Jurisprudence of Prevention? YOU BET!!!

[Busyman]

Airports- stepped up security....profiling accepted. Stop frisking old white grandmas.

I strongly agree with the first, America should have done this after lockerbie but it didn't. Civil liberties had nothing to do with it, money had everything to do with it. Europe got their act together especially with unaccompanied baggage, the USA ignored this, especially domestic flights.
But to the "old white grandmas". As unlikely as it may sound they could be a threat. Drug smugglers use mules and once profiling is accepted as being well managed any potential hijacker could use grandma to get their "stuff" through security.
911 was planned. Imagine if a grandchild or other loved one was kidnapped and the ransom was to get stuff onto a plane. If we want to be secure we need to think outside the box as well as inside.
So profiling is essential but to stop the random searches of unlikely targets could be a mistake.

I should have elaborated.

There is an attempt to show unbias with random searches. This may include ignoring an Arab and frisking an old white grandma in an effort to say, "Hey we frisk everybody."

It's based on show rather than suspicion. This is not to say that the only folk we have to worry are Arabs as un terroriste.

People sometimes forget that before 9/11, the worst terrorist strike on US soil was committed by white men.

[JPaul]

Airports- stepped up security....profiling accepted. Stop frisking old white grandmas.

I strongly agree with the first, America should have done this after lockerbie but it didn't. Civil liberties had nothing to do with it, money had everything to do with it. Europe got their act together especially with unaccompanied baggage, the USA ignored this, especially domestic flights.
But to the "old white grandmas". As unlikely as it may sound they could be a threat. Drug smugglers use mules and once profiling is accepted as being well managed any potential hijacker could use grandma to get their "stuff" through security.
911 was planned. Imagine if a grandchild or other loved one was kidnapped and the ransom was to get stuff onto a plane. If we want to be secure we need to think outside the box as well as inside.
So profiling is essential but to stop the random searches of unlikely targets could be a mistake.

Re the rub down search issue, prior to the most recent changes security staff had to have a reason to give someone a rub down. e.g. a positive on the metal detector. Now they can carry one out as they see fit. I am regularly given the treatment and have no problem with it, it's to save my life and is a mino inconvenience.

I don't see that as a civil liberties problem, as I don't see the right to fly as being a fundamental human right.

[Barbarossa]

I usually opt to go through airport security dressed in a leotard now, in an attempt to avoid the excessive fondling, but it seems I'm getting fondled more often now than before!

It doesn't make sense.