Skip the grannies: The case for airport profiling

Philadelphia Daily News ^ | 17 August 2006 | Michael Smerconish

[Spiff]

Michael Smerconish | Skip the grannies: The case for airport profiling

FIVE YEARS removed from 9/11, it's time to admit that profiling is not a dirty word.

Profiling is street smarts by any other name. It's the common-sensical recognition that while America is not threatened by an entire community, she is under siege by a certain element of an identifiable group, and law enforcement needs to target its resources accordingly.

The failure to profile is a dereliction of duty on the part of an administration that has otherwise been willing to incur the wrath of civil libertarians as it aggressively fights the war on terror.

Only last week, in the aftermath of the thwarted attack emanating from the U.K., did the president appear to take a step in the direction of profiling when at last, he acknowledged with specificity those who threaten our survival:

"This nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom."

Hopefully now there will be a long overdue confrontation of the Emperor Has No Clothes charade whereby law enforcement is mandated to ignore the naked barbarism of radical Islam. The arrest of two dozen in connection with the latest, failed plan should change that. After all, they are the same-old, same-old. I refer to Messrs. Ali, Ali, Ali, Hussain, Hussain, Hussain, Islam, Kayani, Khan, Khan, Kha-tib, Patel, Rauf, Saddique, Sarwar, Savant, Tariq, Uddin and Zaman. To a person they are Muslim men.

Where some would highlight the slight differences among them - class, upbringing and whether they were raised Muslim or converted to Islam - I see the commonalities. Equally significant is who they are not.

They are not Americans. They are not urban blacks. They are not suburban whites. They are not Jews. They are not Hispanics. They are not members of the U.S. military, women, senior citizens or young kids. At a minimum, it is time to profile by exclusion.

Some are still standing in the way. Take Paul Stephenson, the Scotland Yard deputy commissioner, who, on the day the plot was made known, said:

"What I would want to say, and you would expect me to say about this, is this is not about communities. This is about criminals. This is about murderers, people who want to commit mass murder. This is not about anything to do with any particular community."

Wrong, Deputy Stephenson, I would not expect you to say that. And while this is not about a particular community, it most certainly is about people within a particular community.

More appropriate from London were the observations of Max Hastings in the Daily Mail. Hastings correctly noted, "In every other area of criminal activity, we accept that some people are more deserving than others of suspicion."

He pointed out that police do not question women when seeking a rapist, don't round up short West Indians when pursuing a 6-foot white burglar, and don't arrest an elderly widow for car theft when security cameras captured an Asian male.

For years I have been advocating that the United States use this kind of street smarts in the war against radical Islam. I did not begin with any particular knowledge of the subject. To the contrary, whatever understanding I've obtained sprang from a common occurrence in connection with a routine flight.

In March 2004, my family of six was heading to Florida for spring break. At a ticket counter in the Atlantic City airport, my 8-year-old son was singled out for "secondary" or random screening.

I knew it was absurd, but I didn't complain, figuring it was the small price we all have to pay post 9/11. Common sense told me it was a terrible waste of precious resources.

Soon after my son's screening, Dr. Condoleezza Rice testified in front of the 9/11 Commission. Commissioner John Lehman floored me when he asked Dr. Rice this:

"Were you aware that it was the policy, and I believe it remains the policy today, to fine airlines if they have more than two young Arab males in secondary questioning because that is discriminatory?"

I wondered what in the world he was talking about with his quota question. So I called Secretary Lehman and asked him. He told me that airline executives had said as much in testimony before the 9/11 Commission.

Lehman faulted political correctness and said "no one approves of racial profiling. That is not the issue, but the fact is that Norwegian women are not, and 85-year-old ladies with aluminum walkers are not, the source of the terrorist threat. And the fact is, our enemy is the violent Islamic extremism. And so the overwhelming number of people that one needs to worry about are young Arab males."

Lehman was dead-on. When I reported what Secretary Lehman told me in the Daily News, I incurred the wrath of the Department of Transportation. It said I was "wildly incorrect" in my reporting, where I had simply repeated the words of a 9/11 commissioner.

Then I had a chance encounter with Herb Kelleher, the legendary, ballsy founder of Southwest Airlines. He confirmed for me some of what Lehman had raised with Dr. Rice. So I kept digging. Later I learned the specific basis for Lehman's question regarding a quota system.

Edmond Soliday, former head of security for United Airlines, testified before the 9/11 Commission that "a visitor from the Justice Department who told me that if I had more than three people of the same ethnic origin in line for additional screening, our system would be shut down as discriminatory."

Soliday clarified his comments to investigative author Paul Sperry when he said that it was actually the assistant general counsel of the DOT. Soliday said the man "told me that if I had more than three people of the same ethnic origin in line for additional screening, our system would be shut down as discriminatory."

The DOT viewed any human profiling as discriminatory, even if it is based on statistical probability. As a result, Soliday said that United "loaded up the system with randoms to make it mathematically impossible to get three ethnics in line at the same time," including "soccer moms, Girl Scouts, and even little old ladies with walkers."

