[Mb-civic] Why Profiling Won't Work - William Raspberry - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Why Profiling Won't Work

By William Raspberry
Monday, August 22, 2005; Page A17

The Transportation Security Administration, having rendered cockpit 
crews less vulnerable to hijackers by strengthening the cockpit doors, 
is now (1) reviewing its list of items passengers may not bring aboard, 
(2) proposing to minimize the number of passengers who have to be patted 
down at checkpoints and (3) taking another look at the rule that 
requires most passengers to remove their shoes.

These are encouraging moves toward common sense.

This isn't: A gaggle of voices is proposing -- almost as though 
responding to the same memo from some malign Mr. Big -- that the TSA 
replace its present policy of random searches with massive racial and 
ethnic profiling.

After all, they argue, weren't the Sept. 11 terrorists all young Muslim 
men? Isn't it likely that the next terrorist attack will be carried out 
by young Muslim men? So why waste time screening white-haired 
grandmothers and blue-suited white guys? Much more efficient to tap the 
shoulder of any young man who looks Muslim -- a category that covers not 
just Arabs but also Asians, Africans and, increasingly, African Americans.

It must have been just such sweet reason that led to the internment of 
thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II. Even Andrew C. 
McCarthy of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies -- and one of 
the advocates of profiling -- acknowledges that the Japanese internments 
were excessive. But only, he says in the current issue of National 
Review, because "they included American citizens of Japanese descent; 
there was nothing objectionable in principle about holding Japanese, 
German, or Italian nationals."

That distinction doesn't hold up in the case of airport profiling, since 
there's no way visually to distinguish between a Saudi citizen and an 
Arab American. The profilers wouldn't even try.

Actually, anyone who's ever been inconvenienced by security checks -- 
whether as trivial as having to give up a fingernail clipper or as 
serious as having to take a later flight -- will see some merit in the 
case for profiling. Can't they see that I'm just a guy trying to get 
from here to there, while that fellow over there looks like he could be 
a hijacker?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/21/AR2005082100974.html?nav=hcmodule
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