Unreasonable Doubt
David Adesnik of Oxblog has a round-up on the pros and cons of profiling, featuring the arguments and counter-arguments of Colbert King (anti) and Charles Krauthammer, Paul Sperry and Haim Watzman (pro). These arguments don't all meet head on. Colbert inveighs against racial profiling. But Paul Sperry's argument isn't primarily based on race at all. He says we know from experience who the high risk groups are and would be fools not to use what we know. He takes pains to distinguish "young Muslim men of Arab or South Asian origin", who he suggests constitute a high risk group, from Muslim grannies, who he says don't. The sort of profiling Mr. Sperry suggests relies on several attributes, the principal one of which isn't race, but religion. But since religion is a nonphysical attribute, the secondary but visible characteristics of ethnic origin and age are likely to predominate in actual application. King's raises the objection of the false positive, pointing out that racial descriptions would cover a homeland security officer he knows and people like his own son. And what, he asks, is the sense of that?
It appears to matter not to Sperry that his description also includes huge numbers of men of color, including my younger son, a brown-skinned occasional New York subway rider who shaves his head and moustache. He also happens to be a former federal prosecutor and until a few years ago was a homeland security official in Washington. Sperry's profile also ensnares my older brown-skinned son, who wears a very short haircut, may wear cologne at times, and has the complexion of many men I have seen in Africa and the Middle East. He happens to be a television executive.
The justification for profiling derives from statistics. Insurance companies use it to set your premiums. Customs inspectors use it to identify drug mules. A geologist who is looking for oil sinks his drill near certain structures. The enemy uses profiling all the time, the false positives be damned. Robert Fisk was beaten by Afghans on the mistaken assumption that he was a Westerner. BBC correspondent Frank Gardner was shot by Islamists in Riyadh even as he cried "I’m a Muslim, help me, I’m a Muslim, help me".
Even using his geological profile, the prospector will drill many a dry hole, analogous to pulling over a King's federal prosecutor or television executive son. Yet that does not alter the fact that he is well advised to play the likelihoods or go broke. Rejecting profiling in principle is tantamount to throwing away information. The argument against any sort of profiling, especially racial profiling, cannot be based on the false positive. It must instead rely on the assertion that it costs will offset its benefits. The potential public relations disaster of profiling people like Lieutenant Neil Prakash, for example, who won the Silver Star in Iraq, must be set against whatever benefits the policy would yield. On a net benefit basis, racial profiling may very well be a bad move.
It is also a frank admission of the want of a better tool. I've often argued that mass categorizations are what is left after we've denied ourselves the means to precisely target perpetrators protected by political correctness. You screen everybody who comes out of the Finsbury Park mosque when you cannot deport its notorious imam. A policy which forswears fighting terrorism abroad will imply you are going to screen everyone who arrives at the border. If nobody wants to find Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan they will sooner or later do house to house searches in Leicester. The inability of the "moderate" Islamic community to discourage terrorists in their midst may mean you can't separate the sheep from the goats and one day everyone of certain persuasion will be presumed to be goat. Political correctness is the process of shutting our eyes; profiling is the groping that we do afterwards.
79 Comments:
Profiling is used if not intentionally, then subconsciously. If the current profile is a middle eastern male then in the future, it will be who ever the Jihadists can ideologically turn or otherwise coerce. Intelligence will at times indicate a particular threat and such knowledge must be acted on, meanwhile, helpful statistics must be observed.
It is clear that US intelligence cannot simply infiltrate the clans of our enemies, why let them move amongst us without the slightest scrutiny?
Cops tend to spend their time policing where crime often occurs. TO do otherwise would be crazy or cowardly. If one lives in a crime-ridden neighborhood, one should expect and want to help the police, though some may have reason to fear the consequences. Likewise, those of a certain complexion and age who feel they have been profiled should consider it their duty and to their benefit (as to us all) to act in good spirits when a cop asks something of them. It's a way of building trust and showing committment to democracy.
The idea that we should all be looked at the same way when it comes to policing is simply absurd. Anyone who is not deluded by resentment or their own criminality will recognize this and act in good faith. In the English-speaking countries we have no great reasons to fear a police state; what we have to fear if we do not respect the profession of policing by turning them into PC know nothings is the return to a violent and distrusting world where we need continually police each other.
yahoo,
See my latest. The funny thing is how the decline in American deaths in previous weeks has been spun as bad news, because it is an indicator of an Iraqi civil war.
The 21 Marines who died recently perished in a fairly large operation along the entire Euphrates River line the outlines of which are not entirely clear.
Since you don't like my worthless spin, don't waste your time reading it.
Verc, no doubt there is something in what you say. In my Canadian city, I still think I see the police more frequently in urban areas where there is a lot of property and drug crime than I see them in quiet residential areas. Perhaps we retain a touch of sanity. But in other cities in this country the charge of racist profiling has been raised and no doubt scared cops away from certain scenes, for better and worse. But my point is more hypothetical than anything: cops should be spending their time where crimes occur, and we should support them when that's dangerous, and they should not have to fear any rap for profiling in many circumstances. If they have a reason to search people, they should be profiling. No doubt the applicability of mass profiling will be limited since we can rarely justify the resources or hardships involved in trying to secure all arenas of daily urban life.
