spork wrote:
I’d defy anyone to easily tell my race and religion. How long will security want to work this out? Will they be employing theologists?
I did not suggest that security should have to know your religion before allowing you to board. As far as I am aware, there is no requirement for any of us to declare our religion in the UK at present. This does not alter the fact that profiling is a useful aid to assessing risk.
Superpilot wrote:
Situation, you are seen to have been:
Brown skinned
Young
Muslim
Male
Reading about aeroplanes!
Looking deep into the flightdeck everytime the door opened
Telling your mate you thought Bush was a w****r
Someone, on the plane shouts "Terrorist". The entire plane goes into a frenzy. Anti-terrorist squad escorts you off the plane with a gun pointed at you. They frisk you, to discover:
A Bluetooth GPS
A mobile phone with a photo of a flightdeck as the wallpaper
A PocketPC device with instructions on how to get to 'Aviation House'
Police visit your home, and find:
Internet links to anti-Bush, anti-war websites.
Your computers internet history showing you've been to pilot forums, trying to gain knowledge about whatever it was you were probably going to do that day.
A copy of the Quran in your cupboard, alongside 'Pooley's Flight Guide', 'Flying the big jets' and 'Stupid White Men'
A Pilot License, and a logbook proving you've been "surveying" the sites.
An airband radio with all the frequencies tuned in.
...Under current anti-terror legislation, someone like you is allowed to be locked away without being charged for nearly 3 weeks, in the process recking your whole life, probably rendering you jobless, unemployable and a whole lot more.
That someone coule be me, and thousands of other people. Therefore
to your racial profiling.
The example you give is very contrived and most unlikely to happen. It relies on someone on the aircraft shouting "terrorist" on the basis of very little evidence. It also relies on that person being taken seriously enough, despite the lack of evidence, for the anti-terrorist squad to remove the "suspect" at gunpoint. It seems more likely to me that the passenger who shouted "terrorist" would be asked to justify his claim and then politely asked to be quiet.
Here is another scenario for you.
It's 8 July 2005. The police are desperately trying to find the identity of the bombers. They collect the cctv tapes from the relevant underground stations. They are faced with a very time-consuming examination of the tapes, looking for the suspects who would probably be carrying bags or rucksacks or wearing bulky clothes. The question is do they:
a) Carefully check out every underground passenger seen on the tapes who matches the above description?
b) Fast-forward past the white faces and concentrate on young men of south asian appearance?
If the answer is a) what does this tell you about their detective skills? If the answer is b) are they racists?
Scenario 2.
It's World Cup time in Germany and a joint unit of British and German police are monitoring fans on cctv as they assemble in town prior to the game. They are looking for troublemakers including any known football hooligans who may have made it to Germany in spite of having been banned. A German policeman points out two groups of people to his black British colleague. Group "A" comprises dark skinned young men who seem to be well behaved but obviously enjoying themselves. Group "B" comprises white skinned young men with shaven heads who are also reasonably well behaved. Does the British policeman advise his German colleague to:
a) Examine each group carefully against the list of troublemakers?
b) First concentrate on group "B" because most football hooligans are white?
If the answer is a) what does this tell you about his policing skills? If the answer is b) is he a racist?