www.benadorassociates.com/article/1336
The suicidal militant - the not-so-smart bomb, perhaps - has a guidance system programmed inside his or her head. He or she is no easier to detect than a Stealth bomber and no less reliable than a guided missile. Such terrorists are without a future, obviously - but more importantly, theyre without a past. Civil libertarians object to Governor Ridges brave new biometrics because they invade peoples privacy. For travellers to be photographed and fingerprinted as if they were convicts bound for Devils Island is irksome and demeaning, but thats the minor problem. The major problem is that travellers are subjected to such indignity for almost no security benefit. Biometrics target identity - but when militant groups advanced or regressed from reusable terrorists to disposable terrorists, identity became moot. Recruits are groomed for a single terrorist act, during which they self-destruct. Before being deployed, disposable terrorists have usually done nothing. Theyre innocent voyagers whose fingerprints and faces appear in no database. And after being deployed, theyre just a bloody mist gradually dispersing in the air. Suicide-terrorists consider their lives worthless no dispute there but the biometrics of worthless individuals are also worthless. Like bees, disposable terrorists die as they sting - but unlike bees, they cannot be recognized for what they are until theyve stung. Machines that compare faces and fingerprints are helpful against reusable terrorists who try to hide their identities, but a disposable terrorist doesnt care if we know who he is. Until we come up with a machine that can read minds, machines cant help us much. The most sophisticated scanning device is useless if it functions by comparing the present with the past.
Biometric machines give us a false sense of security while spreading out the welcome mat to suicide bombers. This isnt to say that biometric identity checks are entirely useless. They may help identify known organizers of international terror: recruiters, couriers, fundraisers - the office staff. This is a worthwhile function, as is the detection of ordinary drug smugglers or embezzlers, but such screens dont remove the acute menace of suicide hijackers flying an aircraft into a skyscraper. They cant reduce the threat of the suicide bomber or suicide hijacker on his virgin mission. The contemporary hazard is a terrorist who travels under his own name, his own passport, posing as an innocent student or visitor until the moment he ignites his shoe-bomb or pulls out his box-cutter. Identity checks are a good partial defence against reusable terrorists. A good partial defence against disposable terrorists is a background check. The problem is, unlike identity checks which can be accomplished in seconds, background checks of any depth take time. If applied to all travellers, they could bring air traffic to a halt. Profiling has been controversial because, by definition, it discriminates against people of selected ethnicity and religion. Yet we know that disposable terrorists arent evenly distributed among the worlds population. Suicide bombers and suicide hijackers come almost exclusively from certain cultures. Those cultures may shift over historic time, but in a given period they remain remarkably constant. In our times, disposable terrorists or warriors have come from East Asian Tamil, Sikh or Arab and/or Muslim cultures. Since Tamil and Sikh terrorists have rarely engaged in suicide action outside their own conflict regions, it leaves people of Arab and/or Muslim background as logical candidates for special scrutiny. Needless to say, logical as ethnic/religious profiling may be, its unattractive. It would probably require a second 9/11 for its implementation to become politically feasible. As currently set up, biometric screening isnt applied to all foreigners. The problem with this isnt that its unfair, as some egalitarians believe, but that it renders the exercise useless. Anyone with a fake identity can avoid biometric scrutiny by travelling with, say, false Canadian rather than false Brazilian papers. Terrorists can simply steal and forge travel documents that belong to one of the 27 countries - say, Britain - whose citizens arent subject to biometric testing in the United States. The shoe-bomber Richard Reid, for instance, travelling with a British passport, would have had nothing to fear from biometric screening, even if his papers had been forged, which they werent. Reid is a perfect example of the new breed of terrorist who would never be eliminated by biometrics - but might be eliminated by profiling. Body-searching young male converts to Islam before letting them board a plane is no doubt discriminatory, but in the case of disposable terrorists like Reid it could accomplish what biometrics cant. Even more to the point, todays disposable terrorist doesnt necessarily seek to gain control of an aircraft through the passenger terminal. His preferred route to the flight deck may be through the employment office. This, apparently, was the reason Flight 223 was once cancelled, once delayed, and once escorted by fighter jets before landing in the United States capital this month. Though this seems to have been a false alarm, there may well be terrorist moles flying or servicing passenger and cargo jets in Western countries, waiting to be activated for a suicide mission.
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