Phil Elmore: Individual Authoring Services

Profiling Does Not Violate Civil Rights
On Why We Must Profile

Even the editorial staff of Time magazine understands: random security checks of individual airline passengers is a useless gesture. Profiling must be used. The questions remain: Is this a violation of civil rights? Aside from that, does profiling work?

Profiling -- for race or any other single demographic characteristic (or combination thereof) is a simple process of deciding whom, among the members of a given population, should be the targets of greater scrutiny. In a world of limitless time and resources, we could afford -- financially and logistically -- to subject every individual to the same security screening, regardless of what crime (in whatever venue) we were attempting to prevent.

In reality, however, our resources are finite, our labor limited. Basic economic theory tells us that when resources are scarce, we must exercise judgment in their use if we are to maximize the gain to be had from our expenses. Since security personnel, be they police, airport screeners, or whomever, are limited in number and constrained by the hours they can contribute individually, we must exercise judgment in how we apply their efforts to the problem.

Quite simply, considering the great risk of a successful terrorist act, we cannot afford not to maximize the chances that a given object of airport security screening will be a potential terrorist. But more generally, there are limits to what society's members will pay to fight crime and violence. It is within our physical power, for example, to employ so many people as police that there is a patrol on every single street corner in America. This would eliminate crime almost completely -- but we as a people are not willing to spend the enormous portion of our productivity that would be required for this solution.

We are also neither willing nor able to hire enough security screeners to examine each and every airline passenger at the highest level of scrutiny within a reasonable time frame. So: unless we want our screening efforts to be wasted, we must do what we can to increase the chances of a "hit" when using our scarce resources. That means we must profile.

I'll answer the second question first: Does profiling work? I know of no statistics on the issue, but basic logic and mathematics tell us irrefutably that it does -- provided the profile used actually applies to the situation. If young male Arabs are far more likely to be hijackers than other individuals (which they are, statistically and historically), selecting young males of Arab appearance for high scrutiny increases the chances that a potential terrorist will be intercepted. By contrast, purely random security searches have a much lower mathematical probability of intercepting the same lone male Arab terrorist within a given population of air travelers.

Quite simply, the burden of proof rests with those who claim profiling doesn't work. To make such a claim is both illogical (from a mathematical probability standpoint) and counterintuitive, which is why those making such a claim bear the task of substantiating it.

Now, does profiling violate the civil rights of those selected for greater scrutiny? No. Provided all those so profiled are treated with respect and presumed innocent until proven guilty, the mere fact of having been selected for greater scrutiny is not, in itself, a violation of rights.

Innocent members of demographic groups selected for profiling will object. It is not fair, they will say, that they are subjected to greater scrutiny based on their membership in such a group. It is unfortunate that the actions of other individuals (to which you may be linked through some demographic characteristic) may confer on you greater suspicion, but this is the fault and the responsibility of those individuals -- not the security or law enforcement personnel who must take probabilities into account when assessing a given situation.

We must profile. To do so is neither morally wrong nor logistically inadvisable. In fact, it is the opposite of both.