Britain Wakes Up and Smells the Arabian Coffee

The Brits are taking action that will make the skies safer, and the Muslims madder:

THE Government is discussing with airport operators plans to introduce a screening system that allows security staff to focus on those passengers who pose the greatest risk.

The passenger-profiling technique involves selecting people who are behaving suspiciously, have an unusual travel pattern or, most controversially, have a certain ethnic or religious background.

The system would be much more sophisticated than simply picking out young men of Asian appearance. But it would cause outrage in the Muslim community because its members would be far more likely to be selected for extra checks.

[...]

Three days before last week’s arrests, the highest-ranking Muslim police officer in Britain gave warning that profiling techniques based on physical appearance were already causing anger and mistrust among young Muslims. Tarique Ghaffur, an assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said: “We must think long and hard about the causal factors of anger and resentment.

“There is a very real danger that the counter-terrorism label is also being used by other law-enforcement agencies to the effect that there is a real risk of criminalising minority communities.”

Sir Rod Eddington, former chief executive of British Airways, criticised the random nature of security searches. He said that it was irrational to subject a 75-year-old grandmother to the same checks as a 25-year-old man who had just paid for his ticket with cash.

Philip Baum, an aviation security consultant, said that profiling should focus on ruling out people who obviously posed no risk rather than picking out Asian or Arabs.

Just recently a prominent Dem praised the Brits for their work improving airline security. He had this to say on Meet the Press:

MR. DEAN: Well, first of all, if you want to fight and win on the war on terror, the fact is Iraq is a distraction. Iraq never had anything to do with the war on terror and that's just a fact and that's what the 9/11 Commission said. So it's not enough to listen to the right-wing folks that claim that we're fighting the terrorists off the shore so they don't come on the shore. That is hooey. The people who fought the terrorism best in the last couple of weeks have been the British, who uncovered this plot. We need to upgrade our airport security and we've tried to do that in the Democratic Party, and our additions to the budget in Homeland Security have been turned down by the Republican majority. We need a real tough fight on terror, but we need to be tough and smart, not just talk tough.

I wonder if Howard the Donkey will come out tomorrow and demand that we start profiling like the British? I sure hope so, because that's exactly what's needed (I think I said something like that here).