{"id":186552,"date":"2013-12-23T19:48:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-24T00:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/12\/23\/one-of-the-best-articles-on-security-theater-ive-seen-this-far\/"},"modified":"2013-12-23T19:48:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-24T00:48:00","slug":"one-of-the-best-articles-on-security-theater-ive-seen-this-far","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/12\/23\/one-of-the-best-articles-on-security-theater-ive-seen-this-far\/","title":{"rendered":"One of the Best Articles on Security Theater I&#8217;ve Seen this Far"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Read this essay from a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cracked.com\/blog\/7-reasons-tsa-sucks-a-security-experts-perspective\/\">former head of security at Ben Gurion airport<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">For a bunch of people in snappy uniforms patting down crotches, the  TSA is remarkably unpopular. Nobody likes going through security at the  airport, but you probably figured most of it had a point. All those  hours spent in line with other shoeless travelers are a necessary  precursor to safe flying. It&#8217;s annoying, but at least it wards off  terrorism.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span> <span style=\"color: blue;\">That&#8217;s all bullsh%$. The TSA couldn&#8217;t protect you from a 6-year-old  with a water balloon. What are my qualifications for saying that? My  name is Rafi Sela, and I was the head of security for the <a href=\"http:\/\/securitysolutions.com\/news\/security_exposing_hostile_intent\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">world&#8217;s safest airport<\/a>. Here&#8217;s what your country does wrong.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He is clear, and concisely explains the systemic problems present in the agency.<\/p>\n<p>This is the money quote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Of course, after a little while it came out that these scanners were useless. I could strap a bomb capable of taking down a 747 to my body and walk right through a body scanner. Nobody would catch me. I&#8217;d rather not explain exactly how, but this German man was able to sneak a fake bomb through the same scanners without being caught. And he did it in Germany, a country where &#8220;airport security officer&#8221; isn&#8217;t a synonym for &#8220;failed Walmart cashier.&#8221;<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>His basic thesis is that the organization is fatally flawed because it is designed to regulate itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Read this essay from a former head of security at Ben Gurion airport: For a bunch of people in snappy uniforms patting down crotches, the TSA is remarkably unpopular. Nobody likes going through security at the airport, but you probably figured most of it had a point. All those hours spent in line with other &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1002,1159,1061,1181,1248],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-writing","category-israel","category-security","category-travel","category-when-did-cracked-magazine-become-cool"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186552"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}