"Offend few, benefit many"

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Op/Ed
Offend few, benefit many
By Jens F. Laurson and George A. Pieler
The Baltimore (MD) Sun


Holiday traffic exposed lots of glitches in air travel security, as
infrequent fliers confronted the ever-changing rules for carry-on baggage.
Despite the United States-European Union agreement on provisional rules for
passenger-data exchange, air travel security procedures have been up in the
air since the August terror plot aimed at the United States and Britain.  
 
Beverages and gels are out, except for 3-ounce travel sizes. Europe's
belated decision to allow musicians to travel with their instruments cost
renowned Jazz Messengers trumpeter Valery Ponomarev a broken arm in a tussle
with Air India employees in Paris. Most recently, a group of imams were
tossed from a US Airways flight due to passenger alarm at their loud
praying, praising of Allah, and unexplained seat changing. 

These are excellent reasons to step back and consider the obvious: We should
look closely at the actual passengers actually boarding each flight. That,
alas, leads us into the politically incorrect territory of "ethnic
profiling." 

We shy away from any form of "discrimination," yet to discriminate is value
neutral: We do it every day in our choices of food, friends, jobs.
Government discriminates in deciding what laws and regulations to implement.
Security agencies discriminate, focusing their efforts where the yield is
greatest. When resources are limited, anything less than prudent
discrimination brings waste, demoralization, decreased effectiveness and
less security. If, even when lives are at stake, we find flying too
burdensome without mascara, water bottles, too-big-books and instruments,
the answer is common-sense discrimination. 

We may wish to treat everyone the same, but the hard truth is we don't
(privately or publicly) and shouldn't. For greater flying security, we know
to look for Muslim, South Asian/Middle Eastern men. The July 2005 London
bombings taught us that the passport matters less than ethnicity - which is
just as well, because while passports can be forged, skin color and ethnic
features cannot. 

It is time we stop pretending that making Al Gore take his shoes off (as
happened after 9/11) is normal - or that Mr. Gore should have to pretend to
happily embrace that "egalitarian spirit." The true message of today's
airport security measures is that "We are all terrorists now!" 

Is it unfair to make men fitting the suicide-terrorist profile "suffer"
through extra-strict security measures? Inconveniencing an entire ethnic
class for the wrongdoing of a small minority would seem to offend Western
values. The truth is, everyone suffers twice when passengers, no matter how
low their risk profile, are searched, and everyone is delayed because
everyone else is checked. If we simply searched, rigorously, those who
constitute even a remote risk based on the history of terror attacks (with
apologies, discounts, or whatever else might soften the blow of being
singled out), even those customers would save time, not having to wait for
everyone else to be frisked. Those US Airways imams would have been checked
out early and either given a pass or been detained with much less fuss. 

No one welcomes the implicit accusation of wrongdoing, especially when
people to one's left and right do not suffer that indignity. Yet grievances
of those designated for greater scrutiny must be weighed against the
universal grievance of all travelers. No reasonable passenger today should
fail to understand why he has been selected for a more thorough security
check. The person so selected might not like it, but the fact is, such
checking makes him more secure, too. 

Insurance companies use profiling; so does Israel. The history of Western
governments profiling for bad motives is disgraceful and explains our
trepidation. But we must differentiate between acceptable and unacceptable
uses of profiling when civilization and lives are under attack. 

Surely we would be outraged if, to prevent drunken-driving deaths, we
required every citizen to attend classes against drunk driving. Yet it is
imaginable that we might require all those who consume alcohol and have a
driver's license to attend. Troubled times call for troubling measures: Let
us choose those that inflict the least pain and inconvenience the fewest
people. 

Jens F. Laurson is editor in chief of the International Affairs Forum.
E-mail: jlaurson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx George A. Pieler is senior fellow with the
Institute for Policy Innovation and former vice president of the Columbia
Society of International Law.

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