TSA pat-downs.

[ERNO]

NYT, TUES.,NOV.23

"The security methods employed by Israel's famous Shin Bet security service at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv are frequently stricter and more intrusive than the full body scanners and pat-downs American officals put into place Nov. 1, said security analysts and the travelers who regularly show up at Ben Gurion four hours before screening.
At Ben-Gurion, some passengers have been searched so thoroughly that they have had to walk through the terminals, the gates and up to the doors of their planes with no handbags, wallets or even shoes.
Israel has only two airports and 50 flights a day, compared with 450 airports and thousands of daily flights in the United States.
The multiethnic population of the U.S. makes it more difficult here than in Israel to profile possible terrorists, experts say, leaving officals with little choice but to screen passengers carefully for illicit items.
The former offical with the Dept. of Homeland Sec.: 'But we tried that, tried doing security checks on passengers, and a left-right coalition said' "You can't trust the government with this.", such as checking credit records and crimminal histories.
But some travelers say they would rather go through a full body scan than the system at Ben-Gurion airport.
'My experience leaving Tel aviv was by far and away the most unpleasant encounter I've ever had with airport officals in a decade. As best I could tell, things went pretty smoothly as long as you were an Israeli, or traveling with some kind of well-established tour group.' Mr. Yglesias was traveling with a group of journalists. 'The African-American woman in our group was taken off to be questioned.' The Jewish member of his group 'had the easiest time,' he said. 'The black woman had the hardest time.'