With the attempted hijacking of a plane over the Christmas break, there are many questions of racial profiling and how burearicies are not communicating.

This past Christmas on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, Umar Farouk Abdulmattallab attempted to ignite a bomb, in his pants.

As humorous as that may sound, this act has resulted in mandates in the United States and several European nations that will affect citizens from multiple countries. The U.S. policy specified that all citizens of Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Yemen, Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria who are bound for the United States, from airports, will be subject to body and luggage searches.

According to an article by the New York Times, “any citizen of Pakistan or Saudi Arabia will for the first time be patted down automatically before boarding any flight to the United States. Even if that person has lived in a country like Britain for decades, he now will be subject to these extra security checks.”

Seriously? This, then, is not solely a matter of safety, but rather a matter of race. After all, the Christmas bomber’s flight departed from Amsterdam, but the Netherlands wasn’t included on the list.

Instead of targeting all of the citizens of these countries and labeling all them as terrorists, why isn’t security tightened and focused on known terrorists.

Key word known.

At what point are we willing to stop? Privacy is being violated and civil liberties are being reduced to nothing. Not only are the rights of citizens being taken away but with every new search and mandate, I believe a bit of integrity is being taken away as well.

The CIA, FBI and Homeland Security need to communicate better and share information . They need to communicate with each other.

By sharing intelligence, these organizations will be able to maintain accurate and complete lists of know terrorists.

The information that could have prevented Abdulmatallab from stepping on a plane Dec. 25 was avaliable, but the various intelligence agencies weren’t sharing it with each other. We don’t need to randomly target the citizens of 14 countries.

Citizens all over the world have to face prejudices like this form of profiling. In the end it doesn’t solve anything.

If the government spends all of its time searching and pin-pointing mass amounts of innocent people who just happen to be of a certain race, then not only will they be taking away a fellow human’s civil rights, but they will be missing the true terrorist who is on their list and right before their eyes.