Comment by breppp
11 hours ago
most of airport security rests on the notion of going over a series of long tests will elicit unusual (fear, stress) responses from malicious actors and these can then be flagged for even thorougher checks which will then eventually lead to discovery, banning or removal of luggage
so it's not the test accuracy by itself but rather then the fact that these tests are happening at all
You have surprising faith that the system is well designed.
Malicious actors don't get as stressed as normal people who don't want to miss their flight about the long series of obviously pointless tests. Why would they?
And there isn't anyone who surveils the queues and takes the worried looking for further checks. This can happen around immigration checks. It happens for flights to Israel. But not in routine airport security.
Why would they? Because they are about to do the thing they planned to do for months or years? Because they may be risking their own life? Because they're worried about getting caught rather than following through? Because no matter how prepared they are they have never done that EXACT scenario before at that exact airport with those exact people? Because the human mind is a lizard brain even with training and preparation?
Still not a perfect systems, other countries manage this part much better (I've heard Israel is especially good at it, but I don't have direct evidence).
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> going over a series of long tests will elicit unusual (fear, stress) responses from malicious actors
Oh, man. Let me tell you what kind of response going over a series of long tests by armed authority figures elicits on normal good-intended people...
This kind of thinking is as legitimate as believing lie detectors work, i.e., not at all.
Israel is using those methods in their airport security, quite successfully given their threat level. The problem is that it does not scale well and requires very well trained and attentive personnel.
These guys turn up a number of "false positives" and use those backrooms to abuse Palestinian travelers.
I have not been recently to Israel, so I do not know if there have been any changes in their system.
However, some time ago, for a few years I had been a frequent flyer into Israel.
In my opinion their system of airport security seemed far more efficient than what is now typical in Europe and immensely better than the circus that seems typical for USA.
The disadvantage is as you said, that their system requires numerous well trained personnel.
At least at that time, their system had very little emphasis on physical searching and luggage scanning, but it was based mainly on interviewing the traveler, normally by 2 different agents.
During a great number of security checks, my luggage has been searched only once, and it was definitely my fault. That flight was at the end of an extremely busy day and I was very tired, so I just wished for the security check to end as quickly as possible, to be able to finally rest in the plane. My impatience was transparent, which made me suspicious, leading to this singular case of physical searching, instead of just psychological assessment.
{{citation needed}}