9-11, CO airlines and sheep…..

I’ve never been to Israel, but all I have read about flying on El Al leads me to believe that this type of screening may have prevented this guy from getting on board. The people at El Al don’t jsut ask 3 questions and then let you on. You have to get there well in advance of your flight and be expected to get grilled. If you don’t answer in a way that they are comfortable with, you don’t get on the plane.

As I stated in that article, members of his family were aware of his mental state, prior to and during the event. Had they notified officials prior to him getting to the airport and said \”my emotioanally unstable relative has had some recent outbursts and is now on his way to the airport. You may want to give him a good screening\”.

But maybe that is too much to ask for, especially if you are related to the person. I guess we should just let these types of things continue until some bad guy does use this technique. baa baa baaaaaaa

How would I be giving up my security and rights by answering a series of questions that would allow an airline official to determine if I was a threat or not? I’m not suggesting that they pry into intimate details of your life. But at some point this type of mental unstability example will cause more problems for security than the \”erosion of privacy\”.

Most all airlines look to El Al for their experience in weeding out possible terrorists and other dangerous elements from getting on their planes. Do Israelis or people going to Israel feel like this is an infringement? Maybe. But when people have been killed enough times due to lax security measures, you start to allow for more security to be put in place. You start to understand that actually getting to your destination in one piece might take more precedance than the song and dance you had to go through just to board the plane.

I do care what they do in other countries, not what they think of us(not sure why you brought that up), because we were the ones who had planes crash into buildings more recently. So if they have been able to avoid such an attack I want to know how and if there is something we can learn from them.

Benjamin Franklin said ‘Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither’. And I agree with that, but by that logic we should also remove the metal detectors, the sniffing dogs and all the police officers because there might be an infringement somewhere. I’m sure if you got a good ACLU lawyer you could find all kinds of infringements.

I think there is a lot of gray area in between and thats where we should find solutions instead of the slippery slope arguements because I just don’t see this as the slippery slope that you do.

fyi- The last flight I took was a year ago and it took ten minutes to get through security, including the removal of my shoes. The ridiculous questions they asked me were meant not to prevent a situation but basically as a CYA protocol for the airlines.