This House would use racial profiling as part of airport security checks

The reality is that all of the major terrorist attacks against Western targets in recent years have been perpetrated by young, Muslim men. It doesn’t require any prejudice at all to realise that they are the most sensible group to check and recheck.

Although it is important to respect people’s rights and liberties regardless of ethnicity or religious belief, a sensible security policy must force police officers and security officials to make decisions based on factual information. Everybody- including most members of the groups identified by profiling- has an interest in not being blown up on an aeroplane. They will, therefore, accept that this is a regrettable necessity. Airport staff can only stop so many people and it makes sense to target groups that terrorists are likely to be part of.

The presumption of innocence is a principle worth defending and an important part of this is rejecting policing strategies that assume certain groups are more likely to be engage in criminal activity than others. In the last ten years, a few dozen people, at most, have been involved in terrorist acts at airports. Meanwhile, millions upon millions of young, Muslim men have flown across continents and oceans without the slightest disruption.

It is both unfair and foolish to target a single group as being more likely to contain terrorists. It builds resentment among the group concerned and is unlikely to reveal any practical results because of the numbers concerned.

Profiling takes account of many more characteristics than an individual’s ethnicity. Targeted checks would have caught, for example, the so called Christmas Day Bomber. Individuals who pay in cash for a one way flight while carrying no luggage, as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab[i] did, are a fairly small group and it makes sense to target them.

Profiling is a great deal more subtle than a decision to target a single ethnic group. It is entirely possible to identify patterns in the behaviour of terrorists, drug mules and smugglers, and to respond to that accordingly.

Obviously, the more refined the profile can be, the better. It is incredibly unlikely that an affluent, Caucasian businessman with a return ticket for the following day is either a suicide bomber or a drug smuggler. Both common sense and statistics show this to be the case.

[i] “Obama vows to repair intelligence gaps behind Detroit airplane incident”. The Washington post, 30 December 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122901433.html

It is incredibly unlikely that any randomly selected member of a particular group would be attempting to commit a crime. Racial, ethnic and identity groups are extremely large. Terrorist organisations, even al Qaeda, rarely contain more than a few hundred members. The relative proportion of individuals belonging to any particular identity group who also belongs to a terrorist organisation is likely to be impossibly small.

The impact of the perceptions of the communities involved, however, would be significant, allowing for accusations of racism and persecution.

Statistically, profiling would have very little impact: in 2005, US Airlines carried 745.7 million passengers.[i] Faced with figures like that random stoppages make far more sense.

Although exact figures are not available even if just two or three million fell within the profile group, it would be impossible to search all of them. The use of profiling, however, as a result of the PATRIOT Act, led to, among others, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy being stopped; it does not and cannot work.[ii]

[i] ‘2005 Total Airline System Passenger Traffic Up 4.6 Percent From 2004’, Research and Innovative Transport Administration, 2006, http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2006/bts020_06/html/bts020_06.html

[ii] ‘Senetor? Terrorist? A Watch List Stops Kennedy at Airport’, Swarns, Rachel L., The New York Times, 20 August 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/national/20flight.html

Israel has been using profiling for decades to identify those individuals at airports that should be stopped, questioned and have their luggage thoroughly checked[i].

Despite the massive threats that Israel faces, the Israeli state does not feel the need to invade the privacy of most passengers because they simply know what and who they are looking for. This approach has meant that, despite high odds, hijackings and bombings are not the routine affairs on El Al flights that one might expect it to be.

As the focus for terrorist atrocities has now become the US and the UK, it simply makes sense to follow the example of a nation that has been such a target since its creation.

[i] “Exposing hostile intent”. SecuritySolutions.com. http://securitysolutions.com/news/security_exposing_hostile_intent/

The scale of flights in Israel- both domestic and international- is tiny. Compared with the North American and European aviation markets, screening passengers entering and leaving Israeli territory requires an entirely different approach. Equally the racial diversity of Tel Aviv is quite different to New York and London.

The Pew Research Centre estimates that there are 2.6 million Muslims living in the US[i], a number equal to twice the population of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv combined. The pressures on airports between a small state in the Middle East and the transportation hubs of the US and Europe are totally different. The very account cited by Proposition talks about some passengers being interviewed for up to half an hour, that is a rather different prospect when dealing with JFK or Heathrow. It is just not a practical solution.

