# Profiling: Not 100% avoidable, and also subject to different race/gender standard **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 31, 2016, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693 "2016-03-31T04:33:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [April 4, 2016, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/61 "2016-04-04T19:33:34Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Then you are, again, creating a definition to match your argument rather than using the definition that is common to the language. Racial profiling, sexual profiling, ethnic profiling, age profiling, etc. are all types of profiling based on appearance, but profiling, without an adjective, can be based on behavior or other criteria. So are we wrong to be suspicious of young men, who commit the vast majority of crimes and terrorist acts? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/62 "2016-04-05T04:04:13Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > So are we wrong to be suspicious of young men, who commit the vast majority of crimes and terrorist acts? You can be suspicious of whomever you choose to be afraid. However, it is not rational to have governments express your suspicions by treating every male between the ages of 18 and 30 as criminals. I am not even sure what you thought your question meant. Focusing on “young men,” of course, would simply encourage bad people to invest more energy in recruiting, training, or duping people such as Colleen LaRose, Jamie Pauin-Ramirez, or Anne-Marie Murphy. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/63 "2016-04-05T04:16:00Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Can you show your work? I count 19 bombings: 2 unsolved, 1 by Cuban exiles, 1 by the Fifteen of September Legion (anti-Sandinista group), 1 by Sikh separatists, 1 by North Korea, 1 by Pablo Escobar’s cartel, 1 by the Chinese individual, \*\*1 by a Yemeni prince to kill his father, 4 by Palestinians, 2 by Libyans, 1 by Hezbollah, 1 by Al-Qaeda, 1 by Chechens, and 1 by ISIS. \*\* 11 out of 19 is still a high proportion. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/64 "2016-04-05T04:43:51Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > 11 out of 19 is still a high proportion. The point is, though, that the proportion of **all the world’s Muslims** who are involved in any way with such acts is **really small**. So special profiling for all Muslim passengers just because they’re Muslim does not increase to any statistically significant extent the chances of catching a terrorist. Here’s a less emotionally loaded analogy: A hugely disproportionate percentage of Nobel laureates are Jewish. But only an incredibly tiny percentage of the world’s Jews are Nobel laureates. **So if you want to find a Nobel laureate, asking all the Jewish or “Jewish-looking” people you meet if they’ve won a Nobel Prize is an appallingly inefficient strategy.** You’re much better off targeting characteristics that tend to be **specific** to Nobel laureates: e.g., having a doctorate in a Nobel field, being a member of a high-powered academic research department, etc. Similarly, **if you want to catch a terrorist, and you know that a disproportionately high percentage of terrorists are Muslim but only a tiny percentage of all Muslims are terrorists, then profiling _all_ Muslims or people you think might be Muslims is not an efficient way of spotting terrorists.** You should concentrate instead on looking for characteristics that are more **specific** to terrorists, such as membership in extremist organizations (radical mosques, white nationalist groups, etc.), [following a typical schedule of preparatory actions](http://www.nij.gov/journals/260/pages/terrorist-behavior.aspx), and so on. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/65 "2016-04-05T13:15:31Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > 11 out of 19 is still a high proportion. The Middle East is a violent place, for various reasons. Did you know that more Muslims live outside the Middle East than in it? India and Pakistan alone have more Muslims than the entire Middle East and North Africa. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/66 "2016-04-05T17:13:36Z")
Oh, missed this one. > [@DrDeth](#): > > So then, you \*are \*screening everyone. Sure, but not to the level of profile-based “special screening”, much less the universal individual interrogations practiced by the Israeli security agencies you mentioned. Isn’t that what we were talking about? Namely, which passengers (if any) should be subjected to individual questioning **over and above** routine universal surveillance, and why? ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/67 "2016-04-05T17:21:46Z")
[QUOTE=Kimstu;19235034You should concentrate instead on looking for characteristics that are more **specific** to terrorists, such as membership in extremist organizations (radical mosques, white nationalist groups, etc.), [following a typical schedule of preparatory actions] ([Archived | A Look at Terrorist Behavior: How They Prepare, Where They Strike | National Institute of Justice](http://www.nij.gov/journals/260/pages/terrorist-behavior.aspx)), and so on. [/QUOTE] Which is often secret and not all are such members. See, following your theories, we’d let thru most terrorists, just in order to not be “profiling”. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/68 "2016-04-05T17:28:01Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > See, following your theories, we’d let thru most terrorists, just in order to not be “profiling”. While following **your** theories, we’d **also** let through about the same amount of terrorists (since it’s unlikely that most terrorists adroit enough to evade detection by routine screening would be detected by individual scrutiny on the level of an airport interview), while additionally **wasting boatloads of resources on useless heightened scrutiny of the overwhelming majority of Muslims who have nothing to do with terrorist activities at all**. