The absolute number of terrorists trying to board airplanes in an effort to bring them down is so tiny that any system of screening at all generates false positives almost exclusively. Screening (of any kind) does reduce the effort in the first place, though. With no screening at all, I’m pretty confident terrorists would have brought down many planes if they could simply walk on with a bazooka and a couple hundred pounds of explosives.
The reason I support profiling (including appearance-based profiling) is precisely because of the vast numerator of all flyers. It’s not possible to focus on everyone, and focusing on profiled passengers increases the probability of finding the needle in the haystack. You are looking through fewer haystacks.
I do not particularly support the current TSA efforts with much of any enthusiasm. Not only are thy completely unselective–diluting out their focus onto passengers with minimal likelihood of belonging to terrorist groups–they appear to be rather marginally educated and rather more focused on rote process than any real expertise.
Your analogy proves my point. The shoe bomber was not Middle Eastern and the Detroit bomber was black. (And then there is the older case of the guy who planted a bomb in the luggage of his white, red haired, girlfriend.) So “all” incidents of airline terrorism have not been perpetrated by Middle Eastern young men, (or even “Middle Eastern looking” young men). I am not claiming that appearance should never play any role in any profile, but focusing on appearance, (or making silly claims that “all” the carriers of bombs have been members of a particular ethnicity or region), are simply wrong and focusing on appearance will cause TSA to harrass innocents, needlessly, while allowing actual perpetrators to pass through.
Your “almost” does not actually carry any weight because we have no metric for “almost” and I have provided multiple exceptions without even bothering to do a Google search on the terrorists about whom we have information. The thread is discussing “racial” profiling and that behavior is counterproductive.
I wonder if you’d enter into a wager where we take a general population of all flyers in line for screening and let me–well-traveled the world over, but untrained–separate out for you Middle Easterners (and by the way, that is not the only group I’d add to appearance-based profiling). I get to look at every passenger, look over their ID, and ask them one or two questions, followed by parking them into “Middle Eastern” or not. While it’s absolutely true that I would miss some and incorrectly include others, I’d wager my “Middle East” group would contain a far higher percentage of Middle Easterners than my “Everyone Else” group. And that’s what appearance-based profiling is all about. It’s not a statement about your life philosophy. It’s not an accusation you are a criminal. It’s about trying to whittle down the denominator of every single passenger into a more manageable number that is more likely to contain the tiny subset which needs to be prevented from getting on the airplane. A trained profiler would have a far higher success rate than I and obviously a more inclusive (and exclusive) list of profiling criteria beyond the “Middle Easterner” strawman you keep setting up.
But the idea that profiling based on appearance is unhelpful at all is silly.
Again, you are setting up a strawman of “exclusively.” I used your example because it was your example, not because it was a perfect analogy. To date w/r/t airplane terrorism, all successful and nearly-successful terrorists have been extremist Muslims on their personal crusade. I’m not sure who has claimed they are a particular ethnicity, although there have been some implications that blonde and blue-haired women should be considered equally at risk. Much of appearance-based profiling is exclusion rather than inclusion. A little less focus on the Amish Grandma in her buggy than the teenager in Dad’s Maserati, for example; a little less focus on a teenage female bimbo than a nervous Somali.
I’ve already said that if the thread is confined to “racial” profiling, that’s useless. I don’t think it was the intent of the OP to mean it that way. Read my initial post. I do think appearance as one of many screening criteria is a useful adjunct. So, for instance, some blue-eyed blonde women might attract the eye of a professional profiler based on some subtle appearance or behavioural cue; the next might be dismissed with barely a second glance. And as threats change, so would criteria. I’m aware of many anti-government terrorists who don’t meet standard appearance criteria, but not many who are nutty enough to get on airplanes and kill themselves along with the passengers. That particular subtype seems to be the domain of extremist young Muslim males serving the Army of God or hoping for their virgins. But if something about this person’s appearance or behaviour smells wrong, by all means she gets further attention.
Based on what you have said here it sounds like racial profiling is not part of it at all. You are suggest we look for something “that smells wrong”, unless you are suggesting we do something with everyone who looks an extremist muslim whatever that looks like.
Why is it a problem that everyone else might be a terrorist, but not your wife? I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that most TSA agents are not as familiar with her as you are. How’s that?
Al-Qaeda is the most common English transliteration, pronunciation issues aside.
So you make a claim that for some unknown reason security services has more of a reason to trash human rights with no explanation at all and then walk away?
Wow.
I wrote and read what you were responding to. I am unsure how many steps back you are suggesting I need to read, but I fail to see the disconnect and am far from clear on what you mean.
Your reply suggests that I defend the rights of the security services to “trash human rights with no explanation at all”
I don’t and never have.
I acknowledge that they may come close to the line and feel they need to step over it depending on the circumstances but I don’t defend that. In fact I consistently
condem it.
As you feel my words suggested something and I felt your words did as well.
A question on the sentence above. Is it you , they or both who feel they need to step over the line? It reads as you do, but I don;t want to assume and it could be understood either way.
They feel the need to step over the line. I understand why they feel pressured to do that but don’t condone it.
I know it is a subtle step from “understanding” to “supporting” and message boards aren’t always the best place to clarify that. So my apologies if it wasn’t clear.
I understand you better now. No worries. I apologize as well. Of course I understand why they feel the need to. The same with police they often overstep their bounds and in most cases because they feel they need to. In both cases I condemn it.
