Now, I'm not saying profile *just* because they're Arabic.Okay, but it seemed that you did. Okay, Arabic, in the US and trying to board a plane.
Is that detailed enough. :)
There are lots of suspicious behaviors. Richard Reid, so-called "Shoe Bomber", a British citizen with British papers, perhaps not obviously Arabic but certainly a bit odd-looking with a "druggie" look (one account says, and the pictures I've seen agree with that assessment), raised red flags when he tried to board a flight from Paris to Miami - so much so that he missed his plane while being interrogated.You've never seen me. I've never been interrogated, but I've been felt up a few times.
So, you buy all the terrorists nice suits and such. The problem is focusing on a "look". All it takes to crack that system is changing your look.
Perhaps the white chick with the Arab boyfriend might not raise the same flags, but her carry-on baggage has to go through the same machines.Yep. And if we were talking machines, it would be harder. But we're talking about people manning the machines. Then it becomes easy to get stuff through, as you've noted.
Current airline security is *still* a joke.And it will always be a joke.
Until we grow up and realize that what a person looks like is NOT a reliable indicator of whether s/he is a terrorist or not.
In your previous post, you talked about searching all the Arabs coming through the airport.
This is a problem because it conditions the security personnel to focus on the Arabic look.
The security personnel are human and will make mistakes. To crack them, you send a series of false positives through. Meanwhile, you're slipping your weapons through on the least Arabic looking mule you can find.
Richard Reid was brought down by fellow passengers, not security screeners, but he's one fellow who could have and should have been profiled out the wazoo.Exactly. When you ONLY try to secure the access points, you have problems. Each flight should have one or two ARMED and UNIFORMED security personnel next to the cockpit. Facing the passengers.
Defense in depth.
Check for weapons before allowing them on the plane.
Our gun them while on the plane.
Lock the cockpit from the inside.
Even this won't prevent 100% of the attacks. A terrorist can still spend years working his/her way up to commercial pilot and then crash into a building.
But this will reduce the threat. Make it as difficult as possible. Make it as time consuming as possible.