WaPo reports that earlier this month Homeland Security acknowledged a program under which all travellers crossing U.S. borders — citizens and foreigners alike — are assigned a score based on their perceived threat risk.

The Automated Targeting System (ATS) program was initially created to prevent drug traffic from entering the U.S. with cargo. DHS now seeks to expand its coverage from cargo and foot traffic to include air and sea travel. Evidently, the Department has already been using the program in this regard for four years but only recently disclosed that fact in fine print within the Federal Register. That disclosure also reveals that the scores cannot be appealed by travellers and will remain on record for forty years.

That’s right: forty years.

Meanwhile, in other air-travel news, six Muslim clerics are outraged after being removed from a US Airways flight in Minneapolis last week. The Imams claim they were singled out because they prayed quietly in a group prior to boarding the flight, and they demand an investigation.

U.S. Air Marshalls removed the clerics at the pilot’s request. The decision was made in response to passenger and flight personnel observations:

• A note from a passenger to a flight attendant reported that the clerics had been “cursing” America’s role in the Iraq war and chanting the name of Allah prior to the flight.

• A gate agent observed that the men were praying loudly prior to boarding the plane.

• Other passengers, including a travelling off-duty flight attendant, saw the men changing their seat assignments so that two sat in first class, two in the middle, and two in the rear. That arrangement paralleled the grouping on one of the planes used in the 9/11 attacks.

• One Imam seated toward the front of the plane made two trips back to speak to his colleagues in the rear.

• Three clerics requested seat belt extenders despite not physically needing — or using — them. The extenders are made of a belt with a metal buckle which could be used as a weapon. They were found on the floor, unused.

There’s no word on the Imam’s score under the Automated Tracking System.

UPDATE: One Imam denies the accounts of the passengers and Marshalls. He also denies that the WTC attacks were carried out by Muslims and insists that he’d previously cut ties to an organization being investigated for its involvement in terrorist activity.

UPDATE: More on this at Wizbang!

While sitting here watching the 5 o’clock news I got an email from Magen David Adom. Were I not all too well-acquainted with the media’s tendency to report only one side of the story — the one most likely to incite those quick to anger and slow to think — I would’ve thought the two were wholly unrelated.

Exhibit One:

Neighborhood Bombing ‘Against Humanitarian Law’:

Israel’s bombing of a crowded Beirut neighbourhood where Hezbollah had its headquarters has breached humanitarian law, a senior UN official has said, as reports emerged of heavy fighting on Lebanon’s southern border.

Exhibit Two:

MDA Statistics: July 12th to July 24th, 2006

Hezbollah rockets hit northern Israel: 2,200
Qassam rockets launched from Gaza since June 25th: 193
Israelis in bomb shelters: 1,000,000
MDA ambulances deployed in north: 750
Number wounded, treated by MDA: 823
Israeli civilians killed: 17
Wounded today (July 24): 49

I know who my friends are, and I believe my friends.