat-downs and x-ray machines which, by the way, don’t even detect plastic explosives but only metal, thus further reducing their value.
By the way, if I could use the specific, detailed examples given to me by friends involved in U.S. counterterrorism efforts about what’s going on behind the scenes you would be shocked at how bad the ruling experts are. They really believe that everyone is a threat and there’s no sense singling out potential Islamists radicals as the most likely terrorists. Since the Fort Hood shootings, the U.S. army has made zero progress improving its understanding of the threat and is still denying that radical Islamic sentiments might have anything to do with such attacks.
Many of these government experts aren’t just against profiling on moral or political grounds: they honestly think it is totally unnecessary and that random screening is better.
Here’s another point that’s partly related to this kind of official blindness: Counterterrorism should never be in the hands of a bureaucracy. That work requires people who are very flexible, think outside the box, and are not tied down by institutional interests. The larger the bureaucracy the more wasteful and inefficient it is…which leads us to the Department of Homeland Security.
What’s needed is the kind of people who do special operations in the military, not those obsessed with forms and procedures. The latter are the kind of people who can say, after the Underpants Bomber got through the security and failed only because his bomb fizzled and the other passengers jumped him, that this proves the system worked.
If someone who thinks like that is in charge of protecting you, you are in serious trouble.
Critics of the existing system often cite Israel’s security procedures. The United States can learn a lot from these but, at the same time, there are also important differences. That’s another article.
But here’s the single most important and most easily adapted lesson:
Israel cannot afford the U.S. approach because it must have a system that really does stop terrorism, not just fool people into thinking that it is effective.
In contrast, the United States can afford a gigantic, expensive system that achieves almost nothing, since the level of terrorism on passenger planes leaving U.S. airports would remain the same even if the TSA and its toys were to be caught back by, say, three-quarters or more.
The exception on this issue, as I’ve indicated above, is that it is worthwhile to invest in a high-level of security for flights arriving from outside the United States. Yet here, too, the focus brought by realistic profiling is needed.
As we saw recently, the terrorists are now working on sending cheap bombs on international cargo flights, which have not been fully checked by security. Now there will be a billion-dollar defensive program in this area as well.
So is the TSA going to check each railroad, bus, airport, and highway around the clock on the chance of finding some terrorist passing through at the same time as an army officer spoke openly of Jihad was ignored until he opened fire? Will there come a point where this all becomes too onerous, time-consuming, and expensive?
Perhaps the ultimate weapon of terrorists is not to blow up America but to bankrupt it.
Is a government and establishment proclaiming itself horrified at the idea of checking documents when someone has been stopped for due cause by a police officer—the Arizona law—to see if that person is an illegal alien going to authorize stopping and searching of any American citizen for much less of a reason?
Ultimately, the current airport security system is crazy not only because it is excessive in terms of inconvenience or violating privacy but perhaps most of all because it is a terrible way to guard against terrorism. Of course, the public can be propitiated by little changes and big promises. Countering the terrorists requires something much different.
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
Officials brief congressional staff on enhanced airport screening
WASHINGTON (CNN) – Hoping to quell growing concerns in Congress about enhanced security procedures for airline passengers, top administration officials who oversee airport security went to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to explain the new methods and why they are needed.
The closed, nearly two-hour briefing for congressional staff members included a detailed explanation of new advanced imaging technology that has sparked outrage from some passengers because it captures an image of their bodies through their clothing. Also, Transportation Security Administration officials demonstrated the invasive pat downs required for passengers who either refuse a full body scan or who need a follow-up inspection after an image is taken.
Rifles vs. Nail Clippers: The Airport Security Story of the Week
**Written by Doug Powers
No more calls please — we have a winner! Erick Erickson at Red State relays a story from somebody returning to the US from Afghanistan on a military charter that might prompt Zucker & Abraham to sue the TSA for copyright infringement.
Read it here and then come back.
Wow. And that one doesn’t even have anything to do with groped junk or the X-Posed Johnson 5000™ full body scanner.
Speaking of the Airplane franchise, the above story reminds me a little bit of this scene from Airplane II:
**Written by Doug Powers
Twitter @ThePowersThatBe
70% of Americans Want The TSA To Adopt Israeli-Type Airport Security Measures
There has been much discussion today about a Washington Post-ABC News poll which reported that Nearly two-thirds of Americans support the new full-body security-screening machines at the country’s airports, as most say they put higher priority on combating terrorism than protecting personal privacy, but half of all those polled say enhanced pat-down searches go too far.
There is another part of that poll not reported by in the WAPO article. The part about profiling:
As another tool in airport security efforts, this poll finds broad support for passenger profiling – but with that support heavily dependent on profile elements. Eighty-six percent say personal behavior should be a factor, and 78 percent say a passenger’s travel history should be included in his or her security profile. Fewer, but 55 percent, favor including a passenger’s nationality, and half would include his or her personal appearance.
Other potential elements, however, garner majority opposition as elements to include in a security profile. Fifty-nine percent oppose using a passenger’s race or religion, and 65 percent say sex should not be a factor.
