checkpoints as a weak link in airport security. Screeners are hired through private companies under contract with airlines to staff checkpoints. High turnover and low wages make for a vulnerable workforce, while subcontracting of the job results in little oversight (Cohen & Barens, 2001). The FAA, required to oversee and certify airport security, is imposing stricter security standards but these alone will not fix this problem. A systematic plan to increase wages, improve training, and even add prestige to the job must be implemented. This will take time and strict oversight by the federal government must be followed through, if private firms are going to be allowed to continue to provide this essential service to the flying public. One area many lawmakers are reluctant to enter is that of profiling passengers. According to Robert Berkebile a member of the National Research Council panel on airline security, "Profiling is a naughty, naughty word" (Hiltzik & Willman, 2001). Naughty or not, it is an area that must be dealt with. A 1997 report of the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, headed by then Vice President Al Gore, submitted the profiling standards to a panel of experts in privacy and foreign relations and representatives of such groups as the American Civil Liberties Union and the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The panel asked that the profiling standards not be based on anything of "a constitutionally suspect nature," such as race, religion or national origin of U.S. citizens. The commission further recommended that the airlines and government be forbidden from maintaining permanent databases on so-called selectees--people selected by a computer-assisted passenger screening software program for closer scrutiny--and that the entire system should only remain in place until "explosive detection systems are reliable and fully deployed" (Hiltzik et al.). This is a startling sign of the naiv...
