Profiling and the Impossible Dream of Absolute Security
One of the most startling things about the War on Terror is the number of supposed miracle cures for a phenomenon that dates back to biblical times. If we introduce full body scanners at airports or increase the amount of time that people can be held for without charge or if we invade another country then everyone will be safe. Of course, that is palpable nonsense, but it doesn’t stop people spouting this sort of crap.
Like in this Telegraph article, where we learn that everything will be ok if we allow profiling of air passengers. In fairness, the article stops just short of arguing for profiling based on an explicitly racial basis, although given the gushing praise heaped on stop and search procedures designed to halt knife crime you can sense that this is what is being alluded to throughout the article. No, what the author does explicitly call for is profiling and searching those who have behaved suspiciously. And what constitutes suspicious seems to be flying from Nigeria to Amsterdam, and then paying for a one-way ticket to the USA with cash.
Ignoring the fact that people might travel across the world paying in cash for any number of reasons, the big flaw in this logic is that it assumes that the terrorist threat is essentially static. It isn’t. Terrorists adopt different methods as the authorities learn how to fight them. If you’re going to stop and search those who pay for their tickets in cash, then the terrorist will pay for his tickets by credit card. If those with one-way tickets are profiled, and singled out for more rigorous searches, then the terrorist will buy a return ticket. After all, a return ticket offers two chances to down the aircraft.
And you can extrapolate from there. If you search young men who look like Muslims, then the next bomber will be a white man. Search all young men, then it will be a woman with a bomb. Skip the little old lady in the queue, then at some point she’ll be your bomber. Until you are in the position where a kid is turned into a living weapon, and you’ve got an aircraft downed by a child. Don’t believe me? Well, consider this. One of the reasons for the growth in female suicide bombers is because of the comparative ease of getting them through a checkpoint without the sort of searches their male counterparts are subjected to.
Guess what? Terrorists adapt.
As well as increasing the likelihood of catching the bomber who doesn’t fit “the profile”, random searches are fairer. And fairness is an important consideration. I resent it when I have to take my shoes off at an airport, but I understand it. Because either everyone does it or a random selection of people do it, it is ok. But I would be irate if I was selected to be searched based on the colour of my skin, or because of by beliefs. Profiling discriminates – by definition. And discrimination increases the likelihood of radicalisation. So profiling could increase the number of terrorists. A counter-productive move, if ever there was one.
The article talks about the “absence of reality” in those who oppose counter-terrorist methods like profiling. Let me talk about the “absence of reality” in those who believe that ideas like profiling will increase security. You could do what you like to try to stop the likes of the underpants bomber through any number of invasive security procedures, but guess what? That attack failed anyway. And even if you turn airports into a dystopian security nightmare, you’re still not going to stop four lads from the North getting onto a train, coming to London and killing 52 people. Your plans are fuck all use against the most devastating terrorist attack this country has faced.
So go away and try to create your hermetically sealed security bubble, and watch the terrorist find a way around it. Or instead you could invest time in trying to find ways to engage with those at risk of being radicalised. You won’t stop terrorism, but you might help to minimize its recurrence without devastating civil liberties in pursuit of the impossible dream of absolute security.
Labels: Civil Liberties (the Death of), Profiling, Security, War on Terror
posted by The Nameless Libertarian @ 3:14 pm
11 Comments
11 Comments:
Yes terrorists adapt, but thats no argument for not using profiling now.
If the profile of who does the bombing changes, then you adapt to the changed circumstances. El-Al has had no terrorist incidents on its planes - how about starting with their methods? They obviously work.
Plus we have an advantage - the religious sensibilities of the terrorists, being religious fanatics, will mean they are less likely to be able to change the profile of the bomb carriers, unlike say a purely political terrorist such as the IRA was. They view women as below men so are less likely (though not guaranteed not) to use women. Children are a another matter, though I suspect using them would be more problematic from a practical aspect.
Basically a white family of 4 from Nuneaton are not going to be terrorists, and a single Pakistani man from Bradford could be. Thats the reality, and we can't ignore it.
I understand what you're saying; but you're wrong.
The record of El-Al may be good in terms of not having successful terrorist attacks, but across the board Israel does a lot of profiling (and uses other draconian counter-terrorist methods), and is still subjected to considerable lethal terrorist activity. Draconian counter-terrorist procedures don't work in the long-term - it has been shown time and time again.
Your point about religious terrorists being less likely to use women falls apart when you consider the evidence. Yes, they'd prefer to use men in their attacks, but if they can't, they'll use women. It has happened in Israel, in the Moscow theatre seige, in the Beslan School siege. In the latter two examples, women were used in order to create more media attention - which is one of the fundamental points of terrorism. So why not use female terrorist? Why not use old ladies? Why not use children?
