Israel pioneered another controversial security technique now used widely in Europe and elsewhere. These people tend to be questioned more diligently, detained, subject to searches, their personal lives scrutinized. In the United States, profiling is already in use by the Drug Enforcement Administration and Customs Service. The Clinton administration is considering a more extensive program for U.S. air travel. Airlines have objected to the time and costs involved, while civil libertarians claim it will discriminate against minorities and certain religions.
Critics also point the fallibility of profiling.
Yigal Amir, the ultra-Orthodox Jew who admitted killing Rabin last year, was not stopped by security agents as he approached the prime minister moments before shooting him. In Israel and Great Britain, despite crackdowns and compromises on individuals' rights, terrorists still murder people by the score. They screen all El Al passengers and anyone Arab gets scrutinized very closely. So your buses get blown up. That's not so much solving the problem as moving it from airplanes to buses.