Air France false alarms
The forced cancellation of three Air France flights from Paris to Los Angeles is a good example of what we all have to fear from automated government "terrorist or tourist profile" systems such as CAPPS or CAPPS2 or Biometric Passports. e.g. as reported by The Independent or by MSNBC
If anti-terrorist systems can disrupt air travel simply because names which sound Arabic are booked onto a flight, then this is a victory for the terrorists.
The other scary part of the story is that extra "evidence" in the form of suspected specialised knowledge or experience i.e. holding an aeroplane pilot's license somehow constitutes an extra risk. Objectively, people who have been throough expensive pilot training and licensing are less of a risk as airline passengers, and could help to save lives during an in flight emergency. However it seems that according to the "shut the stable door after the horse has bolted" hindsight profiling, they are, illogically, considered to be more of a risk.
This sort of stupidity will lead to even more pressure to expand the crude stereotypes and pigeon hole categories used by these databases to intrude even more into innocent people's lives, without actually being effective in catching real terrorists.
This sort of "profiling" seems to be applied in a racist manner i.e. not against white Americans who hold a pilot's license or, the much higher potential risk category of all Americans with access to firearms at home.
Is it any wonder that people increasingly do not trust the UK Government with computerised personal details, especially if they are going to hand them over willy nilly, to incompetent foreign government bureaucracies who literally do not care for our civil liberties or privacy and have their own agendas ?