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Experts contend racial profiling at airports works
Compiled from Times wires WASHINGTON -- Law professor Jonathan Turley bought an airline ticket shortly before his flight. Rushing through the airport, nervous about getting to the gate in time, he sped through the checkpoint. An elderly woman was stopped instead. Security screeners poked through the woman's bags and looked into each one of her pill bottles. Turley, a younger man traveling alone without luggage, asked a supervisor why the woman was stopped and he wasn't. He was told they could not profile any passengers, and she was selected at random. "Random selection rolls the dice on security by selecting an insignificantly small number of the 40-million monthly travelers for special scrutiny," the George Washington University professor told a House panel on aviation Wednesday. "If we want to have an effective screening system at our airports for terrorism, some form of profiling must be used." The man whose job used to be enforcing the famously strict security at Ben-Gurion International Airport outside Tel Aviv, Israel, agreed. Without intelligent profiling, security agents are wasting time and attention on "low-risk passengers," said Rafi Ron, former security director at Ben-Gurion. Ron referred to a recent incident where a decorated U.S. military officer was randomly selected for a complete search that probably involved as many as 10 security officers. "These 10 people should have been looking for the Richard Reids of the world," he said, referring to the shoe-bomb suspect arrested in December. Ron, now head of a private security company working to improve security at Boston's Logan Airport, told the House Transportation subcommittee that the profiling method -- developed in response to terrorist threats -- has proven successful in Israel for 32 years. It takes into account many things, including country of origin, but ethnicity is not the determining factor, he said. "The fact that someone is a Palestinian is not enough to make him a selectee (for a search)," he said. Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle expressed support for some kind of new profiling system at U.S. airports to replace the current screening process, which they said lacks common sense. Several lawmakers -- who travel extensively -- spoke of watching children, elderly women and even disabled people selected for searches. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., was forced to strip to his underwear before boarding a flight from Washington to Detroit. Former Vice President Dan Quayle and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta have also gotten extra attention. "I have extraordinary concerns that we are doing something that lacks common sense," said Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. "What we're doing sometimes is abysmally stupid." The current screening process, based on a computer program, does not take into account race or ethnicity. "Sometimes it seems that screeners are barred from selecting anyone who actually looks like a possible terrorist," said Rep. John Mica, a Winter Park Republican. "Political correctness may be stifling the development of a profiling system that will enhance the safety and security of commercial aviation." But some lawmakers cautioned that selecting people based even in part on ethnicity or race is discrimination. "Ethnic or racial profiling . . . cannot be defended under any circumstances," said Rep. William Pascrell, D-N.J. "People's behavior should be the bottom line." In addition, Pascrell urged lawmakers to be cautious when looking at other nations as models of security. "We're a different country. We are a heterogeneous nation. That brings very different circumstances," he said. "We've got folks that look like everything here." Katie Corrigan, a legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union, told the panel that profiling airline passengers is ineffective and a violation of civil rights. "It is similar to the use of race to decide which cars to stop in a search for drugs," she said. Corrigan asked the lawmakers to ban profiles based on "race, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation or political opinion." The fear is that profiling will become a way to single out someone on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion. The Council for American-Islamic Relations cited more than 80 instances in which Muslim passengers were singled out for extensive screening, taken off flights or prevented from boarding since Sept. 11. Ron dismissed the criticisms that passenger profiling amounts to racial discrimination. "The fact that there have been many Palestinian selectees in Israel's aviation security procedures merely reflects the fact that most of the terrorists acting against it are Palestinian," he said. Several lawmakers also dismissed the ACLU concerns. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill, said it's logical to have more scrutiny for people who come from nations that sponsor terrorism or have large numbers of Islamic extremists. In response to Corrigan, he asked sarcastically: "So we ignore the fact that particular countries want to kill us?" -- Information from Cox News Service and the Associated Press was used in this report.
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