Argument: When you know terrorists are likely to be members of particular national and ethnic groups, it is simply more practical to focus searches on those groups.

The reality is that all of the major terrorist attacks against Western targets in recent years have been perpetrated by young, Muslim men. It doesn’t require any prejudice at all to realise that they are the most sensible group to check and recheck.

Although it is important to respect people’s rights and liberties regardless of ethnicity or religious belief, a sensible security policy must force police officers and security officials to make decisions based on factual information. Everybody- including most members of the groups identified by profiling- has an interest in not being blown up on an aeroplane. They will, therefore, accept that this is a regrettable necessity. Airport staff can only stop so many people and it makes sense to target groups that terrorists are likely to be part of.

Candidate 1: "The scale of flights in Israel- both domestic and international- is tiny. Compared with the North American and European aviation markets, screening passengers entering and leaving Israeli territory requires an entirely different approach. Equally the racial diversity of Tel Aviv is quite different to New York and London.

The Pew Research Centre estimates that there are 2.6 million Muslims living in the US [i] , a number equal to twice the population of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv combined. The pressures on airports between a small state in the Middle East and the transportation hubs of the US and Europe are totally different. The very account cited by Proposition talks about some passengers being interviewed for up to half an hour, that is a rather different prospect when dealing with JFK or Heathrow. It is just not a practical solution.

[i] “The future of the global muslim population”. Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, January 2011. http://features.pewforum.org/muslim-population-graphic/#/United%20States"
Candidate 2: "The presumption of innocence is a principle worth defending and an important part of this is rejecting policing strategies that assume certain groups are more likely to be engage in criminal activity than others. In the last ten years, a few dozen people, at most, have been involved in terrorist acts at airports. Meanwhile, millions upon millions of young, Muslim men have flown across continents and oceans without the slightest disruption.

It is both unfair and foolish to target a single group as being more likely to contain terrorists. It builds resentment among the group concerned and is unlikely to reveal any practical results because of the numbers concerned."
Candidate 3: "It is incredibly unlikely that any randomly selected member of a particular group would be attempting to commit a crime. Racial, ethnic and identity groups are extremely large. Terrorist organisations, even al Qaeda, rarely contain more than a few hundred members. The relative proportion of individuals belonging to any particular identity group who also belongs to a terrorist organisation is likely to be impossibly small.

The impact of the perceptions of the communities involved, however, would be significant, allowing for accusations of racism and persecution.

Statistically, profiling would have very little impact: in 2005, US Airlines carried 745.7 million passengers. [i] Faced with figures like that random stoppages make far more sense.

Although exact figures are not available even if just two or three million fell within the profile group, it would be impossible to search all of them. The use of profiling, however, as a result of the PATRIOT Act, led to, among others, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy being stopped; it does not and cannot work. [ii]

[i] ‘2005 Total Airline System Passenger Traffic Up 4.6 Percent From 2004’, Research and Innovative Transport Administration, 2006, http://www.bts.gov/press_releases/2006/bts020_06/html/bts020_06.html

[ii] ‘Senetor? Terrorist? A Watch List Stops Kennedy at Airport’, Swarns, Rachel L., The New York Times, 20 August 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/20/national/20flight.html"

The presumption of innocence is a principle worth defending and an important part of this is rejecting policing strategies that assume certain groups are more likely to be engage in criminal activity than others. In the last ten years, a few dozen people, at most, have been involved in terrorist acts at airports. Meanwhile, millions upon millions of young, Muslim men have flown across continents and oceans without the slightest disruption.

It is both unfair and foolish to target a single group as being more likely to contain terrorists. It builds resentment among the group concerned and is unlikely to reveal any practical results because of the numbers concerned.
