To make it concrete: Do you skip screening of the young pregnant Irish woman? I hope not. That was Anne-Marie Murphy, whose boyfriend put Semtex and a timer in her bag. [1]
Do you skip screening of the attractive blonde woman? Sorry, that was hijacker Leila Khaled with a blonde wig and hidden grenades. [2]
(These are both very interesting stories and I recommend reading the links below.)
Well, you have to skip screening some people (in fact, most of them). Given the presence of holes in your net, positioning them over young pregnant women is going to give you much better results than just about any other policy imaginable.
The Anne-Marie Murphy example is interesting; as you point out, she was sabotaged and didn't know she was carrying explosives. So -- she would pass demographic profiling with flying colors, as she should. She didn't want to do anything. The very commonly suggested approach of behavioral profiling is also useless here. People who believe they're not carrying explosives act exactly the same as people who really aren't carrying explosives.
Network analysis ("passenger's boyfriend is Arab") could flag her. Would you support that?
To make it concrete: Do you skip screening of the young pregnant Irish woman? I hope not. That was Anne-Marie Murphy, whose boyfriend put Semtex and a timer in her bag. [1]
Do you skip screening of the attractive blonde woman? Sorry, that was hijacker Leila Khaled with a blonde wig and hidden grenades. [2]
(These are both very interesting stories and I recommend reading the links below.)
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindawi_affair
[2] http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2001-09-28/news/0109280226_...