The secret terrorist database is in the news again. Good luck finding out if you’re on it or not.
Until the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, [Dr.] Elie Khoury of Beverly Hills said he was never profiled…But Khoury and others fear they have somehow ended up on the Terrorist Screening Database administered by the FBI. It contains about 200,000 names and is operated by the government’s Terrorist Screening Center, said Michael Steinberg, an attorney with the Detroit office of the ACLU.
Part of the problem is that the database contains mistakes and misidentifies a number of innocent Americans, Steinberg said. “The government has to come up with a better system,” he said Monday.
Anyways, it seems there’s a class-action suit being filed by a bunch of people who are upset that they might’ve been “profiled,” when flying across the country. For the record: There is nothing wrong with profiling. I of course think it ought to be privately provided, by the airlines, instead of publicly funded through DHS, but whatever. In the meantime, profiling is simply a matter of playing the odds, and like any game of chance, you ought to do anything you can to move them in your favor. In blackjack, you count cards. In policing, you profile. No profile is a guarantee, as past performance is never a guaranteed indicator of future occurrences. But its a step in the right direction until experience dictates otherwise.
Look, we all profile on many levels every day. I know that the probability of a Ford Pinto exploding is greater than that of a Toyota Camry. Reasonable people will buy fewer Pintos and more Camrys. Is the Ford Pinto’s historically shitty record evidence that the one I buy tomorrow will explode? Well, of course not, don’t be ridi-cool-us. But it’s past track record suggests that it is more likely to explode than the Camry for sale down the block. Expecting the Pinto and the Camry to have approximately equal distributions is foolish, at best. Expecting young Arab men to be the subject of the same scrutiny as elderly white females is equally ludicrous.
Sure, the Ford Pinto is not a rational actor. Doctor Khoury is. But the same principle applies. Until young arab males start committing fewer acts of terrorism, or until some other demographic overtakes them in frequency, we have to scrutinize the young arab males. Is it unfortunate? Of course it is. And it’s through no fault (other than chance) of Mr. Khoury’s.
Look, you wouldn’t let a stranger into your car without first making an effort to determine if he’s a threat or not. And the stranger doesn’t have the right to say “You can’t check my pockets, but you still have to drive me.” Now substitute “You” with “Airline Company,” and “drive” with “fly.” The difference is, you’d never expect the government to do the screening for you. Why we expect them to do the screening for Northwest Airlines et. al, I’m not quite sure. It shouldn’t be DHS’s problem, in fact, there shouldn’t be a DHS. But there is, and it just complicates things.
Jarrod Agen, spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security, said he couldn’t comment on the lawsuit, but added “we do not profile when inspecting people at ports of entry” such as airports.
If the Department of Homeland Security is not actively profiling, then it’s simply not doing its job. Either Mr. Agen is lying, or the DHS is comprised of idiots. Neither would surprise me.
