Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Peter King OK Profiling Muslims

WASHINGTON - Nov. 18, 2015 - PRLog -- WASHINGTON, D.C. (November 18,  2015):  Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, Donald Trump, and Peter King have all suggested that they would consider profiling Muslims based upon their religion.

       Fortunately, it's constitutional and would make screening much more effective, and tracking the movements of suspected terrorists could also be done much more efficiently if ankle-tracking monitors were added as an additional tool to prevent terrorist attacks, says public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

       Using terrorist profiling - in which factors like religion, as well as gender and age, are utilized - would improve screening of passengers before boarding planes, as well as after they arrive from overseas flights, and it could also be used to screen Syrian refugees seeking to settle in various states, says Banzhaf.

       Both the Supreme Court and the Justice Department have said that it's constitutional to use factors like ethnicity and race, much less age and gender, as screening factors in certain circumstances.

       Also, a rigorous mathematical analysis has shown that this would make screening far more effective in detecting potential terrorists, says Banzhaf, who is also a mathematician of some note.

       Moreover, rather than barring Syrian refugees from entering many states (as their governors have proposed), or admitting them with few if any restrictions and therefore free to roam at will, refugees who are suspected of being terrorists - or those which cannot confidently be vetted - could be required to wear an ankle-tracking monitor which would alert authorities to their location (both in real time, and retroactively during any subsequent investigations), or provide an immediate warning if the device were removed.

       Requiring people already in the U.S. who are suspected of being possible terrorists, or of having terrorist ties, to wear ankle bracelets would also make it easier for the U.S. to keep track of them, and help meet the complaint that it's simply too difficult and expensive to keep so many suspects under surveillance.

       While it may not be constitutional to require all people to wear ankle trackers based solely upon suspicion, it would be constitutional to impose such requirements as a condition of bail if they were charged with any offense, no matter how minor.

       Ankle bracelets are routinely used in the U.S.  to track the movements of hundreds of thousands of people suspected of even minor crimes, and they have proven to be very effective bordering on foolproof.

       "In the war on terror, no tool should be overlooked, especially a tool which has proven to be very effective in keeping track of people easily and inexpensively," says Banzhaf.

       Indeed, the U.S. should also make them available to the Belgian authorities, who claim that they lack the resources to keep track of many known terrorists in their own country, he notes.

JOHN F. BANZHAF III, B.S.E.E., J.D., Sc.D.
Professor of Public Interest Law
George Washington University Law School,
FAMRI Dr. William Cahan Distinguished Professor,
Fellow, World Technology Network,
Founder, Action on Smoking and Health (ASH)
2000 H Street, NW, Wash, DC 20052, USA
(202) 994-7229 // (703) 527-8418
http://banzhaf.net/ jbanzhaf@law.gwu.edu  @profbanzhaf