Will U.S. imitate Israel’s airline screening?

Despite widely voiced concerns from civil libertarians, racial profiling may emerge as a key element in future airline screening, since a computerized passenger-screening program implemented by the Federal Aviation Administration in 1997 was obviously ineffective in flagging suspicious passengers on Sept. 11.

The FAA’s Computer Assisted Passenger Screening program, as reported by WND in July 1999, was ostensibly designed to automatically search airline passenger computer databases and match pre-programmed terrorist criteria with travelers who fit key profiles.

Authorized in the Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act signed by President Clinton Sept. 30, 1996, the CAPS program was adopted by the Department of Transportation – which manages the FAA – “in response to a recommendation of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security,” according to a DOT statement. The decision came following the July 1996 explosion of TWA flight 800 off the coast of New York.

Since the program was authorized, though, critics and civil-rights groups had complained that the profile criteria were too ill-defined and would inevitably lead to the detention of “scores” of innocent travelers, subjecting them to unreasonable delays, extensive questioning about travel plans and even strip searches.

Such widespread detentions and unreasonable searches did not become major problems, but complaints about racial or passenger profiling were common.

As late as June, DOT Secretary Norman Mineta announced the beginning of an investigation at Detroit Metro Wayne County Airport to “determine whether minority groups are disproportionately selected for additional checked baggage security screening.”

“Safety is the Department of Transportation’s highest priority, and routine security measures are necessary to protect the flying public against possible terrorist attacks,” Mineta said, “but we must also protect the civil rights of airline passengers.”

DOT said the CAPS program “uses information from the airline reservation systems to screen passengers,” adding: “If not enough is known about a passenger to make a judgment, then additional security measures in the form of bag matching or explosives detection screening of checked baggage are applied.”

The program “also selects some passengers at random by computer for these additional security measures,” said DOT.

As the Transportation Department continues its investigation of the Sept. 11 airplane hijackings, some say that despite its sophistication, the CAPS program was not capable of flagging much information that would have ferreted out the 19 terrorists.

The department did say, however, that an earlier review by the Department of Justice found no evidence of racial profiling.

“A 1997 review of [the CAPS program] by the U.S. Department of Justice found that the procedures and the selection criteria do not discriminate unlawfully against passengers based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, gender or religion,” said the DOT’s June press release. “DOJ also found that [CAPS] does not include as selection criteria any passenger traits that may be directly associated with prohibited categories, such as passengers’ names or mode of dress.”

While some industry experts have said a degree of passenger profiling may be what is needed to enhance airliner security, DOT officials say such profiling won’t happen under current U.S. law.

“Federal law prohibits discrimination in air transportation on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, national origin and religion,” DOT spokesman Bill Mosley told WorldNetDaily.

“We are charged with implementing and enforcing the law. If there were a decision made to not have those laws, it would have to come from above us,” like Congress, he added.

Nevertheless, according to a 1995 report authored by the National Research Council, profiling of passengers is a practice successfully undertaken by at least one airline – El Al, Israel’s national air carrier, which has not had a jet hijacked since 1968.

The report, entitled, “Airline Passenger Security Screening,” recommended that U.S. air carriers use the sort of “face-to-face questioning of all passengers” used by El Al.

“… The El Al security system emphasizes the identification of people who could be a threat, rather than the detection of objects that could be used to hijack or destroy an airplane,” the report said, quoting ex-El Al security chief Dan Issacharoff.

The El Al system “identifies five types of people who could pose a threat to an airplane,” the report said, “ranging from na?ve terrorists – passengers who are unaware that they are carrying dangerous objects; to suicide terrorists who intentionally carry dangerous objects to destroy the airplane and kill everyone on board.”

The Israeli airline “has also developed psychological profiles of these individuals and a passenger-interrogation technique designed to identify them during check-in and before boarding,” the report said.

Issacharoff admitted that such a system would have its limitations in an American system. For example, he pointed out that El Al flew out of only 200 airports worldwide on a daily basis, whereas most major U.S. airlines fly out of 400 airports in the United States alone everyday.

Also, Israeli passengers – accustomed to terror attacks in their homeland – accept that they must arrive for El Al flights up to three hours before departure, so they can be processed through the extensive security systems in place. American passengers, at least before Sept. 11, would not have accepted such delays, and neither would U.S. air carriers.

Issacharoff said El Al’s techniques could at least “serve as a model for a passenger profiling method to help air carriers identify passengers who require more extensive screening,” according to the NRC report.

During a 1999 interview, Libertarian Party spokesman George Getz told WND that “the government has figured out the American people don’t like racial profiling and they don’t like being entered into databases.”

Asked yesterday if his party had changed its point of view regarding passenger profiling, Getz said that wasn’t necessary.

“If anything, the Libertarian Party sees another government program and initiative that didn’t work,” said Getz.

“The anti-terrorism act of 1996 hasn’t worked, CAPS hasn’t work, the CIA has a thirty billion dollar budget and it didn’t work, the FAA has a watch list and it didn’t work,” he said. “So what we see here is a pattern of failed government programs – all of which were touted as cures for terrorism – and they all failed.”

Getz said the LP sees a traditional free-market solution — which may or may not include passenger profiling — for improving airline security, and that no more government-run programs would be needed.

“We think that every individual airline … would be able to have whatever kind of passenger screening they wanted,” he said. “Assuming there was a market demand for that, they’d all stay in business.”

“Let’s suppose one airline said, ‘We’re so concerned about security, here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re going to profile everyone. We’re going to physically strip-search everyone. We’re going to look at every bit of your belongings,'” Getz said.

“The lines are going to be long and the price of a ticket on that airline is going to be high, but there may be people who say that’s worth the risk and decide to fly that airline,” he said.

Click here for WorldNetDaily’s extensive coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.