Originally Posted by HeathrowGuy
Racial profiling for terrorism is pointless - al-Qaeda has long since moved on to recruiting persons of African and -- wait for it -- European descent, and I pity the person or country who thinks that screening Arabs will keep them safe.
There was an article in the International Herald Tribune shortly after 9/11 that interviewed a bunch of right-wing groups of white people (I believe these were mostly in Germany) that saw Osama as a hero for what he was doing. I'm not sure if they agreed with his specific politics, but they definitely liked the tactics. I think there's some potential for these types of people to get into the terrorism game. And no amount of discrimination against Middle Easterners is going to help that.
Originally Posted by delpreston
Of note, the 20th 9/11 hijacker was "profiled" by Customs agent and Vietnam vet Jose Melendez-Perez. It was stated that he wasn't afraid of the "profiling" label. In turning away Mohammed Al-Qahtani, believed to have been the 20th hijacker for UA 93.
At one time "profiling" was considered good police work.
Customs does profile, but it's not a "dark skin = bad" profile. That kind of simplicity gets one nowhere.
And Customs is a whole different thing than the airport checkpoint. TSA agents are neither trained to do anything besides look for contraband, nor are they empowered to do "police work."