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/69 "2016-04-05T17:30:08Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > While following **your** theories, we’d **also** let through about the same amount of terrorists (since it’s unlikely that most terrorists adroit enough to evade detection by routine screening would be detected by individual scrutiny on the level of an airport interview), while additionally **wasting boatloads of resources on useless heightened scrutiny of the overwhelming majority of Muslims who have nothing to do with terrorist activities at all**. El Al has not had a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/70 "2016-04-05T17:44:22Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > El Al has not had a problem. El Al, as we’ve clarified several times already, **applies a heightened level of individual scrutiny to _all_ its passengers, as opposed to profiling a subset of them for heightened scrutiny based on broad categories like race or religion**. And yes, that costs them a bunch of extra money spent on security staff and resources. If you want to propose how such methods could be universally implemented for a global air travel industry far larger than Israel’s without being prohibitively expensive and inefficient, I’m sure airline executives all over the world would be interested in hearing it. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/71 "2016-04-05T17:47:02Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > El Al, as we’ve clarified several times already, **applies a heightened level of individual scrutiny to _all_ its passengers, as opposed to profiling a subset of them for heightened scrutiny based on broad categories like race or religion**. > > And yes, that costs them a bunch of extra money spent on security staff and resources. If you want to propose how such methods could be universally implemented for a global air travel industry far larger than Israel’s without being prohibitively expensive and inefficient, I’m sure airline executives all over the world would be interested in hearing it. Which is what I’d prefer. and it’s cheaper than the TSA. Absent that, instead of searching and interviewing everyone, I’d profile. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/72 "2016-04-05T17:57:31Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > Can you show your work? I count 19 bombings: 2 unsolved, 1 by Cuban exiles, 1 by the Fifteen of September Legion (anti-Sandinista group), 1 by Sikh separatists, 1 by North Korea, 1 by Pablo Escobar’s cartel, 1 by the Chinese individual, 1 by a Yemeni prince to kill his father, 4 by Palestinians, 2 by Libyans, 1 by Hezbollah, 1 by Al-Qaeda, 1 by Chechens, and 1 by ISIS. > > You could construct some kind of argument about Middle Easterners, or Palestinians/Libyans/Iranians\*, then we could have that discussion, but Muslims generally? A random Malaysian or American Muslim should get singled out because of terrorism by Palestinians? > > \*Edit: Better still, “people from areas with a civil war being fought”, as that accounts for a ton of the bombings. I am counting the attempted bombings as well. The two you referred to as unsolved were committed by Muslims groups, the Lebanese rebels and the Cypriot rebels. I say Muslim because some of the recent bombers like the shoe bomber who was a British national and the underwear bomber who was a Nigerian. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/73 "2016-04-05T19:07:31Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > I am counting the attempted bombings as well. Those aren’t “bombings”, though. Nor can we assume that all attempted bombings are equally reported worldwide. Successful bombings are indisputable, by contrast. > [@puddleglum](#): > > The two you referred to as unsolved were committed by Muslims groups, the Lebanese rebels and the Cypriot rebels. The wiki articles your list links to describe them as unsolved. > [@puddleglum](#): > > I say Muslim because some of the recent bombers like the shoe bomber who was a British national and the underwear bomber who was a Nigerian. So what we have is one or two nationals each from a variety of countries (Nicaragua, China, Colombia, etc), then a big chunk from the Middle East. And you think you can get a meaningful profile out of that, and that it will somehow do more good than harm? ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/74 "2016-04-05T20:15:36Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > So what we have is one or two nationals each from a variety of countries (Nicaragua, China, Colombia, etc), then a big chunk from the Middle East. And you think you can get a meaningful profile out of that, and that it will somehow do more good than harm? Yes, if 50-80% of airline bombers have a characteristic then it makes sense to profile on that characteristic. Especially if that characteristic is shared by a small slice of the public. Makes alot more sense then trying to look for nervous people. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2016, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/75 "2016-04-05T20:56:02Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > Yes, if 50-80% of airline bombers have a characteristic then it makes sense to profile on that characteristic. So tell me how this works, precisely. > [@puddleglum](#): > > Especially if that characteristic is shared by a small slice of the public. Islam is the second-largest religion in the world, with 1.6 billion adherents. It is not a small slice of the public. > [@puddleglum](#): > > Makes alot more sense then trying to look for nervous people. No, it makes more sense to focus on things tangibly related to terrorism. E.g., Sikh, Muslim, Chinese, and anti-Sandinista bombers might all appear nervous while putting their plan into action. Only Muslim ones are Muslim. And again, we’ve seen the poor results of profiling programs, like the NYPD’s. Have you ever glanced at the stats on that one? ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2016, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/76 "2016-04-06T16:46:42Z")
