Posted on 08/14/2006 6:06:47 PM PDT by Agent Smith
The Times August 15, 2006
Muslims face extra checks in new travel crackdown By Ben Webster, Transport Correspondent
THE 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.
Officials at the Department for Transport (DfT) have discussed the practicalities of introducing such a system with airport operators, including BAA. They believe that it would be more effective at identifying potential terrorists than the existing random searches.
They also say that it would greatly reduce queues at secur-ity gates, which caused lengthy delays at London airports yesterday for the fifth day running. Heathrow and Gatwick were worst affected, cancelling 69 and 27 flights respectively. BAA gave warning yesterday that the disruption would continue for the rest of the week.
Passengers are now allowed to take one small piece of hand luggage on board but security staff are still having to search 50 per cent of travellers. Airports have also been ordered to search twice as many hand luggage items as a week ago.
BAA was criticised yesterday for failing to commit itself to recruiting more security staff and for claiming that its existing 6,000 staff at seven airports would be able to handle the extra searches. Tony Douglas, the chief executive of Heathrow, said that X-ray screening of hand luggage would be much faster under the new rules on size and contents, leaving staff free to carry out more searches.
The new measures, which include a ban on taking any liquids through checkpoints, are expected to remain in place for months. A DfT source said it was difficult to see how the restrictions could be relaxed if terrorists now had the capabil-ity to make liquid bombs.
The DfT has been considering passenger profiling for a year but, until last week, the disadvantages were thought to outweigh the advantages. A senior aviation industry source said: “The DfT is ultra-sensitive about this and won’t say anything publicly because of political concerns about being accused of racial stereotyping.”
Three days before last week’s arrests, the highest-ranking Muslim police officer in Britain gave warning that profiling techniques based on physical appearance were already causing anger and mistrust among young Muslims. Tarique Ghaffur, an assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said: “We must think long and hard about the causal factors of anger and resentment.
“There is a very real danger that the counter-terrorism label is also being used by other law-enforcement agencies to the effect that there is a real risk of criminalising minority communities.”
Sir Rod Eddington, former chief executive of British Airways, criticised the random nature of security searches. He said that it was irrational to subject a 75-year-old grandmother to the same checks as a 25-year-old man who had just paid for his ticket with cash.
Philip Baum, an aviation security consultant, said that profiling should focus on ruling out people who obviously posed no risk rather than picking out Asian or Arabs.
A DfT spokesman refused to make any comment or answer any questions on profiling.
AIRPORT UPDATE
British Airways plans to cancel forty short-haul and four long-haul flights from Heathrow today as well as eleven domestic flights from Gatwick. Other airlines expect to operate near-normal schedules.
All airports will allow passengers to carry one small piece of hand luggage, but no liquids are allowed through the security search point other than prescribed medicines and baby food.
A breakthrough. Recognizing the obvious is the first step towards a cure.
Seems to me that this is a no-brainer. Since 100% of the attacks on the west have been from Muslims in the last 30 years, IMHO all muslim people ought to be suspect......
NO ONE, NO ONE expects the Amish Inqusition!
I wish we'd do it here.
It's about time. Muslims should be profiled and checked before boarding any plane.
Now there is a group that gets "profiled" all the time.
The muslims had their chance. They could have organized anti-terror demos, gone on tv condemning it, etc.
They deserve to be treated -- everyone last one of them -- as suspect.
How about the Muslims think long and hard about the causal factors of OUR anger and resentment?
It's time for that backlash they have been waiting for.
"THE 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."
Who let Mike Wallace on a flight?
Bout damn time. Days late, dollars and pounds short.
Now if we can just convince the PC police in America to think rationally and pragmatically to protect us from the Islamofascist war on Western Civilization, freedom, Israel and the Jews.
Timothy McVeigh is not likely to attempt to get past airline security. He doesn't fly much these days.
They don't have any choice. How much further can you go with screening? You are gonna have to fly them naked.
And just HOW would mere questioning of some white guy or girl, who looks just like you or me, who WILL be prone to lie, going to suss out the recent, rabid convert?
Not necessarily since there are some Caucasian Muslims. Remeber John Walker Lindh?
I think a careful, yet efficient system whereby there are several security perimeters are used. Each perimeter has direct contact with the next perimeter and can flag certain passengers as "persons of interest". If the next perimeter has reason to agree, then this person or persons can be screened more closely at the next perimeter.
It would still be rather slow, but would speed up flow at the bottle necks.
Oh, and BTW, even if they don't say they do, TSA does profile, and Airport security has been profiling for as long as hijackings have been around.
I have some friends from Malaysia and Singapore. Some of them told me, just prior to the April 19 Bombing in OKC, that their relatives were stopped at the Airport here in OKC, interrogated, searched, then let go. The authorities never gave a reason, nor should they have. Then after the bombings it was revealed that Terry Nichols had been to the Phillipines and was in contact with terrorists (very likely Al Quieda) there.
There are still many here in OKC that believe there was an Al Quieda tie to the bombing. Why that part of the investigation has been dropped is still a mystery. The feds claim that John Doe #2 was a figment of some Ryder truck store clerks immagination. If that's the case than he was also the figment of several eyewitnesses imaginations at the scene of the bombing just before it happened.
This is certainly the enemy within who weakens this country. Now it makes perfect sense why multiculturalism, diversity, anger management, and similiar 'neutering' mindsets have been so relentlessly pushed in the last 20 years.....to keep us from speaking out when foreigners try to destroy us.
God save us from our leaders.
THIS IS NOT FRANCE. THE UK, AUSTRALIA, AND THE USA, will deal with this. We have tolerated your insanity for to long. If you don't want to be profiled, tell that to the mujahadin. Just don't complain to us infidels about it.
Allah knows, he wants us dead, and it seems MANY of you Muslims are quiet about it.
Jeff Davis
I am Catholic. If the IRA were blowing up packed trains and flying airliners into buildings in the name of my religion, not only would I be denouncing them in the streets at the top of my lungs, I'd be forming a Catholic Patriotic League or something and insisting that the Feds single out "my kind" for extra attention at airports, train stations, etc. I would act as a spy in my parish, and would report anything I heard that sounded even remotely sympathetic to the IRA to the FBI. I would raise money to publish advertisements in major media letting the public know in no uncertain terms that Catholic Americans are FOR America and AGAINST the IRA. If it came right down to it, I'd even go peacefully to a concentration camp if that were the only way to neutralize fifth columnists, spies, and fellow-travelers among the population.
What I'm trying to say is that as a Catholic and and American, my highest allegiance is to my family and the U.S.A -- I acknowledge only Jesus Christ and his mother ahead of my family and my country. And I daresay you'd be hard-pressed to find any American Catholic (or American Lutheran, Mennonite, Jew, or Mormon) who doesn't feel the same.
My question is: how many American Muslims have the same priorities?
Norm Mineta
The muslim community has not stepped up as Americans during the twenty or more years of muslim terrorism. Either you are going to go with America, or you are going to go with the Mo's perpetrating terrorism. Mos in America need to quit being weeping willows and accept the fact that our constitution trumps their Koran in this country and it always will. We are not going to be ruled by a bunch of ill-educated mullahs wearing dresses, turbans, bad haircuts and beards (who smell bad), who approve of kidnappings, beheadments and the like. If you don't want to be an American, go to some modern and enlightened country which is Mohammedan, if there is one, and if they would have you, now that you have contaminated yourselves by living here in peace and freedom under the rule of law.
Jews don't eat pork.
How about free beer?
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