Or there might be another test out there that could just as easily substitute-
D. A semitic male extremist between the age of 17 and 33.
WWJP- Who Would Jesus Profile?
Maybe, but I still don’t think you’d end up being able to extract very accurately who is part of what Church. I’ve given money at several church fundraisers despite not being part of those churches. And the celphone thing is just fantasy.
Plus, pulling people aside for special screening based on what church they’ve given money to would get squashed by the Supreme Court pretty fast.
And that information would be part of your profile.
Not at all. Do some reading on Project Echelon.
But no one suggested anything like that. You are oversimplifying it, and basically ignoring most of what I’ve said. It is a data point, and it is ridiculous to pretend that it’s not relevant to a terrorist profile. If it were the primary data point, not only would it be arbitrarily oppressive, it would also be useless information. The bottom line is that terrorists have certain criteria in common. Using analytic data we can significantly narrow our search fields.
You said, in precisely the following words:
That implies quite clearly that you advocate limiting the routine screening procedure of shoe checks ONLY to airline passengers who are Muslim males between 17 and 40.
If that isn’t what you meant to imply, you’d better clarify that now, because that’s what you said.
If it IS what you meant, then kindly explain which other routine airport security screening procedures you advocate limiting only to this one class of passengers, and why you think those proposed limitations won’t constitute a security screening weak point that terrorist groups can easily turn to their advantage.
If, on the other hand (or on thinking it over more calmly), you aren’t seriously advocating excusing all passengers other than Muslim males 17–40 from routine security screening procedures, then how are your proposed policies going to help any of us “avoid so much unnecessary bullshit”, as you blithely claimed? ISTM that they won’t do diddly-squat except add more “unnecessary bullshit” to the airport experiences of millions of law-abiding Muslim males between the ages of 17 and 40, without decreasing the “unnecessary bullshit” that the rest of us have to endure in airports.
In other words, you’ve run out of anything resembling coherent responses to my criticisms of your breathtakingly inane idea, and so you’re take refuge in attacking my motives for criticizing it. Pathetic, but not surprising.
You either have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, or else are completely unable to make your meaning intelligible to others. Signals intelligence (or SIGINT) is the category of intelligence gathering that involves analyzing signals from broadcasting, communications, and surveillance devices. It’s an extremely broad category of intelligence-gathering activities, and is in no way specific to religious profiling in passenger screening.
Until some non-Muslim does it. Before 9/11, it never really occurred to most people that someone could hijack a plane and fly it into a building. It was a failure of imagination. How stupid would TSA be to continue that failure by thinking only Muslims can hijack planes. Yes, they have all the equipment, all the protocol, all the training to check for explosives, but they only apply it to Muslims because, why? It’s unthinkable that anyone else might do such a thing?
No one really has any idea who the next hijacker will be. You might think the odds are on a Muslim, but ignoring all other possibilities strikes me as blinkered.
Kimstu Get back to me when you want to have a serious discussion about this topic and are going to stop ignoring what doesn’t fit your narrative.
Weedy Profiles cannot be built off of imagination. They must be built off of corrolative data from past experience. Pointing out that past events are not indicators of future performance is not meaningful. You cannot predict a Black Swan, trying to is a pointless endeavor. But you can use data to meaningfully extrapolate useful information in the majority of cases. No one has suggested ignoring all other possibilities that’s not how profiling works.
I want to have a serious discussion about this topic and am not ignoring what doesn’t fit my narrative. Now please answer my specific questions about your vaguely outlined proposals for improving security by religious profiling of airline passengers, particularly Muslim males between 17 and 40. To wit:
-
Which routine airport security screening procedures do you advocate limiting only to this one class of passengers (Muslim males between 17 and 40), and why do you think that those proposed limitations won’t constitute a security screening weak point that terrorist groups can easily turn to their advantage?
-
If you aren’t seriously advocating excusing all passengers other than Muslim males 17–40 from routine security screening procedures, then how are your proposed policies going to help any of us “avoid so much unnecessary bullshit”, as you claimed?
And furthermore, can you explain what you meant by saying that religious profiling is the same thing as signals intelligence?
I gave an example of possible data points. I didn’t limit them to those data points. You are continuing with this straw man argument saying that I’m limiting it only to those data points. Which I reiterated several times that the profiles would be built off of thousands of data points, not just four as I gave in my example.
I am not talking about limiting things by class. I am saying that we should draw corrolations between certain characteristics in the building of a profile. That religion should not be verboten out of some misguided sense of political correctness. So I cannot answer this question as it presupposes a straw man that I did not advance.
By doing profiling for real and correctly. You would be profiled as you, they’d assemble a snapshot of you based on your particular characteristics. Then they’d use that data to draw a strong correlation between the terrorist profile and you. The fact that being a terrorist has a strong correlaton to being an Islamic male between the ages of 17 and 40 is not something that should be discounted. As I pointed out, it should be built using many, many data points. Being Muslim will be weighted and added to your correlation score, just like being male between a certain age will be weighted and added to your correlation score. Other factors, such as flying with your family, can be used to reduce your correlation score.
