Originally Posted by
battensea
Getting back to the issue of the slippery slope to racial profiling that this BDO program is on ...
Unfortunately, there are all too many voices, even among members of Congress, overtly calling for routine use by the TSA of profiling based on race, ethnicity, and religion.
Throw in a measly 4 - 5 days of training and pressure to meet implicit quotas into that mix and there's no way that this program can not lead to abuses of civil liberties.
The irony is that many, if not all, of those voices are from folks who are
certain that they won't fit the 'profile'. They are foolish enough to envision a checkpoint where only the 'suspicious' folks are singled out, via profiling, for manhandling of their persons and their belongings.
These same voices no doubt envision a much smoother experience at the checkpoint - white grandma can take her oversize bottle of shampoo, little white boy won't get groped.
It never occurs to these voices that the 'profiling' isn't going to change the checkpoint into a 2-layer system, sanity for 'good folks' and a multi-layered gauntlet for the suspicious folks. These are probably some of the same voices who didn't realize that being 'innocent' and subjecting one's self to the NoS was absolutely no guarantee one wouldn't get groped. The BDO harassment will simply be layered atop everything else.
I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere. I wonder if 'trusted travellers' will still have to run the BDO gauntlet?
Re: Israeli security. Can't remember her name now, but a US Cabinet Secretary (IIRC) got pulled aside for a very extended screening coming back from Israel. I think, although she obviously didn't say so, that she was shocked because she naturally assumed that as an American political figure, she was above suspicion.