By Sam Harris
Much has been written about how insulting and depressing it is, more
than a decade after the events of 9/11, to be met by “security theater”
at our nation’s airports. The current system appears so inane that one
hopes it really is a sham, concealing more-ingenious intrusions into our
privacy. The spirit of political correctness hangs over the whole
enterprise like the Angel of Death - indeed, more closely than death, or
than the actual fear of terrorism. And political correctness requires
that TSA employees direct the spotlight of their attention at random - or
appear to do so - while making rote use of irrational procedures and
dubious technology.
Although I don’t think I look like a jihadi, or like a man
pretending not to be one, I do not mean to suggest that a person like me
should be exempt from scrutiny. But other travelers fit the profile far
less than I do. One glance at these innocents reveals that they are no
more likely to be terrorists than walruses in disguise. I make it a
point to notice such people while queuing for security at the airport,
just to see what sort of treatment they receive at the hands of the TSA.
While leaving JFK last week, I found myself standing in line behind
an elderly couple who couldn’t have been less threatening had they been
already dead and boarding in their coffins. I would have bet my life
that they were not waging jihad. Both appeared to be in their
mid-eighties and infirm. The woman rode in a wheelchair attended by an
airport employee as her husband struggled to comply with TSA
regulations - removing various items from their luggage, arranging them in
separate bins, and loading the bins and bags onto the conveyor belt
bound for x-ray.
After much preparation, the couple proceeded toward the body scanner,
only to encounter resistance. It seems that they had neglected to take
off their shoes. A pair of TSA screeners stepped forward to prevent this
dangerous breach of security - removing what appeared to be orthopedic
footwear from both the woman in the wheelchair and the man now
staggering at her side. This imposed obvious stress on two harmless and
bewildered people and caused considerable delay for everyone in my line.
I turned to see if anyone else was amazed by such a perversion of
vigilance. The man behind me, who could have played the villain in a
Bollywood film, looked unconcerned.
I have noticed such incongruities before. In fact, my wife and I once
accidentally used a bag for carry-on in which I had once stored a
handgun - and passed through three airport checkpoints with nearly 75
rounds of 9 mm ammunition. While we were inadvertently smuggling
bullets, one TSA screener had the presence of mind to escort a terrified
three-year-old away from her parents so that he could remove her
sandals (sandals!). Presumably, a scanner that had just missed
2.5 pounds of ammunition would determine whether these objects were the
most clever bombs ever wrought. Needless to say, a glance at the girl’s
family was all one needed to know that they hadn’t rigged her to
explode. The infuriating scene played out very much like this one.
Is there nothing we can do to stop this tyranny of fairness? Some
semblance of fairness makes sense - and, needless to say, everyone’s bags
should be screened, if only because it is possible to put a bomb in
someone else’s luggage. But the TSA has a finite amount of attention:
Every moment spent frisking the Mormon Tabernacle Choir subtracts from
the scrutiny paid to more likely threats. Who could fail to understand
this?
Imagine how fatuous it would be to fight a war against the IRA and
yet refuse to profile the Irish? And yet this is how we seem to be
fighting our war against Islamic terrorism.
Granted, I haven’t had to endure the experience of being continually
profiled. No doubt it would be frustrating. But if someone who looked
vaguely like Ben Stiller were wanted for crimes against humanity, I
would understand if I turned a few heads at the airport. However, if I
were forced to wait in line behind a sham search of everyone else, I
would surely resent this additional theft of my time.
We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could
conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it. And, again, I
wouldn’t put someone who looks like me entirely outside the bull’s-eye (after all, what would Adam Gadahn
look like if he cleaned himself up?) But there are people who do not
stand a chance of being jihadists, and TSA screeners can know this at a
glance.
Needless to say, a devout Muslim should be free to show up at the
airport dressed like Osama bin Laden, and his wives should be free to
wear burqas. But if their goal is simply to travel safely and
efficiently, wouldn’t they, too, want a system that notices people like
themselves? At a minimum, wouldn’t they want a system that anti-profiles - applying the minimum of attention to people who obviously pose no threat?
Watch some of the TSA screening videos on YouTube - like this one - and then imagine how this infernal stupidity will appear if we ever suffer another terrorist incident involving an airplane.
Addendum
Many readers found this blog post stunning for its lack of
sensitivity. The article has been called “racist,” “dreadful,”
“sickening,” “appalling,” “frighteningly ignorant,” etc. by (former)
fans who profess to have loved everything I’ve written until this
moment. I find this reaction difficult to understand. Of course, anyone
who imagines that there is no link between Islam and suicidal terrorism
might object to what I’ve written here, but I say far more offensive
things about Islam in The End of Faith and in many of my essays and lectures.
In any case, it is simply a fact that, in the year 2012, suicidal
terrorism is overwhelmingly a Muslim phenomenon. If you grant this, it
follows that applying equal scrutiny to Mennonites would be a dangerous
waste of time.
I suspect that it will surprise neither my fans nor my critics that I
view the furor over this article to be symptomatic of the very
political correctness that I decry in it. However, it seems that when
one speaks candidly about the problem of Islam misunderstandings easily
multiply. So I’d like to clarify a couple of points here:
1. When I speak of profiling “Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or
she could conceivably be Muslim,” I am not narrowly focused on people
with dark skin. In fact, I included myself in the description of the
type of person I think should be profiled (twice). To say that
ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, dress, traveling companions,
behavior in the terminal, and other outward appearances offer no
indication of a person’s beliefs or terrorist potential is either quite
crazy or totally dishonest. It is the charm of political correctness
that it blends these sins against reasonableness so seamlessly. We are
paying a very high price for this obscurantism - and the price could grow
much higher in an instant. We have limited resources, and every moment
spent searching a woman like the one pictured above, or the children
seen in the linked videos, is a moment in which someone or something
else goes unobserved.
2. There is no conflict between what I have written here and
“behavioral profiling” or other forms of threat detection. And if we can
catch terrorists before they reach the airport, I am all for it. But
the methods we use to do this tend to be even more focused and invasive
(and, therefore, offensive) than profiling done by the TSA. Many readers
who were horrified by my article seem to believe that there is nothing
wrong with “gathering intelligence.” One wonders just how they think
that is done.
About the author:
Sam Harris is the author of the New York Times bestsellers, The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation, The Moral Landscape, and Free Will. The End of Faith won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction.
Mr. Harris's writing has been published in more than 15 languages. He and his work have been discussed in Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, Scientific American, Nature, Rolling Stone, and many other journals. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Economist, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, and elsewhere.
Mr. Harris is a co-founder and the CEO of Project Reason, a nonprofit foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society. He received a degree in philosophy from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA.
Also of interest The Trouble with Profiling
Image source here