And there you have it, the origin of a PC policy that has hindered our ability to protect the skies on 9/11 and through today.

What I have learned since 9/11 about the absence of profiling in America's war on Islamic fascism has filled two books that I have authored. Since 9/11 we have seen the Madrid train bombings, the Bali nightclub bombings, London bombings on 7/7 and the most recent threat of a terror attack in the U.K.

My thesis remains unchanged. We are threatened by individuals who largely have race, gender, religion, ethnicity and appearance in common. To the extent we do not take that information into account as we seek to prevent a repeat of 9/11, we are still flying blind.

The president has finally acknowledged that some in a particular community seek to kill us. Hopefully his comments will set the tone for what is to come because his administration needs a mind-set change.

I say it's nice to philosophize about American peace, love and understanding, but right now we have a more important agenda. Like winning the war against radical Islam so that we are still around to engage in such dialogue when the dust settles.

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Michael Smerconish is the author of "Flying Blind: How Political Correctness Continues to Compromise Airline Safety Post 9/11" and "Muzzled: From T-Ball to Terrorism - True Stories that Should Be Fiction."

[Spiff]

I don't know what happened. I had the right title but when I posted the article it cut off the first word. Can you please fix?

[MaryFromMichigan]

Great post.
Bttt.

[Jack Hammer]

As everyone with any sense knows, Political Correctness is all about self-deception and lying to others. The refusal to profile terrorists is but one aspect of this peculiarly Western form of modern imbecility.

[I see my hands]

Eventually everyone/everything will be screened absolutely. Until then lots of ppl are going to die. Why wait?

[Mrs.Liberty]

In March 2004, my family of six was heading to Florida for spring break. At a ticket counter in the Atlantic City airport, my 8-year-old son was singled out for "secondary" or random screening. I knew it was absurd, but I didn't complain, figuring it was the small price we all have to pay post 9/11. Common sense told me it was a terrible waste of precious resources.

My (Now 8 year old) daughter has been pulled out twice for "random" screening. I could tell by the reaction of the TSA agents that they thought this was ludicrous, but they went ahead and made her stand to the side, arms out, while they passed the wand over her. She was 7 at the time..once at DFW, another at San Diego.

[Samwise]

I have a slightly different take. I don't want them to skip granny. I want her checked. However, I want them to pay extra-special attention to people who fit the profile, which I think needs to now include young women and not just males.

[Samwise]

My (Now 8 year old) daughter has been pulled out twice for "random" screening.

As sad as that is, this is the world we live in today. The next mother-murderer-bomber could be a recent convert who doesn't fit the profile and will gladly sent her child to Allah.

[Heyworth]

The last time I flew, about 6 weeks ago, they had an old Amish guy pulled out for secondary screening.

I always knew there was something fishy about them.

[Mrs.Liberty]

I'll be the first to admit, she can be a terrorist at times, but she is not quite in the league of what we SHOULD be profiling for.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

As sad as that is, this is the world we live in today. The next mother-murderer-bomber could be a recent convert who doesn't fit the profile and will gladly sent her child to Allah.

I agree. That old lady in a walker could have had some sort of explosive device inserted into her walker by a grandson who recently converted to Islam, that white guy with the last name of Smith might be a fanatical devotee of Islam, that little girl might have parents who think nothing of using her to transport explosives onto the plane. Better safe than sorry.

[demlosers]

Who runs the US Department of Transportation?







I know, but I'll let someone else hit this out of the park. ;)

[speekinout]

Yes. 2 or 3 of the British plotters were Anglos who recently converted to Islam; one was a couple who planned to use their baby as cover. In other incidents there was the 59 year old white woman (close to granny status) who disrupted a plane on her way back from Pakistan, and a young woman of Pakistani heritage flying from WV to SC.

It's true that most of the terrorists are Muslim Arabic men, but they have shown the ability to recruit people of all ages and ethnicities. Racial profiling would only work for a short time. After that, the worst dangers would be from the recruits (willing or unwilling). And how would we know who they were?

[ARealMothersSonForever]

However, I want them to pay extra-special attention to people who fit the profile, which I think needs to now include young women and not just males.

You might want to include 59 year old grannies coming from Pakistan to get a fiancee visa for their islamic boyfriend: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1685417/posts

[yuleeyahoo]

Absolutely, everyone should have to strip naked in the concourse and receive a complete body cavity search in full view of the rest of the passengers.

After all, better safe thatn sorry.

[originalbuckeye]

My mother, in her initial stage of Alzheimer's, was taken into a 'private' room because they couldn't swab the top of her metal leg brace. I had mistakenly let her put her slacks on after she put on her full leg brace. It was humiliating. She took it well, I didn't.

