Guardian : Troubled skies

Troubled skies

Leader | Thursday August 17, 2006 | The Guardian

The sudden diversion yesterday of a United Airlines' flight between Heathrow and Washington, and its emergency landing in Boston escorted by US F-15 fighters, is a dramatic illustration of how air travel has changed. Since September 11 2001, air travellers have found themselves on the home front of fighting terror. Yesterday's footage from Boston included the surreal sight of passengers' luggage spread across the tarmac at Logan airport, the aftermath of what appears to have been a single case of claustrophobia. More worrying was the earlier report of a child without travel documents or tickets passing through security at Gatwick and boarding a flight unchallenged. In more normal times these incidents would pass without comment. But in the heightened state of nerves that followed last week's airport security chaos, the response to a plot to destroy several transatlantic flights, anything out of the ordinary is magnified and amplified.

Demand for air travel will recover - just as it did after September 11. Higher oil prices and new environmental taxes are more likely to put the industry off its stride than the threat of terrorism, even if the increase in airport security has knock-on effects for travellers. Longer queues, shrinking carry-on luggage and heavier restrictions on the items passengers can take aloft, all combine to make flying a less pleasant experience. It may also make it a less profitable one for the businesses concerned, including duty free shops and airport operators such as BAA. But it will be passengers who ultimately pay, in higher fares to account for the extra security, and in longer waiting times.

Passengers may also find themselves giving up more of their civil liberties in order to fly. Yesterday's meeting of EU ministers in London described making airlines provide personal details of passengers booked on all flights originating within the EU - including purely domestic flights - to security services, enabling them to comb for suspects. This extends the use of advance passenger data for all flights to the US demanded by authorities there. The net result of the EU system will be what is known as "positive profiling" - a technique the EU justice commissioner Franco Frattini was careful to distinguish from ethnic profiling that targets Muslims directly.

Supporters of positive profiling say it is more sophisticated, relying on patterns and historical analysis to spotlight potential terrorists. In practice it may be hard to distinguish between the two forms of profiling. In any case, French, Dutch and German ministers are said to support ethnic profiling, while the usual suspects within the British media have taken up the call, attracted by a naive utilitarian argument that since young, male Muslims are the likeliest perpetrators, the easiest means of increasing security would be to single them out for special attention. The EU and the British government would be wise to resist such calls - not only is ethnic profiling counterproductive and antagonistic, it is also dangerously ineffective.

If security forces start with the idea that ethnicity is a predictor of terrorism, then they risk blinding themselves to the threat from anyone who falls outside a narrow definition, or anyone has been profiled and ignored - as was the case with one of the 7/7 bombers. A glance at the list of suspects arrested last week shows several individuals who would not show up using the utilitarian rule of thumb. As Labour MEP Claude Moraes points out, a form of ethnic profiling has been used in UK airports since 9/11 and has yet to produce one positive result. Similarly, German efforts to examine the personal details of millions of residents failed to identify a single terrorist suspect. As well as not working, the wider danger is that by targeting Muslims it alienates further the very group that is exhorted to help the authorities. Regular strip-searching for a flight to Glasgow is hardly going to foster Muslim goodwill.