Increased Security Checks raise Fears of Profiling based on Nationality

(Version anglaise seulement)

The US has toughened security measures for US-bound airline passengers from or via 14 countries, mostly Muslim, raising fears of profiling based on nationality.

"Because effective aviation security must begin beyond our borders, (Transportation Security Administration) TSA is mandating that every individual flying into the US from anywhere in the world traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening," said TSA spokesman Greg Soule.

All passengers flying from Sudan to the United States through the East African Nation are subjected to enhanced screening techniques such as body scans and pat-downs as a mandatory procedure to be enforced by airlines and aviation authorities worldwide. “We would target countries on US list of "state sponsors of terrorism" that is currently comprised of Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria”, said the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

The other ten designated "states of interest" are Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

Passengers holding passports from those nations, or taking flights that originate or pass through any of them, will have their carry-on luggage searched and would undergo advanced explosive detection or imaging scans.

Passengers traveling from others countries will be subject to random screening or so-called threat-based screens.

Additional behavioral detection officials are also in airports to observe passengers for any signs that might offer a hint of a plot.

There have been no comprehensive changes in screening at domestic airports but passengers may notice more canine bomb-detection teams or face occasional extra checks of carry-on bags.

The security ban comes barely a week after a failed attempt by a Nigerian man to bomb a Detroit-bound U.S. airliner on Christmas Day and whom the US claim was trained in a Yemen based Al Qaeda terrorist network The TSA said those techniques include full-body pat-downs, carry-on bag searches, full-body scanning and explosive detection technology. The TSA said those techniques include full-body pat-downs, carry-on bag searches, full-body scanning and explosive detection technology.

All passengers are screened electronically for weapons and bombs regardless, and the new rules that include random enhancements appear more agreeable to airlines, which chaffed at broad requirements imposed after the Dec. 25 incident. The Republicans and other Diplomats strongly attacked the Obama Administration concerning the failed attempt by a Nigerian born Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab who is currently in custody in the US, but many fear that the US might be moving towards broader racial profiling.

"I understand there needs to be additional security in light of what was attempted on Christmas Day," Nawar Shora, the legal director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, told the New York Times.

He added that the rule wrongly implies that all citizens of certain nations are suspect.

"But this is extreme and very dangerous," he said, adding that they intend to file a formal protest.

The new measures mean that any citizen of those 14 nations will for the first time be patted down automatically before boarding any flight to the US.

"All of a sudden people are labeled as being related to terrorism just because of the nation they are from."

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