[i] “The future of the global muslim population”. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, January 2011. http://features.pewforum.org/muslim-population-graphic/#/United%20States

The reality is that all of the major terrorist attacks against Western targets in recent years have been perpetrated by young, Muslim men. It doesn’t require any prejudice at all to realise that they are the most sensible group to check and recheck.

Although it is important to respect people’s rights and liberties regardless of ethnicity or religious belief, a sensible security policy must force police officers and security officials to make decisions based on factual information. Everybody- including most members of the groups identified by profiling- has an interest in not being blown up on an aeroplane. They will, therefore, accept that this is a regrettable necessity. Airport staff can only stop so many people and it makes sense to target groups that terrorists are likely to be part of.

The presumption of innocence is a principle worth defending and an important part of this is rejecting policing strategies that assume certain groups are more likely to be engage in criminal activity than others. In the last ten years, a few dozen people, at most, have been involved in terrorist acts at airports. Meanwhile, millions upon millions of young, Muslim men have flown across continents and oceans without the slightest disruption.

It is both unfair and foolish to target a single group as being more likely to contain terrorists. It builds resentment among the group concerned and is unlikely to reveal any practical results because of the numbers concerned.

Profiling takes account of many more characteristics than an individual’s ethnicity. Targeted checks would have caught, for example, the so called Christmas Day Bomber. Individuals who pay in cash for a one way flight while carrying no luggage, as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab[i] did, are a fairly small group and it makes sense to target them.

Profiling is a great deal more subtle than a decision to target a single ethnic group. It is entirely possible to identify patterns in the behaviour of terrorists, drug mules and smugglers, and to respond to that accordingly.

Obviously, the more refined the profile can be, the better. It is incredibly unlikely that an affluent, Caucasian businessman with a return ticket for the following day is either a suicide bomber or a drug smuggler. Both common sense and statistics show this to be the case.

[i] “Obama vows to repair intelligence gaps behind Detroit airplane incident”. The Washington post, 30 December 2009. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/29/AR2009122901433.html

It is incredibly unlikely that any randomly selected member of a particular group would be attempting to commit a crime. Racial, ethnic and identity groups are extremely large. Terrorist organisations, even al Qaeda, rarely contain more than a few hundred members. The relative proportion of individuals belonging to any particular identity group who also belongs to a terrorist organisation is likely to be impossibly small.

The impact of the perceptions of the communities involved, however, would be significant, allowing for accusations of racism and persecution.

Statistically, profiling would have very little impact: in 2005, US Airlines carried 745.7 million passengers.[i] Faced with figures like that random stoppages make far more sense.

Although exact figures are not available even if just two or three million fell within the profile group, it would be impossible to search all of them. The use of profiling, however, as a result of the PATRIOT Act, led to, among others, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy being stopped; it does not and cannot work.[ii]

[i] ‘2005 Total Airline System Passenger Traffic Up 4.6 Percent From 2004’, Research and Innovative Transport Administration, 2006, http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2006/bts020_06/html/bts020_06.html

[ii] ‘Senetor? Terrorist? A Watch List Stops Kennedy at Airport’, Swarns, Rachel L., The New York Times, 20 August 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/national/20flight.html

Israel has been using profiling for decades to identify those individuals at airports that should be stopped, questioned and have their luggage thoroughly checked[i].

Despite the massive threats that Israel faces, the Israeli state does not feel the need to invade the privacy of most passengers because they simply know what and who they are looking for. This approach has meant that, despite high odds, hijackings and bombings are not the routine affairs on El Al flights that one might expect it to be.

As the focus for terrorist atrocities has now become the US and the UK, it simply makes sense to follow the example of a nation that has been such a target since its creation.

[i] “Exposing hostile intent”. SecuritySolutions.com. http://securitysolutions.com/news/security_exposing_hostile_intent/

The scale of flights in Israel- both domestic and international- is tiny. Compared with the North American and European aviation markets, screening passengers entering and leaving Israeli territory requires an entirely different approach. Equally the racial diversity of Tel Aviv is quite different to New York and London.

