CCLA urges Canadian authorities to resist adopting the discriminatory and privacy invasive measures that the US Transportation Security Authority has announced.
There is no question that terrorist attacks must be prevented. The question is how to prevent them. The US Transportation Security Authority states that it is mandating that every individual flying into the U.S., from anywhere in the world traveling from or through one of 14 countries, labelled as “state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest”, will be required to go through enhanced screening measures, including body scanners which can reveal travellers’ naked bodies.
Are these measures appropriate? Certainly two aspects of this approach would raise concerns if it were adopted by Canadian authorities.
First, nude imaging body scanners were only deemed acceptable by the Privacy Commissioner for installation in airports because they were offered as an alternative to pat down searches and subject to extensive safeguards. Mandating body screening for a certain group of travellers (removing their choice to be patted down instead of viewed naked) raises serious privacy questions. In law, the government must, prior to subjecting people to intrusive search measures, prove that it is acting reasonably, has no or few other alternatives and is infringing the right to privacy as little as possible. This is not the case here. Full body screening is not necessarily better than pat down searches, nor is it a guarantee that potential terrorists will not hide explosives in their body cavities. In other words, full body screening only gives the illusion that it could prevent terrorist attacks on airplanes.
Second, targeting passengers from particular countries can lead to discriminatory racial profiling. Most analysts agree that the fight against terrorism requires better intelligence so that the terrorists are stopped before they arrive at the airport or decide to attack train stations, shopping malls or gas stations. Thus, the targeting of travellers from the identified countries may only give us a false sense of security. It is important to remember that some of the September 11 2001 terrorists came from Germany and that the 2002 shoe bomber held a British passport. However, neither Germany nor the UK are on the list but Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen are. As such, it is naive to think that would-be terrorists are not likely to travel through countries other than the 14 on the new US list.
