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Profiling Predictive Profiling 26 June 2008 #149
Profiling Predictive Profiling
By Dr Dave McIntyre, Director, Integrative Center for Homeland Security,26 June 2008
When the threat of terrorism began to emerge in the United States, we immediately rejected racial, ethnic and religious profiling as an un-American way to combat it. This has driven us to suspect everyone equally, and to use increasingly expensive and invasive technology instead. Isn’t there anything in-between? Well, actually there might be. And I will tell you more, if you will give me Just a Minute for Homeland Security.
I’m Dave McIntyre, Director of the Integrative Center for Homeland Security at Texas A&M.
Recently my organization began exploring educational cooperation with a group called Chameleon Associates. [1] They teach security screening techniques they learned while working with Israel’s national airline, El Al. So I attended one of their workshops, to see what makes the Israeli approach different.
They began by explaining that they reject racial, ethnic and religious profiling not just for moral reasons, but because it doesn’t work. Terrorists simply respond by using attackers from another religious or ethnic group – as when the Japanese Red Brigade agreed to stage attacks in Israel. Or they recruit and radicalize local citizens, as happened in the US and Australia. Or they plant bombs on trusting locals, as was planned in Ireland and the Philippines. A thinking enemy quickly gets around the profiling of people.
The alternative is a technique called “Predictive Profiling.” That means predicting the sequence of actions required to mount an attack – from planning, organizing, training and reconnaissance, to actually doing the terrible deed – and then profiling those actions instead of the individuals involved. Instead of subjecting everyone to the exact routine same screening measures, this approach challenges security officers to constantly develop – and attempt – their own mock attacks. Successes and failures are widely shared with the entire security force, and the whole system gets better at defense every day.
With this approach, the best tool to put the attacker on the defensive turns out to be a good set of questions. Once suspicious people are identified by their actions, imaginative questioning quickly unravels even the best cover story. I attended the training with a group of federal, state and local law enforcement officials. They saw immediately that this is much different from their approach – and more effective. “We were taught to think like investigators,” they said. “This is thinking like a criminal.”
There is a lot more too it, of course. This short description barely scratches the surface. But recently the US Secretary of Homeland Security returned from a security tour of Israel and pledged to adopt some of their techniques to make us all safer. “Predictive Profiling” seems a very likely candidate for the job.
This is Dave McIntyre, Director of the Integrative Center for Homeland Security at Texas A&M, inviting you to join us again next week on Just a Minute, for Homeland Security.