The incoming head of Germany’s main airport lobby group is demanding the nation’s transit authorities use racial profiling to weed out terrorists at security checks.
Christoph Blume, the head of Düsseldorf Airport, told daily Rheinische Post on Tuesday that air passengers should be divided into different risk categories, meaning they would be subject varying degrees of scrutiny by airport security.
“That way, the security system could become more effective to everyone’s benefit,” said Blume, who will take the helm of the ADV airport association next month. He said profiling passengers according to characteristics such as race, religion and country of origin would allow German airports to avert a further tightening of security.
While highly controversial because of its discriminatory nature, racial profiling has also found growing support in some quarters. However, critics fear it would stigmatize entire groups of passengers simply on their looks, faith or from where their trip originated.