Daniel Sutherland, the head of civil rights for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, said that Muslims should register with the department before undertaking any air travel to avoid being confused with someone on the department’s no-fly list.

But Daniel Sutherland admits that doing so won’t completely eliminate the chance that a Muslim traveler will be singled out for closer scrutiny before or after flying.

Speaking recently at a seminar on Homeland Security sponsored by the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism, Sutherland said the department wants to improve its relations with Muslims and Arab-Americans.

“We need to listen to their concerns,” he said. “We need to build a level of commitment and trust that’s unprecedented in our nation’s history, not an ‘us-versus-them’ perception in the community.”

One way to do that is by having Muslim and Arab-American travelers complete a form on the Web page of the Transportation Security Administration, a division of Homeland Security responsible for protecting mass transit systems including airports.

The two-page “Passenger Identity Verification Form” (PDF) asks for personal information including name, address, birth date, height, weight, eye and hair color, and requires copies of three of the following documents: passport, visa, birth certificate, naturalization certificate, voter registration card, government identity card or military identity card.

Once completed, the homeland security department shares the information with airlines, who then are able to compare it against security lists that might otherwise red-flag a passenger.

The goal is to distinguish a traveler from people whose names — or close variations thereof — appear on federal no-fly lists compiled by intelligence and law enforcement agencies. It does not remove a name from the list, but seeks to differentiate between a person of interest and someone who has no connection with them. — Associated Press

Hm, yes, let’s just register all the Arab-Americans. That will definitely make them feel more like the U.S. trusts them. And once we’re done registering them all, we can track them, too. And when the time comes, we can round them up and put them all into concentration camps. Oh, excuse me, protective custody.

But Gilbert Gordon, president of the Jerrahi Mosque in Chestnut Ridge, said any such program aimed at one specific group could be viewed as “an invasion of their privacy and an invasion of their civil liberty.”

Rather than achieve greater security and improved relations, having Muslims register would do nothing more than foster “distrust and animosity between the American government and Muslims,” said Gordon, who lives in Chestnut Ridge.

Dobbs Ferry resident Salem Mikdadi, a board member of the Center for Jewish-Christian-Muslim Understanding in Irvington, took offense to the suggestion.

“I don’t want to be singled out as someone different. I am an American like everybody else and my faith is strictly personal,” said Mikdadi, a Muslim who came to the United States from the Palestinian territories 34 years ago. “Singling out individuals or groups of people and suggesting it’s a matter for their convenience to register, a lot of people might take offense.

“I never dreamt in my life that a day would come where it would be suggested that I disclose my personal data to the government to facilitate my travel in a free country,” he said. “As much as I value my safety, there are certain individual freedoms that need to be respected.”

Still, Mikdadi acknowledged that instances of airport workers confusing Muslims’ names with those on the anti-terror lists was an increasing problem, but he attributed it to poor staff training.

Arsalan Iftikhar, national legal director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, called Sutherland’s comments “counterproductive to DHS’s desire to bridge the gap between the Muslim community and the federal government.

“We think that this will only serve to further alienate the community and profile lawful Americans,” Iftikhar said. He added that all Americans should be concerned by any action that would allow the government to archive an individual’s personal information. — The Journal News

You mean such as national security letters?

And the no-fly list is a dismal failure anyway. It misidentifies babies and U.S. senators as terrorists. Completely useless.

For this, Americans are supposed to give up their privacy? If the program actually worked, one might be able to make an argument for it, but as it stands, there’s no good reason for any American, Muslim or otherwise, to participate in this ridiculous identity verification scheme.

Identification is not security, anyway.