Racial profiling is discriminating against one group, whilst putting on the blinkers versus another. I think it was most recently seen by the shoebomber thing.... I mean, in most normal population only a miniscule percentage of people are threats.
Even within a restricted group you have a lot of people being treated differently (heightened suspicion), who are completely innocent. If you tighten the profile, then you leave huge gaps - and that's assuming you have a decent set of information to profile upon, which IMO there isn't in 99.9% of cases.
Worse still, if you're applying this discrimination, then you're breeding the ideal conditions for (reactionary) extremism.
I guess Israel is an exceptional case (compared to, say, the UK, Germany, etc) due to the political and geographic situation, but at the same time I'd wager it's stil only a tiny amount of people who are 'guilty', and a massive amount who are being led to resentment through the likes of roadblocks and soforth. Whether that situation has gone to far to be retrievable in the Israel/Palestine case, I don't know, but I do know that the peace process in NI did more to destroy the IRA than the British Army ever did. Likewise how the increasing devolution of the Basque region has turned the population against ETA (compared to, say, Francos time).
This is a good article, incidentally.
I'd also note
http://www.loc.gov/rr/frd/pdf-files/Soc_Psych_of_Terrorism.pdf;[q]
In profiling the terrorist, some generalizations can be made on the basis on this examination of the literature on the psychology and sociology of terrorismpublished over the past three decades. One finding is that, unfortunately for profiling purposes, there does not appear to be a single terrorist personality. This seems to be the consensus among terrorism psychologists as well as political scientists and sociologists. The personalities of terrorists may be as diverse as the personalities of people in any lawful profession. There do not appear to be any visibly detectable personality traits that would allow authorities to identify a terrorist....
In short, a terrorist will look, dress, and behave like a normal person, such as a university student, until he or she executes the assigned mission. Therefore, considering that this physical and behavioral description of the terrorist could describe almost any normal young person, terrorist profiling based on personality, physical, or sociological traits would not appear to be particularly useful....
International terrorists generally appear to be predominately either leftist or Islamic. A profiling system could possibly narrow the statistical probability that an unknown individual boarding an airliner might be a terrorist if it could be accurately determined that most terrorists are of a certain race, culture, religion, or nationality. In the absence of statistical data, however, it cannot be determined here whether members of any particular race, religion, or nationality are responsible for most acts of international terrorism. [/q]
NB: below that it makes a case for small case, very specific profiling;
[q]
Until those figures become available, smaller-scale terrorist group profiles might be more useful. For example, a case could be made that U.S. Customs personnel should give extra scrutiny to the passports of young foreigners claiming to be “students” and meeting the following general description: physically fit males in their early twenties of Egyptian, Jordanian, Yemeni, Iraqi, Algerian, Syrian, or Sudanese nationality, or Arabs bearing valid British passports, in that order. These characteristics generally describe the core membership of Osama bin Laden’s Arab “Afghans” (see Glossary), also known as the Armed Islamic Movement (AIM), who are being trained to attack the United States with WMD.[/q]
you'll note this profile wouldn't have caught the 9/11 hijackers; specifcially, 5 used the 'visa express' program that allowed rapid entry of Saudi citizens into the US without an Id check (a programme introduced because of tightened id checks due to a terror alert!). (a few were also older than the 'young' profile, depending upon its definition here). One had lived in the US since 1991 (Hanji Hanjour).
(incidentally, a few of the hijackers apparently asked for a state id card on August 2 2001.....)
Of the non Saudis; the Lebanese, Ziad Jarrah was from a secular family and attended a Catholic school. In 99 he became more religious, and then more secular once more in 2000 (shaving his bear, etc; presumably to fit in the US better). Fayez Rashid Ahmed Hassan al Qadi Banihammad (reportedly not Saudi, although I can't seem to find his age or nationality listed) entered also under Visa Express; without specifying a job, area of residence and stating he wouldn't be living in the country. Marwan al-Shehhi; UAE (so not on this suggested list, although I don't know how he got a visa anyways), a devout and ultimately extremist muslim but changed his appearance to be more secular.
Of course, you could expand that suggested profile to include these people, but then you'd also be massively increasing a workload on checking innocent people. On the other hand, if they'd done proper id and history checks, they'd likely have picked up some.
(just on Visa Express -because I hadn't heard of this before - apparently it was introduced in May 2001 at a time when the threat alert was 'off the charts' and it had been identified most al-Queda members were Saudi. It allowed Saudis to be granted a visa without having to apply in person or provide a photograph, at a travel agency. Apparently the reporter that broke this story was later arrested by the State Department)
