FuzzyLumpkins
10-22-2016, 06:41 PM
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-says-profiling-has-protected-israel-it-probably-wouldnt-work-here/?ex_cid=story-twitter
Trump is far from the first American political figure to call for adoption of Israel-style security methods.1 But security experts say it’s not clear how important ethnic or religious profiling is to the success of Israeli security. And even many experts who support profiling in Israel say that it would be much harder to apply successfully in the U.S., where terrorist attacks haven’t followed consistent patterns. Also, contrary to what Trump said, some Israelis are complaining about profiling there: Civil rights groups have done so, and their protests have helped lead to changes in security practices.
The U.S. faces different security challenges than does Israel, which is under threat from terrorists who have emerged from the country’s Arab minority and from Jewish and Palestinian extremist groups. But one important situation in which the two countries face relatively similar threats is aviation.
There hasn’t been a successful hijacking of an Israeli plane since 1968, and there hasn’t been a successful attack on civil aviation in Israel since a 1972 shooting killed 26 people at the country’s international airport. Experts attribute that success at least in part to tight security procedures, which they say include profiling of passengers. (Like most security agencies, the Israel Airports Authority doesn’t share details of its practices, lest that information be used against the agency by people intent on overcoming its defenses.) But some security experts who have observed Israel’s system cite factors other than profiling as more important. In particular, they say interviewers and observers at Ben-Gurion International Airport run drills daily, to prepare for every kind of security threat. They also have extensive behavioral science training, looking for signs of threats in how passengers react to questions.
“They have mastered the art of reading body language, reading eye movements,” said Daniel Wagner, managing director of risk solutions at the security company Risk Cooperative in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. has taken a different approach to aviation security. The Transportation Security Administration, which oversees U.S. airport security, is exempt from federal guidelines barring racial profiling, but the practice is forbidden at the agency. TSA spokesperson Mike England said the agency has concluded that beyond any legal or ethical issues, profiling doesn’t work.
“Profiling is not tolerated at TSA,” England said in an email. “TSA has long made it clear that profiling is not only discriminatory; it is also an ineffective way to identify someone intent on doing harm.” (The TSA is being investigated by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general after a TSA employee alleged that Somali Americans were being profiled in its Minneapolis office; the TSA has also said it is looking into the claim.)
The debate over profiling goes beyond aviation. Security experts distinguish profiling in general — which is based on behavior that’s been displayed by terrorists in the past — from demographics-based profiling and say that the former is inescapable in security. “The concept of profiling, in its root form, is using past information to predict future performance,” said Sheldon Jacobson, who is a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has researched aviation security.
Trump is far from the first American political figure to call for adoption of Israel-style security methods.1 But security experts say it’s not clear how important ethnic or religious profiling is to the success of Israeli security. And even many experts who support profiling in Israel say that it would be much harder to apply successfully in the U.S., where terrorist attacks haven’t followed consistent patterns. Also, contrary to what Trump said, some Israelis are complaining about profiling there: Civil rights groups have done so, and their protests have helped lead to changes in security practices.
The U.S. faces different security challenges than does Israel, which is under threat from terrorists who have emerged from the country’s Arab minority and from Jewish and Palestinian extremist groups. But one important situation in which the two countries face relatively similar threats is aviation.
There hasn’t been a successful hijacking of an Israeli plane since 1968, and there hasn’t been a successful attack on civil aviation in Israel since a 1972 shooting killed 26 people at the country’s international airport. Experts attribute that success at least in part to tight security procedures, which they say include profiling of passengers. (Like most security agencies, the Israel Airports Authority doesn’t share details of its practices, lest that information be used against the agency by people intent on overcoming its defenses.) But some security experts who have observed Israel’s system cite factors other than profiling as more important. In particular, they say interviewers and observers at Ben-Gurion International Airport run drills daily, to prepare for every kind of security threat. They also have extensive behavioral science training, looking for signs of threats in how passengers react to questions.
“They have mastered the art of reading body language, reading eye movements,” said Daniel Wagner, managing director of risk solutions at the security company Risk Cooperative in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. has taken a different approach to aviation security. The Transportation Security Administration, which oversees U.S. airport security, is exempt from federal guidelines barring racial profiling, but the practice is forbidden at the agency. TSA spokesperson Mike England said the agency has concluded that beyond any legal or ethical issues, profiling doesn’t work.
“Profiling is not tolerated at TSA,” England said in an email. “TSA has long made it clear that profiling is not only discriminatory; it is also an ineffective way to identify someone intent on doing harm.” (The TSA is being investigated by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general after a TSA employee alleged that Somali Americans were being profiled in its Minneapolis office; the TSA has also said it is looking into the claim.)
The debate over profiling goes beyond aviation. Security experts distinguish profiling in general — which is based on behavior that’s been displayed by terrorists in the past — from demographics-based profiling and say that the former is inescapable in security. “The concept of profiling, in its root form, is using past information to predict future performance,” said Sheldon Jacobson, who is a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has researched aviation security.