Is That Legal?

That's not surprising considering the fact that the British have never had any problems with light-skinned terrorists. Oh, wait...

To be fair, I was singled out for a search in Heathrow on my way back to the U.S.--25 years ago. I'm not dark-skinned, but I was sporting a beard.

I used to get searched every time I went through heathrow for some reason.
I can't imagine why

As a Customs Officer (not at Heathrow but another large airport) people often make these judgements without understanding the workings of Customs and Excise. It is more than likely that the officers were on a specific op targeting drug source countries (our job). Needless to say, many people coming from these countries are dark skinned and thus by proportion more "dark skinned" people would be stopped... makes sense if you think about it.
However, there are plenty of white skinned people arrested for drug smuggling every day. My last 3 were white.

Bear in mind also that it is our job to prevent certain meat products from entering the country. This meat is often poorly preserved and packaged and liable to carry disease. This meat comes predominantly from black countries and is carried predominantly by black people, hence more are stopped than white tourists who do not return with half an uncooked goat in their suitcase.

In conclusion, don't judge us unless you have done the job...

Every time i go travelling im singled out, especially when flying to american, im a 23 year old white male, but i am irish so its not that much of a surprise.

Ive been told one of hte reasons i often get singled out is cause im normally smiling (im about to go on holiday, why shouldnt i be?) and so this means the custom guys dont think they will get such a hard time

I've travelled through LHR over 5 times now and have never being stopped and I'm a Sri Lankan with brown skin. Plus I have seen 'white' people being checked at Heathrow customs several times. Same with the Sydney airport. However at the Sydney airport everyone gets scanned. Maybe they should do that at Heathrow too.

I guess sometimes we just see what we want to see. Like if we go looking for blue cars suddenly the whole world is filled with blue cars.