>>But isn't this better that hurting the feelings of people who fit the profile of Muslim terrorists? Isn't it better to be diverse and inclusive and blind to the prejudice that says young Muslim male terrorists are mostly young Muslim males?
>
>And wouldn't it better to do it right in the first place by training the security people properly and watching for suspicious behavior. Someone pointed me to this article the other day:
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>http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/744199---israelification-high-security-little-bother
>
>Tamar

My favorite part:

"The word 'profiling' is a political invention by people who don't want to do security," he said. "To us, it doesn't matter if he's black, white, young or old. It's just his behaviour. So what kind of privacy am I really stepping on when I'm doing this?"

and this:

"Even today with the heightened security in North America, they will check your items to death. But they will never look at you, at how you behave. They will never look into your eyes ... and that's how you figure out the bad guys from the good guys."

That's humint 101...

but then, we must be realistic. Look at the number or airports in Israel versus the number of airports here. How costly would it be to have well trained personnel in all of them and the secure blast equipment at all as well? In the long run, it may be less costly than what we are doing now...

I have to be honest and admit that when I fly, I scan the crowd and watch the people (that's from my years in Humint and it's not going to change - it's automatic) but I do not have the authority or right to question anyone to validate my gut feelings. In years of flying, I only ever canceled one flight due to my gut feelings - I arranged to go on a later flight.

Once, I actually got caught by a bright security (in plain clothes) officer who pulled me aside (actually into a private room) and questioned me. After we talked, he offered me a job. Do you know how low-paying those jobs are? It would be a great income to many, but at the time I had better options. There are some qualified folks working out there in some of our airports, but the majority of the personnel are just minimum wage drones...because they are not trained to be anything but...