Profiling – A necessary evil
I doubt there is anyone who may read this article who has not heard about the attempted terrorist attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day. By now, we all know that the system that is supposed to prevent our country from suffering another attack on an airplane completely failed. President Obama himself has said that there was information available to the CIA and other government agencies that should have kept Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab from boarding the flight to Detroit. Abdulmutallab’s own father even warned us about him and how he was afraid that he had been radicalized while in Great Britain.
After such an attempt, it is natural that our security measures should be examined and picked apart. Obviously, the measures we have in place did not work, hence the man from Nigeria was able to board the flight and nearly succeeded in igniting his explosives. There is always a discussion, sometimes very heated, about what we should have or could have done to prevent something like this from happening again. There has been a very lively debate about the practicality of using machines that produce full body scans of everyone who boards a flight. Some say they work and some say that while the machines do the job, they are entirely too intrusive, that they violate the privacy and the dignity of the individual. So far, I have heard of no one who says they do not work.
I have not come to a conclusion of how I feel about the scans, but there is a video at Muskogee Politico that you should watch. It is from FOX News and it features former Israeli security expert Isaac Yeffet, as he gives his opinion on how America should formulate it’s security measures. He has an interesting perspective about using the full body scans that I think you may find intriguing. I had not thought of it in the manner he suggested. Interestingly enough, the Israelis do not use them and as far as I know, they have not had an attack on one of their airplanes.
The main method they use is profiling, which seems to be a very dirty word in some circles. If you really want to stir things up, just call it racial profiling and see where the discussion goes. No matter what you or I may think about the practice of profiling, we can not deny that it works. As is pointed out by Isaac Yeffet, Israeli security forces use it with great effectiveness, but they are not profiling race, but behavior as well. They have people who are trained in the method that can spot someone with suspicious behavior and when those people are identified, they are asked to step aside and are interrogated.
Going back to the attempted attack on Flight 253, it is clear that the warning signs were there. Couple those signs with the fact that the man in question was a Muslim who had possibly been radicalized and there is no way he should have been allowed on the flight to Detroit. Is it a bad thing for profiling, racial or otherwise, to be utilized in such a case? I would contend that it is not. Given the fact that every terrorist attack that the United States has suffered has been at the hands of a Muslim, I think there is a strong case for that contention. That is not to say that all Muslims are bad because obviously, that is not the case. However, in scenarios such as this, it should have provided the straw that broke the camel’s back.
If you want to know just how contentious racial profiling is, just do a Google search and read some of the articles that are available. Check out the images, such as the one on the left, and see how profiling is portrayed in editorial cartoons and other pictures. It is a very hated practice by a lot of people, but it does work. I do not believe our police should go around harassing people just because they are African-American, Hispanic, or are dressed in Islamic dress. I do not believe people in airport security lines should be targeted just because they appear to be Muslim or some other religious faith that seems hellbent on taking innocent lives. Effective profiling requires factoring in every piece of information at our disposal. Age, race, sex, and behavior all play a part in providing such a profile and they all should be used to help stop these attacks. Doing so does not constituent racism. In other words, if you are hunting for ducks, you have to look for them. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, most likely it is a duck.
You make some great points Larry. I also wonder if this is simply an administration that is inept and lazy. I keep thinking about the cash 4 clunkers program, and an insider view that I read, of what transgressed. She states that there was no one in charge, no one who knew what to do, and no oversight person who was engaged.
How else could this have happened? There are stories that this guy didn’t even have a passport when he boarded! Something much deeper is going on here. That and Obama’s dismal and lackadaisical response – four days later! Actually, he didn’t do much better with Fort Hood.
As for the body scanners, I am really divided on that. That is a major intrusion into our liberties. And I am not so sure that the scanner would have even caught the underwear. I think sound investigative work and intel usually get the job done right.
There is this saying that I love. “You will know who a person is when they get squeezed.” (by life) I think we are seeing where Obama’s loyalties lie and don’t lie. When it comes to terrorism, I am not so sure they lie with us
There is no doubt that El Al’s screening techniques are highly effective, but this in is large part due to it’s sophisticated nature. They do not employ racial/ethnicity profiling (nor do they focus on gender), have highly trained security personnel, and operate according to Israeli security protocol-not the airline’s. And it is only one airline. I wonder how effectively the United States could implement this, given the number of airlines?
Politically, I see an El Al-like security force as completely unworkable. Imagine the response of people if Obama were to actually try to implement these procedures. The ACLU would have a field day and folks like Dominique-who already suggest that our President’s loyalities lie with the terrorists- would use this as an opportunity to score points. A Republcian President would face the same, in reverse.
The success of Israel’s security rests with their international airline flight concentration and their unapologetic approach to security. Israel essentially has one international airport — Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv. They have another near Eilat that operates just a handful of daily international flights. It’s quite a different story from the US and Europe with hundreds of locations. They have security operatives at Ben Gurion trained by Mossad and/or with military training (as all Israelis have) while we have minimum wage employees of Homeland Security. And, as Laurie said so well, Israel can do things in the name of security that just would not pass muster here. We need a comprehensive review of security issues (and I’m still much more concerned about port security issues than airport security) and it clearly needs to start with lines of communication. It’s still not working.
I found the Israeli security experts reasons against full body scans interesting. So many in this country would label him a PC liberal Muslim sympathizer…
This piece is also interesting. Nigerians and the Dutch, in light of the Christmas events, will now be using full body scans.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/30/airline.terror.schiphol/
Laurie,
I wouldn’t label him a Muslim sympathizer, but rather a man who wouldn’t want his own family subjected to the “indignation” of full body scans. He does have a valid point.
I have no problem with profiling should it be racial , religionous or whatever, something that can possibly saves lifes cannot be evil. “Necessary evil” implies to me that profiling is evil and that I cannot see. Profiling will save time at the nations airports and millions will benefit and in all likelyhood be safer, while only a few will feel the sting of unwanted attention. In this case I will have to come down on the side of personal safety and not on individual rights. Its not a position I enjoy, but a reality I have come to see.
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I contend that profiling is not an “evil.” It is a neccessary tool that police have been using to great success for years and years. When a crime is committed the first thing that police ask for is a description, they build a profile of the criminal and they base their search on the profile. It makes no sense to stop a black person for a crime that was committed by a white person just to be fair. It does not make any sense to stop a white person for a crime that is committed by a black person either.
But somewhere along the line it vecame poltically incorrect for the police to target a criminal based on what they look like, this is wrong. Profiling isn’t an evil, it is a neccessary and essential part of police work. The same can and should be said for anti-terror policy.
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Good points, Mr. Pink Eyes. The FBI trains some of their agents specifically to be profilers and the point of that is so they can glean some idea of what the criminal is like and how he thinks. They have a much better chance of catching him when they do so. I so no reason the same should not apply to terror suspects.
Whatever it takes to keep these people off our planes. There is no way this guy should have been allowed to fly.