I just discovered, through reading Jeffrey Goldberg's blog, that the Shin Bet (the Israeli internal security agency) has a web site! Somehow, this seems contrary to the image I have that security agencies should be secret! If you're interested, here it is: The Israeli Security Agency.
Goldberg cited an interesting terrorism case that happened in 1986, of Anne-Marie Murphy, whose Jordanian boyfriend gave her a bomb to carry onto an El Al flight. She was six months pregnant (by him). If the bomb had blown up, almost 400 people would have been killed on the flight. I remember traveling to Israel a year or two after that and going through Israeli security. The security agent asked me if I knew why he was asking me all those questions - and then proceeded to tell me the Anne-Marie Murphy story.
Today I went through the security line in Ithaca, where fortunately they don't have one of the screening machines that can see under people's clothes. We did, of course, have to take off our shoes and put our baggies of containers holding less than 3 oz. of liquid in the bin. At least the TSA employees were polite.
airport security is the worst thing, yet. esp. for people from south asia and middle east. the TSA would pull me aside just because of the color of my skin. its just as simple as that. random checks, hmmm.
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