I was never sure why I was pulled aside at airports and given special screening the first 9 times I flew, post 9/11 (yes, I started keeping count), but I've always wondered what triggered the extra scrutiny. Was it an early, flawed version of TIA? My atheistically secular liberal lifestyle? Those photos of me at protest rallies? I hope it wasn't due to racial profiling, because I am of certain Irish/English/German nationality, confirmed via DNA samples as being a descendent of an English colonist to Jamestown in the 1700s, albeit one with swarthy skin and a dark complexion, and perhaps an angry eye.
Where am I going with pointless anecdote? Pasta only knows. Too long of a day/week/month for coherence, sorry.
Anyway, here's what I wanted to link to:
Salon.com Technology | Ask the pilot
The 19 skyjackers succeeded not because we failed to flag them -- in fact several of the cabal, including Mohammed Atta, were singled out by the CAPPS-1 (for computer-assisted passenger prescreening system) program then in place -- but because they knowingly anticipated what levels of resistance they would face, from previously gathered intelligence available to check-in staff, and, most important, physical resistance (or lack thereof) from passengers and crew aboard the four doomed Boeings. The attackers took advantage of the skyjack paradigm as it existed at the time. They did not exploit a loophole in airport security; they exploited a loophole in our mind-set and expectations. And whatever can be said of terrorists, they're generally not stupid; the more narrowly we profile, the easier the system becomes to skirt. Routine, as any security or antiterror expert will tell you, is weakness. The trouble with profiling isn't necessarily that it's racist or discriminatory. The trouble is that it doesn't work.Which data points are we supposed to use? Formulating some religious-ethnic template becomes extremely unreliable. Most of the world's Muslims aren't Arabs. Not all Arabs are Muslims. Nearly half of Lebanon is Christian. Iranians aren't Arabs. Neither are Turks. Plenty of Syrians have red hair and green eyes. The Bali bombers weren't Middle Eastern, they were Asian. And the blabbermouth reactionaries who scream for ethnic profiling were mum when USA Today reported that al-Qaida was actively recruiting white Chechens.
read more of Patrick Smith's invariably interesting column.