[AFPhys]

A related article mentioned by Laura Ingram today:
http://www.townhall.com/Columnists/JonahGoldberg/2006/08/16/screening_for_terrorists_as_nicely_as_possible

Screening for terrorists as nicely as possible

By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, August 16, 2006

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the Transportation Security Administration is testing sophisticated machines that use elaborate algorithms to determine whether air travelers have "hostile intent." The machines measure your sweat output, pulse rate and other tells while asking questions such as: "Are you planning to immigrate illegally?" "Are you smuggling drugs?" "Do these stupid questions make you feel like committing a terrorist act?"

OK, I made the last one up, and I shouldn't make fun because supposedly the Israelis have figured out how to make this stuff work. The thinking behind this program rests on the assumption that searching for every kind of potential weapon or explosive is too reactive. Find the bad motives, and the rest will follow.

If it works, great. But one of the frustrating reasons the U.S. government feels compelled to spend all of this time and energy coming up with computerized lie detectors is that civil libertarians can't trust airport security personnel to do the same thing. Why? Because it's possible for humans to be racist.

The TSA's more established security system, Screening Passengers by Observation Technique, or SPOT, relies on human intelligence instead of the artificial kind. Teams are trained to scrutinize passengers for more than 30 questionable behaviors, according to the Journal: "They look for obvious things like someone wearing a heavy coat on a hot day, but also for subtle signs like vocal timbre, gestures and tiny facial movements that indicate someone is trying to disguise an emotion."

This apparently is unacceptable for civil libertarians.

"Our concern is that giving TSA screeners this kind of responsibility and discretion can result in their making decisions not based on solid criteria but on impermissible characteristics such as race," the ACLU's Gregory T. Nojeim told the Journal.

In other words, while our enemies are coming up with ingenious ways to murder Americans, we're coming up with ingenious ways to search for our enemies in the nicest manner possible. No amount of training, it seems, can immunize against the real threat to America: the possibility that somewhere, at some time, a TSA cop might pull an Arab or South Asian out of a line at an airport unfairly and talk to them for five minutes.

Note: We're not talking about training security personnel to racially profile passengers. Quite the opposite. The ACLU's problem is with training officers not to racially profile if that training nonetheless gives them enough autonomy so that it's theoretically possible to take race into account.

What is so infuriating about this is that the ACLU favors policies which discriminate against all sorts of people - old people, women, children and others who, under random searches and other idiotic numerical formulas, are pulled aside for literally no reason at all.

All of this is happening against a backdrop of a war on terror in which roughly 99 percent of jihadi terrorists are of either Middle Eastern or South Asian descent and 100 percent of them are Muslim.

Critics of racial profiling say that it wouldn't have stopped Richard Reid (the shoe bomber) or Timothy McVeigh (the Oklahoma City bomber). This is a red herring. Nobody ever proposed that race should be the only factor, or even the most important factor. But why can't it be one of those 30-plus factors? The Brits who foiled this most recent plot were allowed to take race into account. Was that too high a price to pay for thwarting mass murder?

The terrorists we're looking for are overwhelmingly young, male Muslims from places like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Why is it morally superior to inconvenience old Mormon women of Swedish descent - for no reason at all - as much as young men from Pakistan?

Two alleged members of the British liquid explosives plot were young men of British descent who converted to Islam, and one was a woman with a child. Only a fool would advocate a system that, as a rule, deliberately excludes such people from scrutiny. But isn't it equally foolish to spend vast sums on machines designed to interpret the facial twitches and sweat glands of millions of passengers out of an irrational phobia of racial profiling?

Ron Suskind's new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," explores Dick Cheney's view that if there's a 1 percent chance terrorists might detonate a nuclear bomb in an American city, the government must act as if there's a 100 percent chance. Despite the guffawing this elicited from administration critics, it strikes me as eminently sensible. (If there were a 1 percent chance the snake in your back yard would kill your child, wouldn't 1 percent equal 100 percent for you, too?) The ACLU's self-indulgent position, meanwhile, seems to be that if there's a 1 percent chance a cop will be a racist, we must act as if it's a 100 percent chance. And that means humans can't ever be trusted.

[seasoned traditionalist]

You know what really p*sses me off about situations like this, is that we NEVER get to know WHO exactly was the f*ckin moron who initiated such a PC, bullsh*t, policy.

I WANT NAME(s), departments, policies, responsibilities, etc.

Where is the the NY Slime and all the "leaker's" when you really need it/them? /sarc.

[chewydog]

Something to go duh about. How is racial profiling any different from racial preference, as used in education or the job place? One is pc, the other is not.

[Yossarian]

I have a slightly different take. I don't want them to skip granny. I want her checked. However, I want them to pay extra-special attention to people who fit the profile, which I think needs to now include young women and not just males.

I agree. I posted this earlier, but it bears reposting.

Last Friday, I was up in San Francisco (hey, I had a professional conference, so I had an excuse). Hezbollah supporters were having a nice, peaceful march (ha!) around the city. Check out the demographic makeup of the protesters:

Islamo-fasicst idiots come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages these days, and don't think for a second that their braintrust won't use our biases against us.