Profiling and Security

I am all for using "profiling" to improve security at airports.  It is just that I am against racial profiling.  While it might work for a while, it will, at some point, fail due to those criminals we are trying to thwart figuring out why "type" of person can pass freely through security.

Put another way, what I am against is the idea that profiling means focusing on people who look like they are from the Middle East or are Muslim.  I am against the suggestion that the TSA should ignore little kids, people in wheel chairs, people dressed as nuns and women who look Nordic.

As this news report points out being blond doesn't mean you aren't part of some world-wide terrorist conspiracy.  Meet Colleen LaRose, aka Jihad Jane.

On Monday, per the news report by AP Correspondent Maryclaire Dale, Ms LaRose pleaded guilty to terrorist activities and in particular "to her role in a plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist who had offended Muslims."  Unacceptable activity; killing cartoonists because you don't like their cartoons.

Ms Maryclair Dale, the reporter, gave us this heartstrings pulling paragraph

Both LaRose and Paulin-Ramirez [a co-defendent] led troubled lives, LaRose having survived a suicide attempt and Paulin-Ramirez, according to her mother, an abusive first marriage and a childhood marked by bullying.

And continued to lead troubled lives.  Now there is something a profiler could make something out of.  Quickly moving Ms LaRosa along because she looks like anyone else from Texas would have been a big mistake.

While the Israelis use racial profiling, they also look for other telltale ticks.  Doing that second kind of profiling is fine with me.  But, to just pick out people whose physiognomy puts them in a suspect category is bad police work and it is un-American.

Regards  —  Cliff