[oh_no_my_eyes]

From the article.. -- I once asked Michael Chertoff, the secretary of Homeland Security, about this. "We actually ultimately do have a vision of trying to move the security checkpoint away from the gate, deeper into the airport itself, but there’s always going to be some place that people congregate. So if you’re asking me, is there any way to protect against a person taking a bomb into a crowded location and blowing it up, the answer is no." --

The implications of this reality have to be considered. The TSA does not exist to protect passengers on the planes. The TSA exists to prevent terrorists from getting the planes themselves and using them as weapons. If terrorists wanted to kill you, the passenger, then they would indeed do so as you waited to be screened through security. I guess you can take some comfort in the fact that they don't hate you, personally, for your freedoms...

[tesseract]

> We actually ultimately do have a vision of trying to move the security checkpoint away from the gate, deeper into the airport itself

Like at Schiphol?

[frossie]

Or CDG or ATH or many other (if not most) European airports.

Screening at the gates makes a lot of sense in terms of traffic flow, as you don't get huge queues, and airline personnel hold the plane if there are security hold-ups. Also if there is a breach, you only have to shut down a few gates rather than the whole airport.

The problem is that this will br very difficult to retrofit in many existing US airports because they weren't designed with that in mind.