This doesn't agree with my experience at all. I've had flights in the US, England, Spain, Bahrain, the UAE, Japan, and China, and the US is by far the most invasive and tedious.
I think it's unique to the US that you need to take off your shoes, thoroughly empty all your pockets and take off your belt, get scanned by the new RapiScan things, and throw away your bottles of water (well, I've experienced that in some of the other countries, but not all).
I'm curious what other people's experience are like. Taligent's comment caught me by surprise because my international airport experience has almost invariably ended with, "wow, that was refreshingly painless. I wish the US was still like this".
My experience was the same. I flew in India, China, Australia and UK last year, and I didn't have to take off my shoes or worry about liquids (except they would so secondary screening for liquids in the boarding areas on US bound flights).
US however was the only place where I could leave my 11" Air in the bag.
I live in Spain and do domestic flights quite a lot (although, high-speed rail is looking better for me every day… 2h30 from city center to city center vs a 1h20 flight plus the train from and to the city, rail is sometimes better), and I always follow the same procedure: take off my watch, empty my pockets, remove my belt, get the tablet/laptop out and put everything in a tray with my backpack on top of it.
I've been asked several times to remove my shoes when those shoes were 'high' shoes, ie. covering a bit over the ankle. Now every time I fly I make sure to have the right shoes, and start removing stuff before arriving at the checkpoint. It does't take long to get past security (I've done under 5 minutes), but still I have to get half-naked and often checked. And it's annoying. HSR (and leaving the VIP lounge, already included in the ticket which has a very reasonable price, ten minutes before the train leaves) is so much better. And just walking past security without having to get half-naked, that too (get your bag through the X-Ray to see if you're carrying something huge and dangerous and that's it).
I think it's unique to the US that you need to take off your shoes, thoroughly empty all your pockets and take off your belt, get scanned by the new RapiScan things, and throw away your bottles of water (well, I've experienced that in some of the other countries, but not all).
I'm curious what other people's experience are like. Taligent's comment caught me by surprise because my international airport experience has almost invariably ended with, "wow, that was refreshingly painless. I wish the US was still like this".