US racial profiling is a slippery slope

5.09.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Thu 3rd Jul 2008

The US justice department is set to allow the FBI to single out Muslims, Arabs and other minority ethnic groups as potential terrorist suspects. Agents would be able to open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious. Race could be one factor, as could travel to regions of the world known for terrorist activity.

Commenting, Baroness Sarah Ludford MEP, Liberal Democrat Justice and Human Rights Spokeswoman, who is also the European Parliament rapporteur responsible for drawing up a report on the use of 'profiling' in law enforcement and border control, said:

"President Bush's earlier pledge regarding racial profiling, 'It's wrong, and we will end it in America", is obviously as unreliable as his pledges about observing the rule of law and rejecting the practice of torture. He should take heed of the warning by the US Congress that it is unclear how the FBI could compile suspect profiles so as to avoid needless intrusions into the privacy of innocent citizens and without wasting time and money chasing down false leads."

"Profiling means junking the presumption of innocence, the foundation of the legal system of democratic countries, since someone is judged suspicious not on the basis of their own conduct but on the basis of a stereotype or profile of what a terrorist is or does. Meanwhile, the real terrorists evade capture by altering the people they select, as we have seen with the use of female suicide bombers."

"Since the EU these days tends to follow lamely down the illiberal trail blazed by the US on 'security' measures, we need to be very worried by this US move. The bottom line is that it is counter-productive as well as ineffective to single out racial and religious minorities, since the very communities whose cooperation with police is needed will be alienated through discrimination. Since European human rights and data protection law is muddled on the acceptability of racial or behavioural profiling, my report in the European Parliament is designed to explore the legal and practical pitfalls."