by Matt Barr

Security profiling deserves a more thoughtful discussion than it's getting

Muslims face extra checks in new travel crackdown, reports the Times Online:

THE [U.K.] Government is discussing with airport operators plans to introduce a screening system that allows security staff to focus on those passengers who pose the greatest risk.

The passenger-profiling technique involves selecting people who are behaving suspiciously, have an unusual travel pattern or, most controversially, have a certain ethnic or religious background.

The system would be much more sophisticated than simply picking out young men of Asian appearance. But it would cause outrage in the Muslim community because its members would be far more likely to be selected for extra checks.

"Ah, the wonders a government can do when it doesn't have to answer to a Constitution," Reason's David Weigel snarks, amazed that the British are "still a target of ungrateful terrorists who don't want to thank them for liberating Iraq."

Amazing. Profiling, of course, has been a highly-charged issue that's bubbled up to the top of discussions of the world's approach to terrorism for a long time. Security personnel are human beings, and already watch young Middle Eastern men more closely as they pass through the checkpoints. (Because they don't have to answer to a constitution!) That the British are taking a some small steps toward formalizing a security approach that includes this should be fodder for thoughtful debate. Not so much. Thanks, Dave, you're very clever.

Or maybe Weigel realized if he tried to talk intelligently about it he'd come off sounding like Talk Left:

The Government tries to legitimize racial profiling two ways: the first is that they are using a behavioral approach rather than racial profiling. Baloney. How many white families traveling with children with little luggage and fast food wrappers in the car do you think they stopped and asked permission to search? Second, not everyone is pulled over for the psychological profiling, only those whom the screeners believe exhibit suspicious behavior. What percentage of those people do you think are white? Racial profiling under any other name is still racial profiling.

Isn't the point that we shouldn't be using scarce security resources to search families traveling with children with little luggage and fast food wrappers in the car (whaaa--?)? Profiling doesn't work because you're not checking enough little kids who obviously aren't a threat? What is it about the behavior of this food wrapper-strewn family that means they should be searched more thoroughly under a behavior profiling regimen?

The post's coup de grace is that Richard Reid wasn't Middle Eastern. Quoting the American Bar Association:

In the aftermath of September 11, we began to harden cockpit doors, to check carry-on bags for even the smallest potential weapons, and to profile Middle Eastern men. Al-Qaeda's answer was Richard Reid--a non-Arab, non-Middle Easterner from England; a British citizen with a valid British passport and a bomb in his shoe. Clearly, they knew what we were looking for, and they did not repeat what they had done in the past.

A-ha! Timothy McVeigh thanks Mr. Reid posthumously for becoming the person most likely to be trotted out as everyone's favorite example of a non-Middle Eastern bomber. (Not so fast!) Fast forward to August, 2006, though, and let's work out how many of the people arrested in the plot to blow up U.S. bound airliners were named Richard Reid. (None: they were named Abdula Ahmed Ali, Cossor Ali, Shazad Khuram Ali, Nabeel Hussain, Tanvir Hussain, Umair Hussain, Umar Islam, Waseem Kayani, Assan Abdullah Khan, Waheed Arafat Khan, Osman Adam Khatib, Abdul Muneem Patel, Tayib Rauf, Muhammed Usman Saddique, Assad Sarwar, Ibrahim Savant, Amin Asmin Tariq, Shamin Mohammed Uddin, and Waheed Zaman.)

It's not an issue, these dreary, weary posts demonstrate, that fits snugly into a round hole, be it "government abandons all pretense of egalitarian principles" or "institutional racism" or even "at last, we have our revenge!" Instead, legitimate and realistic security and safety concerns need to be balanced against a (not selfless) desire not to marginalize a segment of the population, run things according to our (classically) liberal traditions and make sure we're doing what's most efficient and effective.

As to the first, Brendan Loy makes the standard argument that "if a group of people, 95% of whom are Irish redheads, were actively engaged in war against my country, I wouldn't mind being subject to an extra minute or two of screening at the airport just because I'm an Irish redhead." Me neither, I guess (not being easily profiled myself, really), but I think the broader question -- the answer to which isn't the end of the inquiry, but it's important to consider -- is why we're so keen not to "outrage" young Muslims and foster "anger and resentment." If you "outraged" Irish redheads, are you afraid you'd inspire more dramatic and deadly terror attacks? Neither am I. It's like the difference between the Catholic church's reaction to The Da Vinci Code and the widespread rioting, property damage and murder caused by the publication of the Danish cartoons.

We need to be very careful, I think, not to determine how we're going to get air passengers through airports safely according to whether we might inspire criminality. If we "outrage" young Muslims into a discontent and distrust that becomes a murderous jihad or something, that's not our fault. It's theirs. Tell a rape victim she asked for it and you're justly condemned. Don't tell us not to dress all slutty or we'll be sorry.

Even if we're not constrained by a constitution, we also want to adhere to our principles of liberty and pluralism. (Or the terrorists have won!) This is an ineffective argument against profiling. The reason we have a debate (or try to) over profiling is that young Muslim men fly the friendly skies all the time, and every last one has as much business doing so, and as much right to be safe, as any Irish redhead or skinny Anglo-Swedish mongrel like me. It is absolutely not the case that security and pluralism are opposites, and that as we add one we take away from the other.

Finally, there's the argument, which can be made more intelligently than Richard Reid! Timothy McVeigh!!!, that profiling shouldn't be done if it's not effective. But of course, as the Times Online piece is as clear as the reactions to it haven't been, paying keener attention to young Middle Eastern men is part of a larger scheme which includes behavior and travel pattern. A policy which dragged every man between 15 and 40 of Middle Eastern descent from the security line and gave them the once-over, and that was the extent of our security regimen, would fail.

A policy augmented by the reality that people of one particular ethnic and/or religious background are far more likely to be the ones trying to bomb or highjack the plane isn't irresponsible. Quite the contrary.

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