A Lovers’ Quarrel with Airport Profiling

Atif,
Instead of pretending to be a young Tom Cruise, strutting your semi-naked butt all over your Roxbury apartment while waiting for Rebecca De Mornay to show up, you should have been brushing up on CAIR`s pamphlet on prolific practical profiling positions. Also, of course you would draw attention because of the inconsistencies among your shoe size, your obviously small and effeminate hands, and that bulge you bragged about. It`s time you pulled out those heavy-duty Nike socks that don`t fool anybody and just cause you to undergo a full body cavity search.

As the security gal started to inspect your bag pack, it was your clue to start inspecting the fortitude of her fasteners. Such a gesture would have gotten you arrested for harassment, but to my knowledge, no one has ever made it to gitmo just for participatory mutual inspection at the airport security station. You did not tell us whether you were one of the flying Eye Maams on your way to an Eye Maam conviction in DC. If so, you should have resisted saying your prayers in Arabic out loud in the boarding area. Instead you should have been in the First Class lounge relaxing and getting into a three sheets to the wind attitude. For more advice, please refer to the index of topics in my article on this subject.

Atif,
What I found amusing in the early days of airport security was the insistence of inspectors to turn on your laptop. What I found really amusing was when you finally turned it on, the stupid inspectors would poke their seemingly disposable heads as close to the potential explosive device as possible. Either they were always betting on a negative result or somehow, no one can resist getting a closer look once the screen lights up.

atif: little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing. that does not change the fact that the blame for the reichstag fire was placed on communists by the nazis, not on jews.

also note that even more dangerous is crying wolf when there is none as i have been trying to bring to your attention below. because the fact is that homeland security staff are merely doing their job to protect society from real wolves of the 9/11 kind and making them appear to be the problem does not make their job easier.

It makes sense to profile pakis..

Pakistanis among several captured: Ethiopian PM

#126,

With your supply of condoms to last a decade for an entire army division, you were obviously not going to DC. which has as many condoms per square inch as Amsterdam. :))

I suspect that you had borrowed some tips from your own previously notorious article and were preparing to go to Allama Iqbal International, which still has a shortage of sanitary dispensers. :)

No wonder you got a deep cavity search at Logan - claiming to be flying into IAD, while dressed in a bright blue shirt with your skin substantially lightened by an overdose of Fair N Lovely - resembling the late Egyptian flyboy. 8-|

Of course, it would be asking too much of you to claim that you are an Indian. :)

saminasha: #51 this is what i was referring to - ``.the guys who ask the questions are usually Latino and they dont understand why I`m on the Special Line. ``

you should have quit while you were ahead. :-) i mean - what does being Latino have to do with all this?? and, OK, so these are staff then. i mean they can either be staff or passengers and if they are none of the above then what the hell are they??

#126 by atif2 on January 9, 2007 3:20pm PT


the much bigger issue facing this great nation is the erosion of civil liberties.


jihadi2: you don`t give a damn about this great nation or it`s civil liberties...you`re whining because your honor and dignity have been somehow lowered..

salim # 120 ``Now, putting one gross of condoms and a slightly mutilated copy of Playboy was an excellent ploy.``

FYI, some of us keep condoms for more than just a ploy :) Indeed, your article of long ago to dodge just such profiling at the airport sometime comes to mind. Unfortunately the problem with getting profiled is that there are things - such as your name, that cannot be covered even with a family size pack of condoms, or the last 12 issues of Playboy in backpack...

scout #124 - I did not get antagonized either :) However, I think profiling is just one of the issues - the much bigger issue facing this great nation is the erosion of civil liberties. When you hear about people who are put behind bars without any charges, you realize that getting profiled is nothing more than a nuisance. Lets hope that this climate of fear, perpetuated by this administration to further its dark global agenda, eases as the awareness in general public grows.

On a positive note, Cindy Sheehan - the woman whose son died in Iraq, has taken her protest to Guantanamo Bay. She has linked her son`s death to the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay...her son was killed in the same month that first pictures of Abu Gharaib came to light.

#124 Just grin `n bar it.

atif,

i wasn`t trying to antagonize you, i really liked your article and yes it does spread awareness but your target audience is limited. that`s why i wanted to know what you are doing SPECIFICALLY to counteract being profiled. one of my husband`s friend has this exact same problem and is seeing a lawyer. it`s inconvenient but he`s sick and tired of having to go through the same shenanigans when traveling.

on a second note, we always welcome your photographs, so pictures of your protests would be great

DM Sahib #3 {``The fact is that, as the cliche goes, while 99% of Muslims/Arabs are innocent, 100% of those whom the authorities fear are troublemakers, are also Muslims/Arabs``}

DM Sahib,
While I fully support airport safety and the fight against terrorism, I cannot subscribe to this logic. Please consider:

99% of men are innocent, but 100% of the rapists are men.
99% of women are innocent, but 100% of the female whores are women.
89% of Eye Talians are good singers and chefs, but 97% of Mafioso are Eye Talians.
96% of Japanese are good airline passengers, but 100% of the Kamikaze pilots have been Japs.
64% of Indian Hindus are vegetarians, but 75% of riotous murderers in India are Hindus

113 by arjun2 on January 9, 2007 1:53pm PT
it`s always funny when the people who`re most likely to be holocaust deniers claim the status of victimhood by comparing themselves to jews in nazi germany(who, according to the worldview of these islamofascists, were going well in that era)


It fits the theme of this article. here you have an indignant chutif 2 who is making fun of poor workers at the airport because he has to bear the shame of being associated with a terrorist.

Kidding aside…

Profiling is a bad thing. Most profiling methodologies are probably highly mistake-prone. Further, those methodologies are implemented by ordinary individuals in less than perfect ways. The vast numbers of people who get profiled are innocent individuals who perhaps feel rather humiliated – as is human. And as expected, the vast majority of the remainder of the population does not care too much about profiling because – based on the very facts that it IS profiling and targets specific ethnic groups ensure that most of them would not undergo it.

Having said all of that, in the present climate, profiling is not going to go away unless and until we can come up with something better.

Something more objective, something less intrusive!

Something else!

Something based on future technology – which is yet to come along.

But is certain to come along, because once a need has been identified, there WILL be an invention and a solution.

And when such technology comes along, there would be no need to profile because everything about everyone everywhere will be known ahead of time.

Then we can all be happy except those who worry about their privacy.

Atif,
This is a very interesting and well-written anecdote. You manage to captivate the audience by using the 2nd person quite effectively and your description of the ordeal is very graphic. I wish that you had referred to my serious article pertaining to this subject and could have circumvented some of the negative outcomes of your suffering. Now, putting one gross of condoms and a slightly mutilated copy of Playboy was an excellent ploy. Of course, you should have loudly announced your possession of ten bottles of Chivas Regal as soon as you got out of your cab driven by the Somali driver. Your other shortcoming, other than the obvious physical one, was your timidity in not leaping over the counter to grope the airline agent`s knockers as she printed your boarding pass. Anyway, I found your article both humorous and timely. Good job.

#103 {``what i wrote to atif of course is not affected by that, and i wonder what you think of this question - what i call crying wolf over trivialities while the real wolf (e.g. in the form of immigration restrictions for people who would have otherwise come to the west and improved their lot) gets in and does real damage to other people who are not as fortunate as we are.``}

First IamNadia and now this fool. I am going to demand that Chowk Staff provide permanent subtitles when either one of the two posts incomrehensible nonsense.

#116 (further thoughts)

Of course, the ``pleasure`` would have been rather one-sided.