You can argue that the Pakistani man from Bradford is more likely to be a terrorist than the family from Nuneaton, yet you have no evidence whatsoever that the man from Bradford is an extremist, or even Muslim. In fact, it is still highly unlikely that he will be a terrorist. Yet if you start stigmatising a section of the population through profiling (or assuming they are guilty until proven innocent) then your are going to start radicalising some of them. You are going to increase terrorism. Which, I'm assuming, you don't want to do.
I see the risks of using profiling right now far outweighing the benefits of doing so. Ignore the rhetoric; we are not in a state of war. There is still a far greater chance of your flight falling out of the sky because of a technical malfunction than there is of it being blown out of the sky.
TNL
Profiling seems to appeal to the "nationalists" who see terrorists as male, brown skinned undesirables.
In addition to TNL's points, I would add that given the police's widespread abuse of S.44, their ability to correctly use profiling would be in question. I'm pretty sure it would end up with security theatre, obvious targets being hassled and real terrorists left pretty much free to roam.
The only possible advantage of profiling would be that photgraphers might be less hassled.
I'm struggling with the thrust of your argument which seems to boil down to the following logic -
- People adapt to countermeasures
- Therefore countermeasures are pointless
I'm really not sure that follows. At the least you buy more time while the terrorist figures out how to adapt - and hopefully the things that cause the terrorist to learn will be failures as a result of the counter-measures working. There is only a limited pool of little old ladies in wheelchairs that can be duped into being bomb mules - I concede it is not beyond the realms of possibility that one could be recruited - but I am certain there is a much bigger pool of young angry men, who have studied in certain Mosques, or have affiliations with certain groups, or have travelled recently to certain countries who are more likely to be a threat to my family. After much reflection I'm all in favour of profiling so long as the formulas remain secret and it run in conjunction with a complementary random search policy. Belts and Braces.
No, that's not my argument at all. You might want to re-read my post so you actually understand the argument.
Don't forget history shows that counter-terrorist measures often have extremely negative implications. If you (or the government) starts profiling based on, for example, visiting "certain Mosques" then you are going to radicalise more people. What is the point of a counter-terrorist procedure that creates more terrorists?
And belts and braces? Ha.
If you routinely visited, for instance, Finsbury Park Mosque during the Immanship of Abu Hamza and went of your free will and listened to him Friday after Friday, I would suggest that you have more chance of having been radicalised already rather than by being asked now to take your shoes off at the airport. So having a watch list of 'certain Mosques' or even more specificly association to certain Imans is fair game.
I don't disagree with you that blanket, simplistic prolfiling (i.e. all brown skined 20-30 year old) would be counter-productive. But a more sophisticated set of profiling criteria (which can leave race out of it 100%) are common sense.
You're still missing the point. I'm not talking about people becoming radicalised because of having to take off their shoes in an airport, but rather people becoming radicalised because their religion or skin colour requires them to be treated differently to someone else.
You might want those who have particular connections with Islamic fundamentalism to be the ones "profiled", but who is to say what constitutes connections to fundamentalism? And who has the right to divine the motives of someone who visits a particular mosque? That's drifting into the territory of where someone is guilty of terrorism until they have had the authorities at an airport prove them innocent. Which again, could radicalise moderates.
You talk about profiling based on non racial grounds. Sounds wonderful, but I fail to see how it will work. Jim mentioned El-Al - how do you think El-Al's profiling works? Divine intuition? No, racial profiling.
Besides, those who do commit terrorist atrocities are often on the fringes of the security services radar - if they are on that radar at all. I don't think anyone would have stopped the 7/7 bombers at an airport except through using racial profiling. And as 7/7 shows, airport security is magnificently irrelevant given the targets of some terrorists.
TNL
I think it is more you who is missing my point. I read your article, I get what you are trying to say, I just disagree with it.
The assumption that would make your argument valid is that 'profiling' be based primarily on race and religion.
My understanding of the proposals for profiling are that they are way more sophisticated than that. You actually allude to some of them in your piece.
How would profiling have picked up the 7/7 bombers? Connection to Finsbury Park Mosque. Check. Flights to Pakistan or Yemen in the last three years. Check.
(incidently, that would also have picked up your white shoe bomber, and come to that you underpants bomber)
Personally, despite being white and of non-determinate religion, I would probably get flagged up on a couple of criteria (the flight to Pakistan thing - and often buying return tickets but then only going one-leg and flying somewhere else) but hey, that's fine with me. I seem to get stopped most times for 'random' checks anyway. Perhaps it is already happening?
Done properly, done in conjunction alongside a program of honestly random stops, there is no need to even make folk aware they are doing it.
No, once again, you still seem to be missing the point. Profiling will radicalise if there is even the perception that it is being done on a racial or religious basis. Cost benefit analysis - on the one hand, we have a the benefit of maybe stopping two bombers who failed anyway. On the other hand, we have the potential of creating a whole host of new terrorists for the future. Counter-terrorism needs to counter terrorism by definition rather than create new terrorism as it has done so often in the past.