There are differences among groups, with profiling generally winning more support from Republicans, conservatives, men and whites, as well as, naturally, among those who see security as a higher national priority than protecting privacy rights. But there are commonalities as well; racial profiling, for instance, is opposed by six in 10 whites and non-whites alike.
In the past, Americans had nixed anything close to the Israeli system of profiling. (for a full explanation of how Israel works click here) claiming it casts suspicion on one sector of the population mostly Arabs and Muslims. According to Robert Gibbs the reason US authorities refused to adopt Israeli methods was because “Israel has one international airport and we have 450 of them that makes all the difference”.
But based on the latest information, maybe America is ready to give it a try.
Feel free to reproduce any article but please link back to http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com
Fun with airport security
Blake Eskin ingeniously taps The New Yorker’s cartoon archive on the subject, dating back to the late 1930s.
This one is from 1972. They’re pretty great.
(h/t reader LL)
Airport Security: Gellin’ Like a Felon
I stumbled upon an AOL article titled “What Not to Wear: How to Speed Through Airport Security.” As a fairly experienced traveler, nothing was new to me except this:
Gel Shoe Inserts: Gel shoe inserts are not permitted, so save yourself the hassle and put your inserts in your checked baggage — that’s right, inserts are not even allowed in your carry-on. Shoes constructed with gel heels are allowed but like all other shoes, must be removed and screened.
Now, as it happens, I don’t wear gel insoles, although I do wear over-the-counter leather orthodics in my dress shoes. But, seriously, we’re not allowed to wear insoles now?! Or even carry them in our carry-on luggage?
I’m sure this is somehow Richard Reid related. But it’s not immediately clear why inserts in checked baggage are less dangerous than those on board the aircraft. I suppose the latter could be ignited via a lighter or other crude flame-producing device. But those aren’t allowed on board, either.
Congressman-elect Allen West says government should rethink airport body scans, pat down
Congressman-elect Allen West said Monday the government needs to rethink the imposition of the full body image scans or extensive pat downs of airline passengers.
“I think it has to be rethought,” he said in an interview. “Look. This has become a preeminent story of the past week. And the voices are out there. If it was a great idea we wouldn’t be backing off from it. We’ve backed off from the children. We’ve backed off from the pilots.”
West, who becomes the congressman for the Broward-Palm Beach county 22nd Congressional district in January, returned to South Florida on Sunday after a week of orientation for incoming members of Congress.
He said Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., didn’t have the new kind of body scanner for his flight, so he wasn’t forced with making a body scan versus pat down choice.
“Between the two I would do the body scan and not the pat down. I do think that the pat down is very invasive.”
West said it’s an example of what he thinks doesn’t work too well in the way the government operates generally, and particularly when it comes to thinking strategically about the threat from terrorists.
Airport Security, Israeli Style; Strip Search Anyone?
This interesting piece was published today in the Israeli publication Ynetnews. Think the TSA is intrusive? There’s a reason the Israelis have great airplane security. And it’s not because they take a “hands-off” approach. An excerpt:
“Before checking-in for my flight, passengers were required to undergo a brief security interview. As part of this, I was asked what I was doing in Amsterdam and who I was staying with. My answer: ‘Visiting two Australian friends from law school currently living in Holland.’ Security asked for their names. I had nothing to conceal and neither did my friends, so I gave security their names as requested. This should have been a simple affair if it was not for the sole reason that one of my friends, born and raised in Australia, happened to have an Arabic sounding surname.
Immediately and without explanation, my bags and passport were taken from me and further security appeared demanding to know whether this girl was really Australian. I found this question offensive: she is as ‘Australian’ as I am, just without my ’stereotypical’ blond hair and blue eyes. They started questioning her background, which made me think: if she or I were any type of security threat, would I openly say her name? Of course not. The situation didn’t seem rational to me.
I was directed to a different boarding gate to all other passengers. A lady was waiting for me at the gate and ordered me to follow her into an isolated, underground section of the terminal where I was placed in the custody of approximately five security officers . Needless to say, a very intimidating and confusing situation.
There, security officers spoke between themselves in Hebrew, which I cannot understand, and provided me with no explanation of what was happening even though I kept asking. Again, without any explanation, I was ordered to a private room with two female security officers with the only English instructions being ‘move over there and bring whatever money you have with you.’
This did not clarify things for me. I again tried to enquire what was going on because, but again, they continued to communicate only in Hebrew and still I received no response to my questions. Eventually I received a response when I asked, ‘Is this a random security check?’ One lady paused and barked at me, ‘No.’ I was silent after this.
In this room, I was strip searched. I was ordered to remove my shirt, pants and bra. Again, no explanation was given as to why I was being ordered to remove my clothes. The security officers still spoke in Hebrew on radios between the rooms. I was ordered to put my clothes back on and join the other security officers in the first room. I was given a chair in the corner of the room behind a partial screen to sit and wait while every item of my backpack was examined in detail, my laptop was taken from my sight and the occasional question thrown at me across the room.”
