Thursday, June 9, 2011

Profiling Airline Passengers


Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano explains why America's (and TSA's) focus on screening travelers should not be on the young Muslim males who're actually causing all the problems. She seems to be saying that we should continue doing cavity searches on African-American Baptist grandmothers or Irish Catholic toddlers to insure that our focus on diversity remains strong. 

Israel's El Al Airline is widely considered to be the safest in the world to fly. (Walt, Vivienne (2001-01-10). "Unfriendly skies are no match for El Al". USA Today. Retrieved 06-09-11)

Why is Israel's airline safer? Profiling works. Some critics to El Al note that its security checks on passengers include extreme racial profiling and have argued that such profiling is primitive, unfair, irrational, and degrading to those subject to such screening. El Al argues that it does not use racial profiling, but does use behavioral profiling, and that there is nothing inherently racist about behavioral profiling.




Does listening to Secretary Napolitano inspire confidence in you that she has both oars in the water? Or does she seem more like a broken lightbulb (dumb as a bag of hammers/box of rocks)?


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