Air passengers face greater pre-flight checks

Sweeping changes to pre-departure checks for all passengers travelling to and from Britain, including the introduction of an electronic "no-fly list" for terror suspects, are in the pipeline, the Home Office has confirmed, reports The Guardian . The changes, including greater use of passenger profiling and the drawing up of a larger watch list of people who should be subject to special measures such as enhanced screening before they are allowed to fly, were first announced after last December's Detroit airlines plot. But they have yet to be introduced. The home secretary Theresa May told MPs that the coalition government was committed to making the changes to pre-departure checks "to identify better the people who pose a terrorist threat and to prevent them flying to the UK". She added that passenger profiling was one of the measures under consideration: "We are looking at all the techniques that we should be using in order to ensure that we can provide the maximum protection for people here in the UK. And indeed, in relation to passengers, we are enhancing our ability at the borders to ensure that we take steps to make sure that those who are a threat to the UK do not travel here." Home Office sources say this will involve extending the existing border watch list, which includes everyone from minor immigration offenders to terrorists. The new watch list will separate potential terror suspects from immigration offenders. But more significantly, it will be linked to the growing database of advance information about passengers – often supplied when booking the flight – enabling automatic checks against the list. There will also be a measure of passenger profiling to select those who should be subject to extra screening or checks. This is likely to apply to people who start their journey at a particular destination or match a particular profile of behaviour, such as paying cash or not carrying luggage. Racial or religious profiling is, however, explicitly banned. The system is not foolproof and cases of mistaken identity can occur. Only last week an American neuroscience professor who was travelling from Cambridge to an academic conference in Israel was treated as a terror suspect by El Al security personnel at Luton airport. It emerged today that she has the same name as a prominent pro-Iranian US activist.