A TSA agent checks a bag at a security checkpoint area at Midway International Airport, last month. ...

1. DOJ To Issue New Federal Rules On Profiling
A TSA agent checks a bag at a security checkpoint area at Midway International Airport, last month.
The new federal government guidelines on racial and religious profiling won't apply to the TSA. Nam
Y. Huh/AP hide caption
itoggle caption Nam Y. Huh/AP
A TSA agent checks a bag at a security checkpoint area at Midway International Airport, last month.
The new federal government guidelines on racial and religious profiling won't apply to the TSA.
Nam Y. Huh/AP
The Justice Department is preparing to release new guidelines for some federal agents that would
prohibit them from using such factors as religion or sexual orientation to profile individuals, but the
new policy would not apply at airports or border crossings.
NPR's Carrie Johnson says the DOJ has been considering the change, expected out any day, for the
past five years.
"They will add some new categories that are prohibited, like sexual orientation and religion," Carrie
tells Weekend All Things Considered.
"These guidelines will be applied at the FBI and at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the
DEA and the like," she says, but adds: "Democratic lawmakers and advocacy groups tell me the
guidelines still don't go far enough.
"They won't apply, for instance, at airports, to TSA agents or agents on the border," Carrie says.
"There are still some big loopholes too that allow the FBI to map Muslim-American communities in
the U.S. and most importantly, they won't generally cover state and local police who are at the heart
of these incidents in Ferguson, New York and Cleveland."
The New York Times reports:
"Under the rules, law enforcement officials cannot consider any of those factors, along with race,
during criminal investigations, or during routine immigration cases away from the border. Agencies
whose officers make traffic stops, such as the United States Park Police, may not use them as a
reason to pull someone over. The rules will apply to local police assigned to federal task forces, but
not local police agencies.
"The rules also eliminate the broad exemption for taking into account those factors in cases
involving national security, but F.B.I. agents will still be allowed to map neighborhoods and use that
data to recruit informants from specific ethnic groups."
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