what if somehow "John Smith" enters the no-fly list ?

what if somehow "John Smith" enters the no-fly list ?

thast when the system gets improved. wouldnt want to harass whyte people..

I wonder which political crony got the contract to do the database. Seriously, it is not that tough to have included birthdates.

All this loss of freedom and extreme inconvenience will save how many lives???? More people get killed in regular car accidents, yet many people don't bother to follow seat belt laws(including yours truly). But if one dies in a terrorist thing, it is the end of the world. The terrorists have won when we live in such fear. I personally would love to get on an airplane with their own separate lines where we can sign a "OK to shoot down my plane in case of a hijacking" waiver.

i think political cronyism is a viable career option for me...

Because of this cluster, Javaid’s parents are debating a name-change

The other solution is don't go to America. Plenty of mates - not just Muslim - are doing their best to avoid going there whenever possible.

The other solution is don't go to America. Plenty of mates - not just Muslim - are doing their best to avoid going there whenever possible

anyone think the situation will improve concerning internatinla relations and american government behavior once the current administration is over?

Scary 7 year olds, the new face of terrorism. Are people that scared!! 7 YEAR OLD. For pete’s sake!

As chris rock said, “I’m not afraid of al qaeda, I’m afraid I’ll CRAKKA!!

“The other solution is don't go to America. Plenty of mates - not just Muslim - are doing their best to avoid going there whenever possible”.

Many mates of mine too are doing the same thing, which is a really sad thing.

what if somehow "John Smith" enters the no-fly list

thast when the system gets improved. wouldnt want to harass whyte people..

I feel so bad for the kid and wtf about the logo his t-shirt, he's 7 for heaven's sake!!

Even with a green card, just recently my husband had to go go to that 'back room' when we were coming back from Mexico due to his non American passprt and we've missed our flight back to JFK . We ended up taking a much later flight back to La Guradia and had to pay for a taxi home as the car was in KFK.
There is no concern whatsoever for any delays or anything by the immmigration people when they hold you up. there is no way to even notify the airlines of your status and if you're in a trnasit city it is just so stressful if no flights are available that day.

I also have many Brits both Muslim and non Muslim, all races who just can't be bothered with the fingerprinting, and bearucracy that the US now has and therefore avoid travelling here.

If the USA removes the visa wiaver for EU countries,(as suggested by some senators) occurs then the tourist industry will suffer a lot and US citizens travelling to EU will be affected too.

A seven year old ! ! ! My head cannot hit the desk hard enough. Our country is doomed if this is the best our crack team of airplane security experts can do...

wouldnt want to harass whyte people..

Just to be totally anal and pedantic, two aunts of mine, of Irish extraction, share a name with some IRA bomber who's also on the no-fly list. They were still eventually allowed to fly back and forth to Europe though.

My name is on some sort of "triple check this guy before you let him on a plane" list and it is annoying as hell. I noticed it after I saw a message pop up on the check in counter computer "ALERT: THIS PASSENGER NEEDS ADDITIONAL SCREENING!!"

I can never use any sort of curb side check in or online check in or any computer service at the airport to get my boarding pass and after googling my name I can thank the many Sikh terrorist that share my name for making my atheist life hell at the airport.

its good that my name is oddly spelt. that way, the ony people with my last name are my cousins, aunts, uncles, nuclear family.

what if somehow "John Smith" enters the no-fly list ?

Funny you should say that, my former boss was named G. Smith. His name was on the no fly list (his first name is very common, too) and EVERYTIME he flew, he had to check in at the desk. He couldn't print his boarding pass online since the airline systems prevented him from doing so. This was despite him being a life long government employee who maintained a security clearance.

So this kid was 1 year old when he helped plan 9/11? Kids are growing up so much faster these days...

So this kid was 1 year old when he helped plan 9/11? Kids are growing up so much faster these days...

i think i was still $hittin' my self at 1y. HAHAH!

its good that my name is oddly spelt. that way, the only people with my last name are my cousins, aunts, uncles, nuclear family.

ha ha, A lot of southie surnames have various spellings. I cant get people to get it right even after I flash my badge!

i wonder how if barack obama ...get confused for osama bin landen by Homeland Security

what if somehow "John Smith" enters the no-fly list ?

I can never use any sort of curb side check in or online check in or any computer service at the airport to get my boarding pass and after googling my name I can thank the many Sikh terrorist that share my name for making my atheist life hell at the airport.

Alright, we need to have a re-naming ceremony for this kid now...

Javaid is now known as ...

Koolaid?

