One thing that I can't get out of my head. The last few weeks have been "All 9/11, all the time" on the History and Discovery channels. I've seen multiple interviews with the gate agent who checked in Mohamad Atta. The gate agent said that, during the check in, he thought to himself, "If anyone might be a terrorist, it's this guy." He thought so because of a combination of factors -- Atta's middle Eastern appearance was part of it, but, primarily, it was Atta's demeanor. The gate agent said that, though Atta was polite, there was a "look" of intense hatred about him. The gate agent ignored his impressions of Atta, partly because he thought it was, essentially, bigotry and partly because he simply wasn't sure.

I do agree, however, that at this moment in history the danger of terrorism comes almost exclusively from one source (though, obviously, all Muslims and Arabs are not terrorists) -- it's silly to point to McVeigh or Cuban hijackings from 60s to suggest that the terrorism threat is equally dispersed through the entire world population. However, I don't think inclusionary profiling based solely on ethnicity or religion can work because of the difficulty of defining when someone meets the profile.

I do think exclusionary profiling makes sense -- there is little chance that a threat will be prevented by screening 80 year old couples from Des Moines or toddlers from Austin. Similarly, I think screening most FTers -- frequent flyers who fly on business and have years-long histories with the airlines that are readily documented, makes no sense.

Is it possible that some terrorist group will recruit a 70 year old couple from Des Moines? Sure. Is it likely? Absolutely not. It is far more likely that a terrorist will hide some C4 in a radio (this brought down Pan Am 103), pay off some ramp worker to leave a pistol at a seat, or simply use a Stinger missle near an airport.

I also think that security procedures must be flexible enough to, for example, have allowed the gate agent who checked in Atta to have acted on his suspicions without risking being deemed a racist. Unfortunately, I don't think either DHS or TSA, given their current level of administration and training, are capable of exercising this kind of discretion and discrimination.

It is impossible to make flying completely safe from a terrorist determined to bring down a plane, short of introducing the most extraordinary and intrusive security measures. However, security procedures can certainly be refined and focused to maximize benefit and minimize inconvenience to the travelling public -- Israel does it successfully on El Al.