Quote Originally Posted by Veronica View Post
Given the numbers of people who travel here in the US I suspect we would need to get to the airport a DAY or two ahead of our flights to get interviewed by the well trained agent to see if we are terrorists.


And how many well trained agents would there need to be at every airport? How much money are those well trained agents going to get paid yearly? What funds are going to be used to pay them?

Israel as a country is like 1/10 the size of California. How many major airports do they have? Fewer than California I suspect.

What you are suggesting would be a huge undertaking and a massive financial burden on someone - either the travelers or the taxpayers.

Veronica
I beg to differ. The TSA tries to replace intelligence with mechanical checks and technology. TSA security protocols are entirely reactive: take the check on shoes or the liquids issue... Those backscatter machines were not free (they run at the tune of $100k to $200k per machine, not considering training and maintenance costs, assuming, even hoping, they spend on that at all). Perhaps that money, now lining some company's pockets, should have been used in training of the huge number of staff members the TSA already has in place. Or to train sniffer dogs. Instead of smart profiling, they terrorize people and they have the perpetual and misused threat of adding people to the no-fly list. Does anyone honestly feel safer since the TSA was created, seriously? Air marshals were a good idea -- I think that was an Israeli practice. Taking our shoes off, carrying ZIP lock bags... not so brilliant.