[Andoror]

A top Israeli airport security expert says the new screening procedures being implemented by the Transportation Security Administration are a "hysterical" reaction to the terrorist threat.

Ben Gurion Airport's former director of security Pini Schiff warns that the TSA pat-downs and body scanners won't be effective in pinpointing terrorists.

"When you are wasting time and when you are wasting manpower and the level of service to the passengers is so low - something is missing in the way of finding the passenger you are looking for," he said.

"When millions of passengers are suspected, how can you find the one suspect passenger you are looking for? It's impossible to do," he concluded.

Schiff also says the new system will be impossible to sustain and said he wonders what will happen when it breaks down.

Israel, a world leader in aviation security, began implementing profiling techniques in the 1970s.

"Already from the early 1970s our security officials realized that we had to check commercial cargo, not just travelers, hand bags, and luggage," Schiff said in a recent interview with Army Radio.

"Profiling is the key," he told the Jerusalem Post. "There are many different elements that need to be looked at - who is sending the cargo, what is being sent and where it is going."

Opponents of profiling say such methods could lead to religious or ethnic discrimination.

"We are not talking about discrimination," Schiff told the U.K.'s Sky News.

"We are talking about passengers who have to be checked differently to other passengers," he explained. "It can be a Jew, Christian, Muslim whatever."