It's distressing how easily the government can manipulate the population after even a failed terrorist attack. As I mentioned in an earlier blogpost, the response to the recent attempted bombing of a flight arriving in Detroit is tighter restrictions on airtravel.
You can read about the new rules here. It's pretty easy to see how ineffectual they will be.
The ACLU cuts to the heart of problem in a press release from yesterday. Please check it out in its entirety below, or click here.
For more about the waste of it all, read today's article in Slate here.
Two important points to remember:
1. The government's plan to subject citizens of certain countries to enhanced screenings is bad policy, because there is no way to predict the national origin of a terrorist and many terrorists have come from countries not on the list.
2. According to a UK Independent report on Sunday, British officials have already tested the scanners and were not persuaded that they would be effective for stopping terrorist threats to planes. And according to security experts, the explosive device used in the attempted attack on a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day would not have been detected by the body scanners.
Airline Security Must Protect Rights As Well As Safety
January 4, 2010
Racial Profiling And Body Scanners Target Civil Liberties But Not Necessarily Terrorists
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 549-2666; media@aclu.org
NEW YORK – The Obama administration announced Sunday it will subject
the citizens of 14 nations who are flying to the United States to
intensified screening at airports, including being subjected to
full-body pat downs or body scanners. According to the American Civil
Liberties Union, the government should adhere to longstanding standards
of individualized suspicion and enact security measures that are the
least threatening to civil liberties and are proven to be effective.
Racial profiling and untargeted body scanning do not meet those
criteria.
"We should be focusing on evidence-based, targeted and narrowly
tailored investigations based on individualized suspicion, which would
be both more consistent with our values and more effective than
diverting resources to a system of mass suspicion," said Michael
German, national security policy counsel with the ACLU Washington
Legislative Office and a former FBI agent. "Overbroad policies such as
racial profiling and invasive body scanning for all travelers not only
violate our rights and values, they also waste valuable resources and
divert attention from real threats."
According to the ACLU, the government's plan to subject citizens of
certain countries to enhanced screenings is bad policy, because there
is no way to predict the national origin of a terrorist and many
terrorists have come from countries not on the list. For instance, the
"shoe bomber" Richard Reid is a British citizen, as were four of the
London subway bombers, and in 2005 a Belgian woman launched a suicide
attack in Iraq.
"Singling out travelers from a few specified countries for enhanced
screening is essentially a pretext for racial profiling, which is
ineffective, unconstitutional and violates American values. Empirical
studies of terrorists show there is no terrorist profile, and using a
profile that doesn't reflect this reality will only divert resources by
having government agents target innocent people," said German.
"Profiling can also be counterproductive by undermining community
support for government counterterrorism efforts and creating an
injustice that terrorists can exploit to justify further acts of
terrorism."
In addition to racial profiling, some have called for the
across-the-board implementation of full body scanners, which present
serious threats to personal privacy and are of unclear effectiveness.
According to a UK Independent report on Sunday, British officials have
already tested the scanners and were not persuaded that they would be
effective for stopping terrorist threats to planes. And according to
security experts, the explosive device used in the attempted attack on
a Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day would not have been detected by
the body scanners.
"We shouldn't complacently surrender our rights for a false sense of
security, and we should be very leery of being sold a device presented
as a cure-all, especially when the evidence shows just the opposite,"
added German. "If scanners and other intrusive procedures are used, it
should be with their limitations in mind and only when there is reason
to believe that an individual poses an increased risk to flight safety,
not as blanket measures applied to millions of innocent travelers."