Anti-terror fear normalizes demographic-focused security searching

Evidence

Legomsky’s view is one that is gaining in popularity as the fear of a terrorist attack increases. After uncovering what it declared to be a terrorist plot to bomb U.S.-bound passenger jets leaving Britain, the former head of London’s metropolitan police expressed the view that it made sense to concentrate searches on young Muslim men travelling by themselves, and to leave those who do not fit this profile alone. Certainly everyone could not be searched, an option suggested by Canadian legal scholar Sujit Choudrhry. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 88

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the general claim that threat spikes legitimize profiling that would otherwise be unacceptable — connects to the moral-panic literature and to the chapter’s own shift-from-debate framing in para 85. — connects to: Fear of social invisibility drives user acceptance of surveillance features — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1462; National security threat perception can abruptly reverse public rejection of racial profiling — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 462