Koolaid?

Clearly you guys don't spend enough time around kids to know what they're really capable of.

Alright, we need to have a re-naming ceremony for this kid now...

Before I read this blog entry, I never knew there existed a first name like 'Javaid', all I've heard is 'Javed'. Google knows 363,000 Javaids and 2,080,000 Javeds!

I think a simple solution is to document all the muslim names in the world and every new muslim child born will have a unique name. They can take a cue from us and add maybe 26 initials before the same. Now if he was called ' Q W E R T Y U I O P A S D F Javaid Iqbal' would he have had such issues. After all we in America need our protection freedom.

I'm always amazed when people defend the sheer stupidity of the TSA by claiming that victims of profiling 'should have known better.'
The facts are simple:
1) Up until recently, the no-fly list was confidential
2) The process of determining a threat has still not been explained, and is often highly flawed
3) The TSA screeners themselves are often inept, and in some cases downright criminal

America. F*** yeah.

The TSA seems to have it in for kids these days :8-year-old on no fly list 12 Year Old Boy: TSA Stole My Birthday Money . Maybe one day they'll actually catch a terrorist. Wouldn't bet on it though.

Let's assign each kid a GUID!

Wow. That's just outrageous.

Anybody else thinking about this in relation to the trend in Florida of arresting small (almost always black) children for having tantrums, fighting, and generally doing kid stuff? It just seems like black and brown kids are being criminalized before they're even old enough to have any idea what that means. Scary.

Yikes, for some reason that link isn't working now! Here's another story on the same trend, from the St. Petersburg Times.

My blond, blue eyed cousin is one of the "lucky" people to share the name David Nelson. Google "david nelson terrorist" and you'll see what I mean.

oddly enough, i kinda feel good that they are not just targeting funny looking brown people with funny sounding names.

Just flew back ten thousand miles, or whatever the exact mileage is, from Delhi to Miami with one arm in a cast. Severe scrutiny by officials in Delhi as well as in London during transit. Learned that a plaster cast, particularly the hard kind that the Mumbai orthopod mustered up in a hurry, could be a lethal weapon if the terrorist decides to choke someone to death. No sympathy from the flight atendants, no extra Scotch or anything. They were probably nervous with me in the cabin. Now, if I wasn't brown...

Dangerous one loose and runnin',

If I ever saw one.

Amazing.

Learned that a plaster cast, particularly the hard kind that the Mumbai orthopod mustered up in a hurry, could be a lethal weapon if the terrorist decides to choke someone to death

Or used to hide a parts of a nuclear weapon a la Frederick Forsythe's novel - the name of which I cannot recollect :-)

Sorry to hear about your arm - get well soon

here's a great op-ed by yasmin anwar from the honolulu advertiser about a federal retiree named kobayashi who was surprised to find himself on the no-fly list:

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Mar/14/op/op15a.html

Or used to hide a parts of a nuclear weapon a la Frederick Forsythe's novel - the name of which I cannot recollect :-)

The Fourth Protocol? There are much better uses for plaster casts - to get priority seating on planes for instance.

Not that I would know...

Floridian - welcome back. Missed your sagacity.

Pinellas and Pasco county are "white bread" counties - at least it seemed that way to me.

I think what is going on is more of government doing something just to say they are doing something. The whole liquids thing is such a dumb security measure. Yes, theoretically, someone can bring a lquid of some sort and do damage on board. But really, do we live our lives around small possibilities? Do we make everyone drive 30mph on the highway just in case there is an unnmovable object around the bend?

I have taken contact lens solution bottles larger than 6 oz on a few occasions while they were tossed away on others. So despite all that inconvenience, this illustrates that this specific security measure is not even foolproof. All a terrorist has to do is keep trying until he finds that person who is incompetent.

As far as the name crap, I think the government is getting away with it not because whites are being very racist(though there are instances where white passengers do act racist and freak out over a middle easterner), but because this specific inconvenience does not affect the white community in the same numbers. So they do not feel it as much. So they do not understand the fuss over security measures as their friends and they do not find it to be that cumbersome to do it once in a while.

Pinellas and Pasco county are "white bread" counties - at least it seemed that way to me.

I spent a lot of time in Pinellas as a kid (my dad lives there) and my impression was that the African-American population is small but very poor, and racism is pretty bad there. The Tampa area also has a lot of migrant worker populations passing through, although they're a bit more inland-- my cousin went to East Bay HS and the migrant kids were pretty much treated as criminals there.

Outrageous, and chilling.