The Pew Research Centre estimates that there are 2.6 million Muslims living in the US[i], a number equal to twice the population of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv combined. The pressures on airports between a small state in the Middle East and the transportation hubs of the US and Europe are totally different. The very account cited by Proposition talks about some passengers being interviewed for up to half an hour, that is a rather different prospect when dealing with JFK or Heathrow. It is just not a practical solution.

[i] “The future of the global muslim population”. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, January 2011. http://features.pewforum.org/muslim-population-graphic/#/United%20States

Profiling is, in the end, simply wrong. Britain suffered for decades from the ‘innocent until proven Irish’ attitude of their security forces, which did nothing but engender resentment among Irish individuals who were trying to live and work in the United Kingdom. For western nations to make the same mistake in their approach to Muslims would be the gravest folly.

Aviation authorities are, ultimately, under the control of the state, and if a government announces that they consider all members of a group to be potential criminals, it sends out a very provocative message.

The use of the term “racism” suggests that assumptions made by screeners are based on prejudice, not fact. Profiling, which takes far more than race into account, has a solid basis in fact. It is entirely sensible to attempt to prevent criminal acts by being particularly cautious in the investigation of those groups and individuals that are most likely to pose a risk to other passengers.

Risking the lives of innocent passengers in the name of political correctness is simply absurd. These are measures that protect the security of thousands of passengers at the cost of minor inconvenience to a few.

Any reasonable traveller- Arab or not- would accept that there is a reason for these actions in the same way that passengers realise that delays caused by security controls and passport checks are an unavoidable nuisance in an era of routine international travel.

Making statements in advance as to who is likely to be stopped at airports is the most dangerous action any government could take. There are innumerable ways in which it would be possible to perform a terrorist act, and random checks mean that all possible routes are equally likely to be apprehended.

By contrast, actively and visibly subjecting members of particular ethnic groups to stricter security checks will enable terrorists to determine where surveillance in airports is at its most lax. The most dangerous terrorist groups operate on an international level, recruiting attackers from a wide range of backgrounds and ethnic groups. It would therefore be comparatively easy for an organisation such as al Qaeda to mount an attack using only individuals who do not conform to the authorities’ profile of a potential terrorist.

More importantly random checks mean that all people, regardless of the background, age or appearance are equally deterred from considering criminal or terrorist acts.

On the basis that it would be impossible to search everyone at a major international airport, the deterrence factor offered by random stops is far more effective than searching a tiny proportion of a designated group.

In other areas of enforcement it is routine to use simple common sense when identifying security risks. A group of students coming off a cheap flight from Amsterdam are simply more likely to have illegal drugs in their possession than a group of pensioners returning from a tour of museums in St Petersburg.

Of course it is important that airport authorities should be vigilant and avoid making damaging assumptions, but that is no reason for them to be reckless.

There are a limited number of people that can be stopped and searched or questioned at an airport; wasting that time on passengers who are extremely unlikely to pose any threat presents a substantial risk of peoples’ lives and safety.

The reality is that if a plane can be held up with a box-cutter, a broken glass bottle from duty free or flammable alcohol from the same source could be just as threatening.

However, increased use of air marshals- armed plainclothes police officers who travel secretly on certain flights- means that even these desperate tactics are likely to be ineffectual.

Institutionalising prejudice and assumption will add legitimacy and grativas to terrorist propaganda that seeks to radicalise curious or confused young people.

Not only is profiling ineffectual, it is likely to exacerbate the situation.

This opposition argument is potentially contradictory. It argues that the majority of Muslims are reasonable people and then, on the other hand, that the moment reasonable security measures are put into place there will be a massive increase in radicalised young people willing to act as suicide bombers.

Everybody accepts that security checks are necessary at airports and for the most part they are applied universally. However, if opposition is correct, it would seem absurd to suggest that millions of reasonable people would suddenly take affront at the simple fact that they happen to be part of a social group that has an unusually high number of rogue elements. Indeed, suggesting such a thing could be construed as a racist act; implying that the people concerned are in some way incapable of reaching this regrettable, if logical, conclusion.