Sunday, January 21, 2007

TSA Reverse Profiling

While entering one of the airport gates in Washington D.C. I was pulled aside because I forgot there was an unopened bottle of water in my satchel. Although the person I spoke with was mildly polite, it was obvious that he was irritated. I asked him point blank why they didn't allow unopened bottles of water into the airport gate while I reached out to touch the top of the bottle on the table to emphasize that it was unopened.

He quickly put his hand on the bottle, looked at me sternly and said "take your hand off the bottle." It was as if he thought it were some crime for me to now touch what was once fully in my possession.

So I asked, "Why are you so strict about liquids." His reply was that a terrorist tried to blow up a plane in the UK with liquid explosives. Suggesting that the event occurred months ago he then continued: "We are at code orange."

Looking back at the aforementioned terrorist activity, 24 of the 25 arrests had Islam-based names and were primarily in their 20's. (Statistics gathered from Wikipedia.)

Even the 9/11 attacks were performed by obvious Islam extremists. So the question arises: Why is TSA making deliberate attempts to molest 83-Year Old Caucasian Women with the last name of Bogart when it's obvious that 20-something year old Islamic Men with last names like Moqed and Almihdhar from Saudi-Arabia are the correct profile to match?

On one hand it makes the TSA organization look like cowards. After all, an 83-Year old woman is much easier to mess around with than a strong 25 year old man. However, I think the actual root of the problem is the fear of being accused and sued for discrimination. In situations where one terrorist activity after another comes from the same group of people, it's obvious that you focus your attention on them - however, certain groups like the ACLU won't have it. As a result, most of the training, money and efforts position the TSA to making an ass out of itself when it could otherwise be more productive in reducing the terrorist threat through the use of racial and age profiling.

I would liken the behavior of the whole mess to that of DRMs that hurt the honest people while it does nothing to hinder the problems in mind when creating them. This just reasserts my claim before - being a TSA worker must royally suck. I would put the blame on the TSA company as an entity as a whole and not any one person in it. For the company to really focus on its job would jeopardize its business because a minority of Islam-extremists could simply lean on the ACLU to stop them.

As a result the minority has power over the majority and money has to be put towards reverse profiling; it's a necessary means to prove that TSA can still exist within the confines of political correctness no matter what absurdities come of it.

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