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'US to begin profiling air passengers'

  • 02-04-2010 12:09PM
    #1
    Tabnabs
    Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 15,839 Mod ✭✭✭✭


    Friday, 2 April 2010 10:51

    The US will today announce plans to begin profiling American-bound passengers in a major shake up of air travel security measures.

    Under the new measures to begin this month, and which will apply to US citizens as well, the level of screening of travellers will depend on how closely their personal characteristics match against intelligence on potential terrorists.

    The measures will replace mandatory enhanced screening of all passengers travelling to the US from 14 mostly-Muslim nations, put into place following a failed al-Qaeda attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound flight on Christmas Day.
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    'It's much more tailored to what intelligence is telling us and what the threat is telling us, as opposed to stopping all individuals from a particular nationality,' said an unnamed US official quoted by The Washington Post.

    The announcement to be made by the Department of Homeland Security comes after a three-month review of security protocols, said the Post, citing a senior administration official.

    'It is much more surgically targeting those individuals we are concerned about and have intelligence for,' the administration official said, according to the New York Times.

    'This is not a system that can be called profiling in the traditional sense. It is intelligence-based,' said the official.

    The current 'no-fly' list is to remain in place under the new procedures, but supplemented by cross-referenced information that may see passengers subject to further screening even if their names are not flagged, the Wall Street Journal said.

    Characteristics such as nationality, age, recently visited countries, and partial names will be used alongside the 'no-fly' list, the Journal said.

    The system aims to avoid the intelligence failures that allowed the alleged Christmas Day bomber, Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, to board the Detroit-bound flight from Amsterdam wearing underpants rigged with explosives, even though US intelligence had been alerted to information on him.

    The Obama administration has also pledged to speed up the installation of full body scanners at US airports and to increase funding for federal air marshals on flights deemed most at risk.
    source

    I have heard people saying how profiling was much better and more successful long term than the current measures, but from this article there appears to be no slackening of the current requirements (liquids quote for example)?


Comments

  • #2
    alpha2zulu
    Closed Accounts Posts: 689 ✭✭✭alpha2zulu


    It's no bad thing really. If it means time and expense aren't wasted giving "mandatory enhanced screening" to Grannies and familys heading to Disney, shopping trips to New York etc it is to be welcomed.

    Of course we are bound to hear the usual backlash in the media from the PC brigade to even a mention of the word 'profiling', but in the long run it just makes better sense.


  • #3
    BrianD
    Closed Accounts Posts: 7,221 ✭✭✭BrianD


    You know what. It's an absolute waste of time and another step towards a police state.

    The odd thing is that the 9-11 terrorists were all on visas. Not the waiver programme. They applied for and were given a visa by a branch of the American government. would it not better if they were a little more careful here? The Detroit guy was also supposed to have been issued with a visa and apparently was on the no-fly list.

    So the bottom line is that it seems to be the law abiding people who are being profiled (no doubt this data will soon be commercially available) and it has no effect on the bad guys. I recall reading that there over 400,000 people on the no-fly list. How on earth is this a manageable system? The system seems to be failing in this respect.

    Furthermore, terrorists seem to be coming from all walks of life. Jihad Jane is an American woman and so on. America and many other countries including ourselves seem to be avoiding the real issue of why are these people so motivated to carry out these outrageous and terrible actions and against others?

    All of these just adds to the State of Fear that government likes to impose on their citizens. Stalin would be proud.


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