It's worth mentioning, perhaps also in the post itself - that the kid is a British citizen of Pakistani (BCOP) origin. Although he's clutching what clearly is a British passport, once you look at it hard enough - when I read zoomed the story, I thought he was from Pakistan.

Now of course, the system shouldn't do that, but I wonder if it's possible that his risk score increased after the name match came up, given that he was a BCOP orgin. Especially if the system doesn't consider age and date of birth.

Chachaji, that is an excellent suggestion...I'm sorry that I left out the child's origin. I put the post up in a hurry, because I am mindful of our readers' desire for lunchtime (EST)/coffeetime (PST) reading material, if that buys me any sympathy for the omission. :) Updating now...

I think what is going on is more of government doing something just to say they are doing something. The whole liquids thing is such a dumb security measure. Yes, theoretically, someone can bring a lquid of some sort and do damage on board. But really, do we live our lives around small possibilities? Do we make everyone drive 30mph on the highway just in case there is an unnmovable object around the bend?

Oh man, it's killing me that I can't remember the name of the stand-up comedian who had this routine... he was talking about how the security peoplewouldn't let him bring liquids on the airplane, and then finally they relented and said "OK, you can bring it, but you have to put it in a little plastic baggie."

The comedian was like "ORLY? A little plastic baggie prevents terrorism? Can I put, like, a gun in the plastic baggie and bring it on?"

Anyway, jokes aside, I do agree with you. There was recently a damning report that came out about Sky Harbor in Phoenix, AZ. Basically, between midnight and 4 a.m., the "security" guards would wave anybody and everybody through without checking ID or screening bags. (Story) Now, the crappy guards in that story were privately contracted, not federal agents. But seriously, why did it take a local television reporter to discover this? I guess the feds were too busy cracking down on those America-hating terrorist 7-year-olds.

There are genuinely times where I think that I should put on a kurta, a kufie, and grow my beard out a little longer and go walk around some airports for a while, just to introduce some random noise into the system. I don't mean to mock the possibility of real terrorist threats, but given the farce that is current practices advocated by the TSA, especially as in the case of poor Javaid, that I think the people could stand to have a little more entropy.

Articles like these are always very painful/angering for me because I've literally stopped air travel since 9/11. I've turned down 2 freebie trips to Europe and 1 to Australia in the interim. Am I worried about the bad guys? No. It's the f'ed system put in to place by the "good guys" run by high school grads/drop-outs and instituted by folks that want the American empire to expand at the expense of everything else that I'm really worried about. The traveler no longer has any control in their travel except to not do so, which is what I now do.

I'm a fan of putting everyone 7 years old and younger on the "no-fly" list, without regard to race or religion.

Any desi male out there got dreadlocks/mohawk, green hair, pink hair, tattoos, loads of piercings who can report on their travel experiences? I'm just curious what they do with a desi male whose appearance screams 'pay attention to me'.

There's an MP in Canada with a very white bread name (Williams, I think) who's on the no-fly list. Has to get checked out everytime he jets around.

It keeps getting better.

Bruce Schneier coined the very apt term - security theater - to describe this kind of nonsense.

Worth following his blog if you are interested in a high signal-to-noise discussion of security.

I'm an American citizen and I travel in and out of the States several times a year. I've been sent to the back room every single time I've entered the US since 9/11. Does anybody else here feel that US bureaucracy is often totally robotic and process bound compared to other countries, such as the UK or Canada? Maybe its because the top 4000 or so jobs in government are appointments at the President's pleasure, and career government employees begin work with a sense of being second-class employees. Who knows?

Oh my God, sakshi, please tell me that link is from an Onion wannabe!

American officers receive 56 hours of training — far less than their Israeli counterparts_ because U.S. officials want to be less intrusive.

Right, when I want to see good results, I immediately think "less training."

sakshi - I shouldn't have clicked on your link. I feel even more depressed now. Oh well, at least my genes will end with me.

Thank you Thomas for representing the Hoosier state so well :).I feel horrible for the kid honestly, but these types of things don't faze me anymore. My younger cousin, who also happened to be 7, was flying from Indianapolis to San Francisco last spring and was stopped because her name showed on the no-fly list. Well, she didn't choose having the last name "Hussein", and she was taken away from her parents and questioned for 45 minutes. Luckily she did not have any more questioning afterwards and was cleared to go onto the flight, but I find it ridiculous and appalling that kids have to go through this treatment. I guess she was fortunate that she was an American citizen born and raised in Carmel, Indiana so that she did not have to go through more security checks.

sarah - i commented on pasco and pinellas as a result of the story of arresting small kids in st petersburg times.
I know that racism is widespread in the Tampa Bay area - I taught a few black kids in Tampa.

