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Call it profiling - or common sense

By PHILIP GAILEY
Published July 24, 2005

Here we go again - another round of Lotto security where the odds favor the terrorists. Wish us luck, because we're going to need it.

After the second terrorist bombing in London in two weeks, New York City police began conducting random searches of bags and packages carried by subway passengers. Police officials stressed that the selection of commuters for checks will not be based on race, ethnicity or religion. At selected stations, one in five passengers, or maybe one in 10, will be searched. New York Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said everything would be done strictly within the law, although that didn't satisfy the New York Civil Liberties Union, which howled about an invasion of people's privacy.

We've been through this before. After the 9/11 attacks, the government ordered tougher airport security measures, including random passenger searches. Racial and ethnic profiling was forbidden. So we had the ludicrous spectacle of airport security officers pulling grandmothers in wheelchairs and people like former Vice President Al Gore out of boarding lines to search their persons and baggage. As far as I know, these random searches didn't turn up a single terrorist. They certainly didn't make me feel any safer getting on an airliner, especially when I saw people who fit my own terrorist profile - I had the 9/11 terrorists in mind - being waved through.

Random searches are likely to be a waste of time and resources that produce little beyond a false sense of security. Police should instead focus their attention on suspicious people, suspicious behavior and suspicious bags. For example, if they see a young man in a bulky coat in midsummer, or someone with wires sticking out of his shirt sleeves, they might want to investigate further.

That appears to be the way London authorities are handling security on their subways and buses after the terrorist strikes. Instead of random searches, they pay particular attention to people who fit the profile that emerged from the recent bombings, although they don't call it profiling. Some would call it common sense. Since we know that the eight London bombers were all young Muslim men with backpacks, is it wrong for police to keep that profile in mind in their surveillance of the city's subway and bus stations?

In the United States, any suggestion of ethnic or religious profiling provokes a great outcry from civil rights groups who see it as morally and constitutionally repugnant. We know our country's sorry history of racial profiling - "driving while black" - and don't want police singling out people on the basis of skin color, dress or religion. After 9/11, even the Bush administration, hardly a champion of civil liberties, prohibited profiling in airport security. But have we gone too far in that direction?

A few months ago, a friend of mine complained to the Transportation Security Administration about what he considered a serious security breach at Dulles International Airport outside Washington. London-bound passengers were required to show a photo ID before going through the security checkpoint. There was one exception - a young Muslim woman who was garbed in black from head to toe. Only her eyes were exposed. When my friend, a liberal Democrat, asked a security officer why the woman had not been required to show a photo ID, he said he was told that higher-ups made the exception after getting complaints from Muslim groups. That two Muslim women from Chechnya a few weeks earlier had brought down two Russian airliners with bombs they smuggled on board apparently was of no concern.

It would be wrong to suggest that all Muslims are potential terrorists who bear close watching. But it would be absurd to pretend that randomly pulling Al Gore out of an airport line for an individual search makes flying safer.

The fact is, it's simply not possible to protect our subways, trains, buses and ferries from every terrorist threat. Random searches won't do it; neither will passenger profiling. Some will get through despite our best efforts. I like the British response as expressed last week by Prime Minister Tony Blair: "It's important . . . that we respond by keeping our normal lives and doing what we want to do. To do otherwise is, in a sense, to give them (terrorists) the very thing that they are looking for."

Philip Gailey's e-mail address is gailey@sptimes.com

[Last modified July 23, 2005, 00:21:02]