I didn’t say it’s the same thing. I said Signals Intelligence uses data analysis to build profiles.
A profile essentially has several characteristics all weighted. So you build a profile of a likely terrorist, that profile is then matched up against people who share some of those characteristics. If your score shows a high correlation you’re more likely to be pulled aside for a screening interview. Being a Muslim shouldn’t be the only criteria and it shouldn’t be arbitrarily weighted highly, but it SHOULD be on the list of criteria as there is a strong correlation between being a terrorist and being a Muslim.
Well, you’re the one who explicitly said that you thought only the “3500 or so per day” of airline passengers who fit the category of “Muslim males between 17 and 40” should be subjected to “increased scrutiny”, and you gave the specific example of shoe checks.
If you’re backing off of that now, I don’t mind (in fact, I think you’re wise to do so), but that’s what you said.
Okay, but that doesn’t answer my question. Exactly how do you propose that this will “avoid so much unnecessary bullshit” in airport security screening? Specifically what “bullshit” will it eliminate?
Only in one direction, though. That is, as I noted, being an Islamist terrorist is indeed a very strong indicator for being a Muslim, but being a Muslim is only an extremely weak (in fact, statistically nonexistent) indicator for being a terrorist.
So if you were trying to screen passengers for Muslim-ness, it would be very smart to profile them based in part on their records of Islamist terror activities. You find somebody on your passenger list who’s a documented al-Qaeda cell member, and yepper, I’ll bet you anything you care to name that you’ve found yourself a Muslim!
However, if you’re trying to screen passengers for Islamist terror activities, it’s futile to the point of stupidity to try to use the reverse correlation, because no statistically significant correlation in that direction exists. If I find somebody on my passenger list who’s a documented Muslim, how much are you willing to bet me that I’ve found myself a terrorist?
Go right ahead and name as large a sum as you want, I’m very happy to take that bet.
If I were a terrorist, there’s nothing that says I have to behave honestly.
For example, the whole point behind having a terrorist plot is for it to succeed, yeah? So why try fit only a specific pattern we all know the security will be looking for? If I saw that Arab-looking men of a certain age were getting screened a lot more, I might try to smuggle a bomb in the underwear of a ‘normal’-looking black man. Which has happened.
If I saw that men of a certain age were getting screened a lot more, I might try to have my bomber be a woman. Which is what has happened, several times.
If I saw that people of a certain age were getting screened a lot more, I might try to have my bomber be an old woman. Which has happened.
It’s a similar idea to drug smuggling, after all. In Steal This Book, Abbie Hoffman advocated dressing up like clergy when travelling because they supposedly were subject to lesser scrutiny with security. If I was a drug smuggler, you think for a second I wouldn’t take advantage of this proposed new Bullshit Free™ security screening? Fuck yeah, cheap cocaine for all!
I don’t know how much of this thread you’ve read, but in this particular thread there’s been several examples listed of non-Muslim acts of violence. In fact, I’d take a shot in the dark and guess that’s that that discussion goes as far back as the OP.
Typical. I point out some of the obvious weaknesses in your idea, and all you can do is use “LOL” like it is an argument. That’s your common response to an argument you can’t answer; an emoticon and empty mockery, instead of argument. It seems to be a favorite among people trying to defend right wing positions on this board, in fact.
Even a bad argument would be better.
But that’s exactly what you said should be done; ignore all non-Muslim males.
Except for Stephen King in “The Running Man” where the protagonist hijacks a plane (and with his entrails falling out) flies it into a network TV building (while giving the bird to the guy he was aiming at) and Tom Clancy sometime in the mid nineties (I forget which book - maybe Debt of Honour?) where a Japanese pilot flies a 747 into seat of government killing the president and most senior members of senate etc just before jack Ryan got sworn in as VP, making him president on the spot.
How many millions of people read these two books?
Except that by your definition being a Muslem is basically insignificant in the profile, unless and until linked to other factors like
- Donating money to terror linked organisations
- Cutting ties with family
- taking part in other violent anti American / anti govt activities
etc etc
The very same indicator (attending “terror” mosque) would be used for ANY person attending any such fringe church, whether it be a Mosque, Christain, Temple or whatever. In that sense religion by itself becomes meaningless.
And to be clear, if the “profiling” is based on comprehensive information, I wouldn’t have a problem (aside from the obviously problematic idea of where the infor comes from in the first place)
However “profiling” as it was used in the OP refers to a casual observation of only one meaningless factor, which most people have a problem with.
Fantome, excellent post, good for you.
To the others pointing out plenty of other crimes are done by others, I think you are missing his point. That is that the kind of crime a moslem is likely to do is the kind that airport total search could find, where most of the other terror is not. No way to have checked Mcvey in Oklahoma and all that. In other words a profile search at an airport of this group makes sense because they are who are making the trouble there.