Once my erstwhile partner and I were the only non-white persons at a July 4 fireworkds / celebration. I was so happy coz nearly everyone ignored us ;) - when one comes from a country where everyone stares at a stranger it was quite liberating.
This was post 9-11.

Here is another piece of genius. Once when a security person rejected my contact lens solution as larger than 3 oz, i asked her if I could bring two separate bottles with differnet liquids as long as each is small enough. She said yeah. So a terrorist can divy up the liquids in different containers disguised as two differnet products.

cookiebrown @ 49 - are you a naturalized citizen? or have a name reflecting an ethnic/religious group that is on any security list? not that it should matter, but i'm a native-born citizen, and i'm pretty brown in skin colour, but i have never been pulled for questioning since 9/11 (though almost always i am taken aside for a 'random' bag/shoe search), so i'm wondering what would explain these differences.

i know people are shocked by the stupidity of this incident, but e.g. women used to be considered less of a threat until more of them became prominent in terrorist activities. perhaps the logic is that nobody should be protected from suspicion - i.e. you can never be too careful. of course, in practise, the officials are missing some pretty big signs, and discriminating as to who is a 'potential' anything. still, i'm sure this is the logic they would use when called out.

e.g. women used to be considered less of a threat until more of them became prominent in terrorist activities

ahh...the lifting of the glass cieling. i love it.

puli, even that is a sort of progress for gender equality, isn't it?

puli, even that is a sort of progress for gender equality, isn't it?

sure. reminds me of this quote by Alexis de Tocqueville "Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom." qually bad is still equal...

except, we're not really equal, right? it's only brown women who join the brown men in their potential terrorist status. i don't see white men or women looked at with the same scrutiny, at least not in this country.

i don't see white men or women looked at with the same scrutiny, at least not in this country.

maybe. hard for me to comment. ive never been searched or anything. i felt very well treated post 9/11. maybe if i had a turban and a bears people would look at me differently.

beard

maybe if i had a turban and a bears people would look at me differently.

beard

I think the sentence is funnier if you leave it saying "bears"

oh..no one would f-ck with me if i had bears...

:P I think I'm going to bring some bears in turbans when I fly in two weeks. Then no one will complain about my kids saying bye bye airplane. :P

I personally do not have a problem with profiling .... AS LONG AS IT IS INTELLIGENT PROFILING. When you process so many people, it becomes a numbers game as one can never guarantee 100% safety. Profiling is a necessary tool. It is just not smart to search an old white woman in detail unless she is driving a pickup truck near a federal building. When cops pull over a black guy, there better be other guys that tip them off that he is a drug dealer, not just the fact that he is black. I can say that after I started buzzing my head, I have been pulled over a lot more often maybe because cops think I am black. I understand why a black guy may snap over an innocent search because they have reached their breaking point.
The guy who got shot 41 times in NYC didn't even fit the profile of a suspected rapist on the run other than his skin color.

I think brown people, especially Muslims will reach their breaking point too if these kind of inconveniences become more than an "inconvenience".

profiling should never be based on a purely visual criteria. Because the people bent on causing you harm aren't stupid, they know the profile, and actively try to dodge it.

what do terrorists do if you just ignore them?

what do terrorists do if you just ignore them?

Kill you.

Because the people bent on causing you harm aren't stupid

Mohammed Salameh, who had rented the truck and reported it stolen, kept calling the rental office to get back his $400 deposit. The FBI arrested him there on March 4, 1993. In short order, the Bureau had several plotters in custody, including Nidal Ayyad, an engineer who had acquired chemicals for the bomb, and Mahmoud Abouhalima, who had helped mix the chemicals

Pravin, profiling is one thing, but it's another when your only criteria is skin color or real/perceived race. This kind of bigoted laziness diverts resources away from more effective "crime-solving" strategies.

My friend is Muslim and shares his name with a terrorist on the no-fly list. He works for a major Canadian corporation and has to fly down to the States every month for Engineering meetings. Despite government business documentation, Canadian citizenship, etc he has to arrive at the airport 4 hours early every time for the back room confessional. I don't think a little sticker is going to save this kid from the horror of Homeland Security. Many brown Canadians avoid travelling to the States because of border harrasement, America is losing out on Canadian $ big time.

Pravin, profiling is one thing, but it's another when your only criteria is skin color or real/perceived race. This kind of bigoted laziness diverts resources away from more effective "crime-solving" strategies.

