Racial Profiling

(Community Matters) It isn’t as simple & philosophical as it sounds.  How do we effectively combat terrorism in the air?  Where are the lines at civil liberties vs security we are willing to draw in exchange for heightened security?

These “essays” in today’s New York Times helped me better understand the cost:benefit analysis of racial profiling.  Frankly (and I suppose perhaps I should be embarrassed about it), I wasn’t automatically opposed to the new policy of profiling individuals from 14 countries.  However, the comments therein, especially those of Ben Gurion Int’l Airport (Israel) consultant Rafi Sela and computer science Professor Sheldon Jacobson remind me that racial profiling isn’t just wrong, it isn’t effective and would distract from better practices.  Prof Jacobson notes that 60-70% of passengers are known commodities.  We have enough information on them to not spend billions in security resources inspecting them as they travel.  For the other 30-40%, that’s where we should focus our state-of-the-art technologies, even not allowing some of them to travel if we cannot satisfy ourselves with safety.