By your profiling criteria, someone who delivered something completely innocent to a radical mosque (and defining radical is deeply subjective) and who has visited a country like Pakistan could be profiled and placed on a stop and search list, or even on a no-fly list. Profiling is making someone guilty until proven innocent. Even if you can stomach that corruption of our legal system, then statistically the vast majority of people on your list are going to be innocent. You mention Pakistan: people could end up on a watch list for traveling to a country of over 168,000,000 people and an economy of $164.557 billion. Yeah, there's no innocent reason to go there. Or at least that's what your profiling criteria would say. And think about it - how would profiling trips to Pakistan look? Like it was being done on a racial basis. Remember, we're talking about perceptions here - what perception do you think people would get from the idea that traveling to a particular country makes you a possible terrorist?
I don't really get your point about the 7/7 bombers. So what if they got searched at an airport? They bombed tube trains and a bus. Unless you are advocating extending profiling to the users of public transport, profiling would have not stopped them. But then again, maybe we should extend this "non-religious, non-racial" profiling to users of public transport. It would "buy more time" while the terrorist adapts.
And this notion that the government can develop lists in secret of who has the right to board an aircraft is abhorrent. You clearly have a lot more faith in the efficacy of the state than I do. Just because the government can, and maybe already does, do something in secret really doesn't make it right.
You persist with the confusion that someone 'disagreeing with you' must be 'missing your point'. I understand your every word - you're not making a particularly complex argument. I simply do not agree.
I suppose one anti-terrorism strategy is to only perform token random searches at airports on the basis that:
- It wont upset anyone into wanting to join the nutters
- We may as well let them at the planes as if we lock planes down they'll just go for the tube or whatever
- the current crop of terrorists are all from the keystone cop school of Jihadi's - we can keep crossing our fingers that they wont get lucky.
Personally I would rather tackle the threat head on. My wife is half Pakistani her family travel there often for entirely innocent reasons. We expect tighter security for those flights - any extra inconvenience does not make them want to become Martyrs. Anyone who travels there with any frequency is under no illusion that there are a sizeable minority (millions of people) in Pakistan (northern Pakistan particularly) who wish this country mortal harm. Not to reflect that fact in our security arrangements is nuts.
You are of course right that we cannot make everywhere safe. Terrorists can choose many soft targets and no doubt will. But we can make airports and airtravel safe and we should.
I am not sure where you think I am talking about lists of 'who can board aircraft'? All we are talking about is who has a greater % chance of being pulled for inconvenient closer screening in the airport.
No, there's no "confusion" - you genuinely don't seem to be getting what I am saying... But I guess that's not going to change.
As I'm sure you know, anyone getting on a flight is already subjected to multiple checks and searches. Don't try to imply that I am talking about "token random searches"; I'm talking about the compounding of the current security checks with discriminatory random searches.
"Nutters?" Don't be ignorant. We are talking about extremist terrorists: not nutters. Their actions maybe abhorrent and lethal, but their reasoning is rational. Which is how they can radicalise people.
Again, who said they should be allowed to go after aircraft? I don't want terrorists to go after anything. However, draconian security checks are not going to stop them from targeting all modes of transport. And you still haven't addressed my question - how would profiling have prevented the 7/7 attacks?
I'm not crossing my fingers and hoping that attacks continue to fail, just acknowledging a fact - recent attacks targeting aircraft have failed.
You do know that tackling terrorism can involve more than discriminatory anti-terrorist measures, right? Like trying to win the hearts and minds of those who might be tempted by fundamentalism.
Searches don't make your family want to become martyrs... So? Believe it or not, your family is not indicative of all flyers to Pakistan.
Evidence please. Evidence that millions in Pakistan wish mortal harm on this country. Something more than your own anecdotal assertions. And even so, there is still a big difference between wishing a country mortal harm and actually bombing an aircraft.
And to base a security arrangement on the anecdotal evidence of one man is equally nuts, I'm afraid.
Airports and airplanes are safe. In fact, they are amongst the safest places you can go to. You're advocating discriminatory profiling in an already exceptionally safe place without offering evidence that it will make them safer.
And you are talking about who will be allowed to board an aircraft. Err, how do you think the lists will work? There will be a list of people who can get on the plane, those who need a thorough search first, and those who just can't get on the plane at all. No-fly lists already exist, you know.
What we are actually talking about is people being pulled over for more intensive searches based on a crude profiling criteria. If you have flown to a particular country, or paid in cash, or bought a one-way ticket, you get searched - according to your criteria. I suspect the real criteria will be a little less cerebral, and will be racially based. And I believe that based on the airline that already embraces profiling.
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