Wasnt that my point?

profiling should never be based on a purely visual criteria. Because the people bent on causing you harm aren't stupid, they know the profile, and actively try to dodge it.

HMF,
This is a first .I am completely in agreement with you !

What is the face of terrorism? Is it the brown bearded guy with the Saudi passport,the black clean shaven guy with the British passport or the vanilla white guy iwth the US passport ? Answer: ALl of the above.Remember Timothy McVeigh? The Unabomber?The FBI spent a lot of time chasing the non existentIslamic terrorist after Oklahoma.
The problem with racial profiling is that the moment the bad guys know you are looking for one profile,they start using others. In Delhi - at the height of the security issues with the Punjab problem etc - the police stopped only cars with young men at checkpoints. Any vehicle with women and/or children was allowed through.The terrorists promptly began recruiting young women to be passive passengers....

Mohammed Salameh, who had rented the truck and reported it stolen, kept calling the rental office to get back his $400 deposit. The FBI arrested him there on March 4, 1993. In short order, the Bureau had several plotters in custody, including Nidal Ayyad, an engineer who had acquired chemicals for the bomb, and Mahmoud Abouhalima, who had helped mix the chemicals

This is like straight out of a Jay Leno stupid criminals bit. Still doesn't prove profiling works.

HMF,
This is a first .I am completely in agreement with you !

Wait 5 mins.

I can't believe I am actually going to be the pro-Profiler on this thread. Profiling is not meant to be foolproof. It just maximizes your chances of catching someone when used correctly. The problem with race based profiling is that it is used lazily without looking at multiple factors.

But despite my pro profiling comments, I think airport security is a joke. All it takes is for some airport personnel to be bribed. Having a secure cockpit door with a video camera on the cabin and passengers in no mood to wait for a negotiation is enough of deterrant to a repeat of 9-11.

It gets really ridiculous when you get patted down in NFL stadiums. I can understand for the SB, but regular season games? Do you know at one point, there were suggestions in some areas that movie theaters could use extra security? Ridiculous.

Wasnt that my point?

The problem with race based profiling is that it is used lazily without looking at multiple factors.

I agree if those factors are spread over time. But if the object of profiling is to catch the assailant right before they're about to do the deed, based primarily or exclusively on visual factors, the chances of catching them really amount to sheer dumb luck.

Still doesn't prove profiling works.

Here's a recent incident where the TSA claims profiling helped:

Va. man arrested at BWI with gun

August 18, 2007

Officials credit behavior-focused screening program

A Virginia man who appeared to be "exhibiting suspicious behaviors" was arrested at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport this month while carrying a concealed handgun with 30 rounds of ammunition, according to the federal Transportation Security Administration.

The Aug. 1 incident was not publicly announced at the time, but an account was later posted on the TSA Web site as an example of the success of its technique of screening passengers by closely observing their behavior. The program has been in place at BWI for almost a year.

According to the TSA, the behavior of the arrested man was consistent with that of a terrorist before an attack. link

It depends on what they mean by 'suspicious behavior' too often that means, having X,Y,Z (not W) skin. Otherwise it could be an example of pure dumb luck.

Here's a recent incident where the TSA claims profiling helped..

I gotta clarify - I thought we were discussing racial profiling, hence my remark in # 73 .Profiling on the basis of "suspicious behavior" - well,DOH! Thats what I expect the TSA to be doing.That kind of profiling ( behavioral and NOT just skin color/appearance) is an absolute necessity for law enforcement

Depending on the context, race and religion cannot be ruled out: Most serial killers : white (yes, there have been a few non-White serial killers, but the majority have been white). Most abortion clinic bombers: Christian (I doubt any atheists have been arrested for that crime). Most terrorists in the past 5 years : Muslim. Context is required.

Most terrorists in the past 5 years : Muslim

only problem, muslims cannot be visually identified as easily as the white majority thinks. Muslims in Turkey look nothing like Muslims in Somilia.

thats easy. clamp down on funny lookin ferners. thats what the point of profiling is anyways. when tim mcveigh blew up a federal building, no one associated whyte with bombing. after WTC, terrorism = funny lookin brown guy.

Also depends on what you classify as terrorism. I personally think that wing-nuts who torch synagogues and mosques, burn crosses in front yards, and murder innocent taxi drivers are pretty effective at terrorizing communities here in the U.S.

