Possible Profiling of Passengers
 

From Government Executive.com (govexec.com) magazine

Homeland Security officials and Republican lawmakers have begun downplaying the need for more bomb-detection technology, calling instead for expanded government monitoring and airline passenger profiling -- including, as House Homeland Security Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., now suggests, pulling those of Middle Eastern descent out of airport lines for additional questioning.

These officials say last week's foiled plot in London to take down U.S.-bound airliners revealed the limits of current airport screening technology because the suspects planned to use common household liquids that probably would have gone undetected.

"We could have had all the liquid explosives detection systems in the world ... and that wouldn't have picked up the materials that these guys were using," one congressional source said. Instead, lawmakers and administration officials are now evaluating whether doing more surveillance and profiling of people makes more sense than trying to deploy technology for every conceivable threat.

Here is the link to the entire article.

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cf...789&dcn=e_gvet

Thanks for the article.

There are a few threads (actually a bunch of them) discussing this, including Peter King's comment. (King's eyes are clouded by racism by the way, so it's no surprise he's advocating this.)

Here is just one of the very recent threads discussing racist/tribalist/behavioral profiling:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=589371

Don't they already do this?
 

A former colleague of mine holds EU nationality and passport, yet is of Syrian origin and ethniticity. Without failure, he's picked out of security lines, immigration lines and subjected to customs on every single flight to/from the US. He's the nicest guy and has no criminal record - I can only guess that "profiling" is the reason that he's singled out.

When he's flying into the US, he always avoid same-day connections, since he routinely takes 2-3h to get through immigration (after standing in ine for 45 min) while being interviewed, etc -- even for a simple business trip.

I can kind of see the logic, however it may have let the Afro-Carribean and the white guy slip throw who were arrested as two of the 21 who were implicated in the liquid bomb plot last week.

...

I used to work with a guy of Pakistani heritage. When he was coming back from Columbia, en-route to Pakistan via Heathrow he was apparently tailed by the FBI from Miami airport to his hotel, and pulled aside for questioning as he was checking in for his one night layover. They calmed down pretty quickly when they heard his exceptionally posh English accent though. :rolleyes:

So, how would they go about doing this?

While long-term frequent flyers should be the least of threats, given the mentality in TSA right now, I can see the decision being made like this: "He flys a lot? Then he deserves surveillance and in-depth monitoring of everything he does on and off the plane. Why? Because he flies a lot".

While I generally support some sort of behavioral observation (call it profiling if you will) if it's done right, I am less than confident that the government will get it right.

As if accent is a fool proof discriminant. Omar Sheikh Saeed, a known terrorist had perfect English accent too. Many of the suspects, I am sure have English accent, although it might not be the RP kind (standard BBC).

He's more of the "I say old chap, what seems to be the problem? Terrible business all this bother, don't you say?" type.

The company he works for (/I worked for) is pretty important in the travel industry, so the hotel would have been expecting him and waiting to lay on the best service possible and all that. They may have helped smooth things over.

Amusingly I did comment before he left that doing whistlestop tour of drug-hotspot to drug-hotspot to terrorist-hotspot was almost certainly going to get him a bit of attention along the way... But even then I wasn't expecting him to be tailed by agents. Eeep!

The term "profiling" now has negative connotations--they need another term if such a program is to be implemented. However, as another poster indicated, it seems that "intelligent screening" is already ongoing. I would be surprised if the government didn't have a profiling dimension to their screening.

Actually, the term profiling has increasingly positive connotations. That's why the new PC run amok is: "Don't bother me, bother 'them'; I don't look like a terrorist, 'they' do."

So called "behavioral profiling/screening", "intelligent screening", etc will just provide cover to implement racist/tribalist-profiling. Such terms as those are euhpemistic ones that put out smoke and mirrors to hide the racist/tribalist element that the advocates of such have in mind but don't want to openly admit for it might sabotage their hopes/expectations.

Immigration/customs already does racist/tribalist profiling -- even against US citizens -- but that still doesn't make it right. Also, CAPPSII/SecureFlight already has a racist/tribalist-profiling component to it.

I love your measured language! ;)

I don't agree with the conclusions you reach. To recap what I said in another thread: bad people need to be targeted. I am glad to hear that there is a program in place that already targets people based on some calculus that they may be involved in untoward activities.

I know you don't agree with what I've stated. ;)

Bad people don't get targeted well at airports. A multi-hour, multi-day, multi-week, multi-month, multi-year investigation often enough messes up; and there's even less reason to believe that a 10-minute to 220-minute "size up" by an airport-based interrogator is going to work or work better. If targeting bad people is the objective, that's best done somewhere besides at an airport.

Systematic singling out of people who look a certain type is deplorable, despicable and racist. To call it anything, such as profiling, is PC crap. ;)

Well, what they're doing today looks a lot like this!

Exactly. "Profiling": code-phrase for "we need racism". :eek: :(

Omar Sheikh Saeed was a very well edcuated too. OSS went to London School of Economics. It's not unsual for England educated Indians and Pakistanis, let alone those born and bred and educated in England to speak with perfect WEnglish accent. Having heard neither your freidn, nor OSS, I couldn't tell you if their accents would be the same.

Racial profiling actually does very little to catch the actual 'bad guys'. I just did a paper on Racial Profiling for a Criminal Investigations class and have learned quite a bit. Racial Profiling, while most associate this against black people, has since 9/11 greatly included people of Arab descent. The most ridiculous case I found was of an 8 year old boy in Oklahoma, who is of Arab descent, being routinely stopped at the airport for questioning (away from his parents). Apparantly his Cub Scout pinewood derby racecar was considered suspect in his carry-on, because it was disassembled in Tulsa.

This kind of stuff just serves to piss off the moderate Muslim citizens, who are the best weapon we have in calming or locating the extremists.

But this isn't about what they look like, it's about how they react to questions.

And it's crazy to pretend that profiling doesn't happen. If you want law enforcement to do any good then there will be profiling.

I've been profiled once going into England. I understand why, we looked suspicious (in a leech sense, not a criminal sense.) I'm a bit annoyed with the immigration guy who wouldn't drop a theory that had been disproved

That's what they all say. That's not how it works out. ;)

Just because racism exists doesn't make racism right. And good law enforcement is different than good security screening. The core purposes are not the same.

Immigration screening is not security screening for they have different core purposes. And just because one individual understands "why" something happened to them, doesn't mean it's as acceptable for other individuals. That is, it may be ok to volunteer yourself for additional screening (including racist profiling), but it's not ok to volunteer others for the same against their wishes.

Spot on.

There was a story in the UK papers about about 12 yr old boy who this week ran away from home and was able to get through airport security then get on a plane - all without a boarding pass and without a pasport or any ID.

Everyone just assumed he was withsome one and was no threat. Because he was a white middle class average looking 12 yr old.

But what if someone indoctrinated him to take a bomb on board? Everyone on that plane would be dead while security are happy with a charade of "profiling people."

Its nonsense. If everyone has not been checked there is NO security - just a lot of theater. Feels good - if you are not the one being profiles - but does NOTHING to make anyone safer.