> [@Human\_Action](#): > > So tell me how this works, precisely. > > Islam is the second-largest religion in the world, with 1.6 billion adherents. It is not a small slice of the public. > > No, it makes more sense to focus on things tangibly related to terrorism. E.g., Sikh, Muslim, Chinese, and anti-Sandinista bombers might all appear nervous while putting their plan into action. Only Muslim ones are Muslim. And again, we’ve seen the poor results of profiling programs, like the NYPD’s. Have you ever glanced at the stats on that one? The way it works is when guards or ticket agents see a passenger that meets certain criteria such as young, male, and muslim they get flagged for an extra pat down or a talking to, or their bags get x-rayed. Islam is a very tiny portion of this country’s citizens, and a very small portion of the passengers on US airlines. What Air Saudi Arabia does is no concern of the TSA. I am familiar with the fact that homicides in New York went down 82% after the NYPD adopted tactics such as profiling. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2016, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/77 "2016-04-06T17:22:49Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The way it works is when guards or ticket agents see a passenger that meets certain criteria such as young, male, and muslim they get flagged for an extra pat down or a talking to, or their bags get x-rayed. 😕 What do you mean, “their bags get x-rayed” as a part of special screening? **Everybody** ’s bags get x-rayed by TSA procedures. [QUOTE=puddleglum] Islam is a very tiny portion of this country’s citizens, and a very small portion of the passengers on US airlines. [/QUOTE] See my above analogy about a Nobel Prize laureates being Jewish. Jews are a very tiny portion of this country’s citizens too, but that doesn’t mean that if you’re trying to find a Nobel laureate on a plane you should ask every Jewish passenger if they’ve won a Nobel Prize. [Research article on why screening passengers for superficial characteristics such as race or religion is useless from a security standpoint:](http://arstechnica.com/science/2009/02/study-racial-profiling-no-more-effective-than-random-screen/) > [@](#): > > Study: racial profiling no more effective than random screen > > […] [Bioinformatics researcher William] Press then examines the effect of what he terms a strong profiling strategy, one in which a limited set of screening resources is deployed solely based the risk probabilities identified through profiling. It turns out that this also works poorly as the population size goes up. “The reason that this strong profiling strategy is inefficient,” Press writes, “is that, on average, it keeps retesting the same innocent individuals who happen to have large pj [risk profile match] values.” Which in fact is exactly what happens to Muslim travelers in the US. As [this article](http://www.nbcnews.com/id/44334738/ns/us_news-9_11_ten_years_later/t/muslim-travelers-say-theyre-still-saddled-baggage/#.VwVFP4dU8zI) documents, innocent “Muslim-looking” travelers keep getting selected for special screening over and over, while the screening system gets no closer to identifying actual terrorists. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2016, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/78 "2016-04-06T17:45:49Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The way it works is when guards or ticket agents see a passenger that meets certain criteria such as young, male, and muslim they get flagged for an extra pat down or a talking to, or their bags get x-rayed. In addition to the points raised by **Kimstu** …how do the guards and ticket agents tell who is Muslim? Are we issuing religious ID cards now, like Israel does? > [@puddleglum](#): > > Islam is a very tiny portion of this country’s citizens, and a very small portion of the passengers on US airlines. What Air Saudi Arabia does is no concern of the TSA. If I’m not mistaken, no Muslim American has ever bombed a plane. So why are you acting like they have, and constitute some kind of danger? > [@puddleglum](#): > > I am familiar with the fact that homicides in New York went down 82% after the NYPD adopted tactics such as profiling. The homicide rate went down everywhere. Are you familiar with the fact that, under stop and frisk, blacks and Hispanics stopped were less likely to have contraband than white people who were stopped? ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2016, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/79 "2016-04-06T18:31:19Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > Should we then say that conservatives just want to make sure those brown people know their place? > That statement, (with which I do not agree), makes as much sense as your threadshitting. > > Profiling on behavior makes sense. > Profiling on appearance makes no sense. > > Your appearance-based profiling would have done nothing to apprehend [Colleen LaRose](http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/i/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/140106-colleen-larose-jsw-935a.jpg) or [Jamie Paulin-Ramirez](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/03/09/article-1364520-0D8A4132000005DC-701_233x383.jpg) or [Michael C. Finton](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2009/09/28/us/springfieldman190.jpg) among others. No, but it may well have prevented 911. And surely that’s worth a few hurt feelings. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2016, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693/80 "2016-04-06T20:29:40Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > No, but it may well have prevented 911. :rolleyes: No, what might well have prevented 9/11 would have been the administration **paying attention to the warnings provided by intelligence agencies about _specific patterns of suspicious behavior associated with specific individuals_.** The idea that we ought to focus (or should have focused) our attention on clumsy, wasteful, **statistically useless** racial-profiling screening criteria _ **even when we had in hand clear evidence for suspicion of particular identified individuals** _ is the gleaming idiocy cherry on top of the stupidity sundae that the pro-profiling advocates have been laboriously constructing throughout this thread. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/profiling-not-100-avoidable-and-also-subject-to-different-race-gender-standard/750693.md?page=5)