Profiling airlines passengers has become an urgent issue for airport authorities around the globe in the wake of the alleged plot to blow up a series of US-bound commercial jets over the Atlantic Ocean. It has also produced extreme jumpiness in passengers themselves, so that in recent days we have seen a dozen entirely innocent people of Asian or Middle Eastern appearance taken off a NorthWest Orient airliner after it turned back to Schipol airport. Meanwhile two British Asians were escorted from a UK-bound flight before it left Spain.
The current high state of tension has been well summed up by the UK’s most senior Asian police officer when he said it seemed a new crime had been created; that of TWA, “Traveling While Asian.”
There is no doubt the authorities must respond to the new dangers menacing international air travel. The key point is the manner in which they respond. As Saudi citizens discovered to their cost and embarrassment in the months after 9/11, visiting the United States became a distinctly unpleasant and frustrating experience. Possessing a Saudi passport meant being subjected to rude and humiliating treatment by US immigration and security personnel.
What is needed is balance. Passenger profiling cannot be based purely on the color of a person’s skin, their religion or their nationality. During the IRA bombing campaign on the UK mainland, every Irishman arriving in Britain was treated with suspicion. Over the 20 years of the troubles, immigration officials detained thousands of innocent Irishmen. In the end it became an inconvenience that Irish visitors learned to endure. Unfortunately, the new profiling is not so easily dismissed. This is because it gives rise to suspicion that it is motivated by racial and anti-Islamic sentiments. The powers that be in the United States and Europe can deny this vigorously. Unfortunately, this is the way it seems to those who are caught up in this new security net, the mesh of which picks out their skin and their Muslim faith.
The vast majority of victims of passenger profiling will accept the absolute importance of ensuring that the terrorists cannot again strike airliners. That will not however stop them from being offended at being treated with the highest suspicion, both by security people and even some of their fellow passengers. It has rightly been pointed out that a few terror suspects have in fact been white. Dressed in a sharp suit with a computer case slung over a shoulder, such people would in no way fit the passenger profile.
Good security operatives will be looking at features other than the color of a person’s skin. Telltale signs, such as body language, eye movements or more obvious nerves can betray a man or woman whose mind is set on murderous crime. Obviously such techniques should not be broadcast. What governments everywhere must broadcast, however, particularly in Europe and North America, is clear and convincing proof that the basis of passenger profiling is not racism and religious bigotry.