Also depends on what you classify as terrorism. I personally think that wing-nuts who torch synagogues and mosques, burn crosses in front yards, and murder innocent taxi drivers are pretty effective at terrorizing communities here in the U.S.

the logical ones will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes....the only terrorists are the funny lookin ferner ones that hate america..

only problem, muslims cannot be visually identified as easily as the white majority thinks. Muslims in Turkey look nothing like Muslims in Somilia.

Once again, it is all about what context that piece of information is applied to. It is not a visual attribute, but does govern motivations and behavior. Christians who bomb clinics or PETA members who attack animal testing labs don't look a certain way but their beliefs do point to certain personal aspects that can be profiled and tracked.

sakshi : It keeps getting better.

Actually, Ekman is onto something. The microexpressions he's talking about are what Malcolm Gladwell talks about in "Blink." They are some of the most reliable and hard-to-conceal signs of intent for human behavior.

Unfortunately, I would agree with your assessment based on the "56 hours of training" they go through. I'm sure there are "macro" behaviors and expressions that may be useful to look for, but the people in the Gladwell essays (and even Ekman himself) have literally tens of years of experience.

You can read an excerpt of the how-it-works version of it here.

Actually, Ekman is onto something. The microexpressions he's talking about are what Malcolm Gladwell talks about in "Blink." They are some of the most reliable and hard-to-conceal signs of intent for human behavior.

Somebody should build a Voight Kampff machine...

It could be done. And then we could force all the suspicious 7-year-olds with scary names to stand in front of the weird machine!

I like it.

tamasha (#21) and dave (#45):

i am with you both. for millenia, humans have been fooled into awwwing and cuddling the little monsters. time to show them! even while posing for the picture above, i am sure javaid is thinking of his secret nook lair stash.

Once again, it is all about what context that piece of information is applied to.

You're stretching far beyond the scope of my comment. Sure, if information is gathered earlier, and investigated and vetted, and data much beyond visually identifiable criteria is taken into account, then sure, some degree of profiling would be useful.

Most serial killers : white (yes, there have been a few non-White serial killers, but the majority have been white

Vikram,
Interesting observation. 1) Is this in the USA only? Since this is still White majority nation , I would not read too much into gross numbers
2)Another intersting fact: Serial killers- usually they kill within their own racial group .Don't know if taht has any bearing on the dicussion on terrorists though

And since we are discussing profiling on the basis of appearance check this out .Once we accept that its okay to target people only because of the way the look , this is what will happen all the time

Interesting observation. 1) Is this in the USA only? Since this is still White majority nation , I would not read too much into gross numbers 2)Another intersting fact: Serial killers- usually they kill within their own racial group .Don't know if taht has any bearing on the dicussion on terrorists though

Here's some information. Don't know how much this applies to countries other than the US.

A more specific profile of a serial killer has been presented by Apsche (1993) stating that most are white males in their twenties or thirties, who target strangers near their homes or places of work. "According to criminologist Eric Hickey, who has assembled the most extensive database on demography of serial murder states that, 88% of serial killers are male, 85% are Caucasian, and the average age when they claim their first victim is usually around 28.5. link

Sure, if information is gathered earlier, and investigated and vetted, and data much beyond visually identifiable criteria is taken into account, then sure, some degree of profiling would be useful.

Yeah, and here's what happens when agents in the field are hamstrung by bureaucratic paper pushers ...

Report Details F.B.I.'s Failure on 2 Hijackers

The report provides new information about the bureau's mishandling of a warning from an agent in Phoenix in July 2001 about Middle Eastern extremists connected to Osama bin Laden using American schools to receive aviation training.

Those agents who did see the warning did not have the time to follow it up, or disregarded it because they felt the presence of Middle Eastern flight students was already commonly known. The agents were also concerned that racial profiling had become so "hot" an issue that they could not pursue the Phoenix agent's suspicions, according to the report. link

I am not sure that suppressing the human rights of a seven year old will keep the world safe from terrorism.

However, I think if the TSA applies a little bit of common sense that just might help the situation quite a bit.

Oh lord. This is bad, and it's endemic. One of my distant nephews, who is seven years old, was kept waiting for six hours at the US embassy in Islamabad because his name matched that of someone in the security database. Following that, his passport was kept by the embassy for almost a year, because they were "still verifying that he isn't a threat".

Moments such as this one are why Salon.com's "Ask the Pilot" has articles about how Air New Zealand is deliberately going out of its way to advertise flights that avoid the US. Can't say I blame them. If I'm flying anywhere that has a transit through the US, I now re-route my flight to go through somewhere else. It's just too much bullshit to deal with.