I don’t think the OP meant that all crime would stop everywhere else. He is trying to stop a waste of time searching people they know darn well are not going to be bringing explosives so that the air system will run much better than if all people are searched totally. That would also mean even a moslem would get to his destination sooner as well as you, so everyone benefits.
Okay, so 100 people want to get on a plan. 10 are Muslim, or dark skinned, or dress in some fashion that makes Charlie at screening think that they might be Muslim. Of these, 6 are male, and 3 are between 18 and 40. These three guys go for a full body search and interrogation regarding their madrassa attendance. What do we do with the other 7 people? Do they get no search? Do their shoes stay on? How about the 90 people who don’t look Muslim-ish? Do they get to get straight on the plane? Or do they continue to have to take their shoes off and carry tiny weenie toothpaste tubes? Or do they go through the same screening as they already have, and then get to sit on the plane waiting for the 3 guys?
And don’t you think the bad guys will find some older, female or european-y people the day after the new rules kick in?
Yes they could use older people or women, the thing to look for is moslem, I do agree just saying the men and a certain age is too narrow. But you have to notice so far they have not gotten non moslems to do a bombing here, and there are lots of easier places to use them like crowded nightclubs and such.
But since they claim to own their women as slaves, yes indeed they may rig them with explosive, it has been done that way overseas already. It is still actually the males in that age that are really doing it, but yes you need to search all moslems because some control others as property. That always made me wonder why so many liberals seem to stand up for them and their rights, they are actually against almost everything liberals believe in.
That’s what they’ve done in the past. Link. Women are popular suicide bombers because they tend to raise much less suspicion.
The problem with a lot of these supposed simple and easy security proposals is they’re usually based on a flawed premise. We have enough data to prove most of these proposals ineffective.
“Muslim-looking” man too obvious? Shave the beard, slick back the hair, put on a leather jacket and blue jeans. Or a track suit. Now nobody will suspect you’re about to blow up a café!
Now security/military forces are on the look-out for military-aged males? Use a woman! One case
In Chechnya (where many of the people are white), The New York Times has this infographic on female suicide bombers. Most of those look like regular Caucasian women, and could pass security screening in the US.
Grandma? Oh no!
What about security personnel? Surely you can trust them, right? Nope. Turns out in Iraq insurgent groups were buying/steal police uniforms and then going on killing sprees. Link.
There’s a pattern here. The pattern is, Terrorists will try whatever evades suspicion. Focusing on one particular thing does not work.
Non-Muslims have done plenty of bombings in the US. In fact, that’s what this thread was initially about. You’ll see a small list upthread about that. Not to make the non-Americans feel left out, but this thread has yet to mention the IRA and the Red Army Faction, Carlos the Jackal, Tamil Tigers, Loyalist Volunteer Force, Shining Path, FARC, (arguably) KKK, Loyalist Volunteer Force, Basque Homeland and Freedom, Kach, and so on. None of these were Arab or Muslim.
Who? Not the ones who live in this country.
Where did you get your degrees in Terrorism and Islamic Studies? Did you go to school for it, or did you have to send in cereal box tops?
Because I believe it’s an important part of winning this war. Osama bin Laden has popularized a narrative of the West on a crusade against Islam, and they, Al Qaeda, are the true heroes of that jihad. If we feed that narrative, by going to war against all these Muslim countries, Abu Ghraib, by going apeshit when a guy can’t even set his underwear on fire on a plane, by treating American citizens like they aren’t Americans, then I believe that only creates more terrorists.
And perhaps even more importantly, it hampers our efforts to find and thwart the terrorists we’ve already got. Fuck all this noise about identifying every single Muslim individual in the US; what we really (and desperately) need to do is increase our knowledge of the comparatively few Muslim groups and individuals that are actually dangerous to us.
That means having sympathetic informants, effective undercover agents, reliable inside information, and all the other vital factors in intelligence gathering that you can’t get unless there are people in and near the trouble areas who are willing to trust you and work with you.
If the average law-abiding American Muslim ends up fearing and mistrusting the US government more than they fear and mistrust violent Islamist extremists, our security efforts are largely screwed. And treating American Muslims in general as a class of uniquely suspect potential enemies, even the vast majority of them who’ve never committed or condoned terrorist acts in any way, only exacerbates fear and mistrust.
Not to mention an English guy of mixed English and Jamaican heritage.
Being a devil’s avocate, though, mswas did not say “Arab” he said “Muslim”. Which both the shoe bomber and pants bomber were, despite their not fitting the mold that profiling advocates promote. And he said you can tell them by their attendance at mosques and what they wear*. Which is obviously bunk.
So in order to do this “profiling”, mosque attendance must be noted to determine religious affiliation (which mosque, which imam/s, what religio-political stance the mosque takes) - which is intel, not profiling, and I’m sure happens already.
*Thankfully none of the 9/11 hijackers shaved their beards off and adopted casual western clothing, which is why they were all caught before they could do any harm.