One reasonable argument against profiling is that the terrorists will adapt and use people who won't fit the profile. But I don't think we're yet at the point where this is a realistic argument. THeir human resources are limited too.
In any case it is the assumption that we can't trust the police and that we can't be or don't want to be transparent to them that angers me. The sentiments of a guy who is never hassled? Perhaps, but I don't see how those who suffer police brutality or stupidity are better off not trying to build trust with their police force regardless. We are either policed by professional police or by the local gang. If the cops tend towards the latter, then, at least in theory, encourage them to be sane professionals. Getting all self righteous or going to war with the cops is never going to be very productive unless your interest is that of the gang. The solution to the horror stories we sometimes hear regarding police profiling ("driving while black") is for everyone pulled over to see it as their duty to be transparent and co-operative; even when the cop is an a-hole you give him the benefit of the doubt except for extreme behaviour. Without such pride in our own patience and doing the right thing when the other guy is too undisciplined to reciprocate - the correct form of righteousness is more to act as if the world is what it must become if we are to survive and less to decry that it is not yet that - we all become an easier target for terrorists. But it takes a lot of moral discipline to live like that. SO let's build it.
I think that perhaps people are equating racial profiling with more broad-based forms of "discrimmination."
Singling people out for special scrutiny does not immediately equate to denial of access to public services, separate drinking fountains, lack of equality in hiring practices or loans, refusals of service in private businesses, lynch mobs, etc.
This is complicated by the fact that many in government use "if - then" as a pattern of thought that substitutes for reasoned analysis, resulting in absurdities such as government demands for handicapted access for performers in strip bars.
People not only react as if profiling equates to the full imposition of Jim Crow, they also know how government "thinks" and what they could lead to.
If I were a muslim terrorist, I would have my wife insert C-4 in her vagina wrapped in plastic. If caught, she could plead that her husband made her do it. A few women mules and you have enough for one good homicide bomber in shopping mall in the D.C. area. It's the message that counts at this time, not the destruction. Ya' gotta' love any Constitution that protects the forces seeking its very destruction! It's just too darn bad that we somehow believe that by suspending a rule, we can never again reistate it. Bring it on, eh folks? I'm sure the threat of American Jurisprudence has them all quaking in their boots.
The reason that 'Profiling' is frowned on is our Fourth Amendment. It, under current interpretation, forbids random searches without specific probable cause. Our freedom from random searches is but one reason for the Conflict. We will not improve Security with these searches.
In the first wave of attacks the Opfor used airplanes. In the second wave they have targeted commuter trains.
What is the next target going to be?
desert rat,
"In the first wave of attacks the Opfor used airplanes. In the second wave they have targeted commuter trains."
You don't mean to imply the enemy is actually opererating to a conscious plan? (Irony alert) Seriously, you've come up with a tremendous insight. They have themes. I don't think anyone has ever noticed before.
It is true that an advantage once denied will be replaced by a new modus operandi, but denial of capability is still useful. It thwarts some plans in mid step and forces a realignment of enemy means and methods towards new spheres of operational cover and new targets. If nothing else this is disruptive to ongoing operations of the opposing forces and keeps them dependent on evolving their tactics. This requires even more command and control from upper echelons or a previously written rule book. Plans rarely survive contact with the enemy and it at these times that mistakes can be made. The trick of law enforcement is to meet the enemy head on at the next cross road by anticipating their next move. This is why SIGINT may still play a huge part in tracking the desperados domestically.
Worrying how politically correct we are in protecting ourselves just illustrates the lack of urgency in this country. The trivialities will disappear when the situation becomes dire (unfortunately, that means another attack).
Also, I do not think for a minute that our screeners abstain from profiling. It seems that the discussion is over public policy, not individual practice. It's not apparent to me that we should trumpet a posture, or concern ourselves with a public debate, that manifests itself inevitably on the ground. Old ladies may be taken aside, but no suspicious men will go through unmolested. Our resources at the point of entry are not that scarce; everybody must file through the same gate.
Whether we publically commit to the policy or not, our guys on the ground are actively profiling.
Intel, infiltration and forward defense.
To try to defend US at the inner most layer is eye wash. There are to many targets of opportunity to even begin to list.
How many lives would be lost if the Staten Island ferry was sunk by a car bomb. Must we search every car? There are so many targets that none can be adequately defended, against the general threat levels.
The increased Security at selected locations just adds to the sense of unease in the society.
Increased fear and anxiety amongst the General Population, caused by increased presence and use of Security Forces.
See: Terror & Revolution 101
Just the size of the New York Subway System makes the passenger access checkpoints problematic
New York Subway System
How are the Governments assets best allocated to defend the people?
'Rat: At our border
And why just New York?
Light rail systems, Commuter trains and Buses are prevailent in many an American City.
Should all BART riders be subject to profiled search?
How about Pedestrians in Times Square? There could be a bomb in that backback.
General Fear vs. Probable Cause
The course dictated by the Oath to defend the Constitution is clear.
Don't burn a village to save it
Aristides,
At the source of the people we would be trying to catch at our border. i.e. the Middle East.
I'd agree about the Border.
That is where the Federals have a DUTY that has been abdicated.
exhelo is also correct. As W posted earlier we need a layered defense. The further the layer is from US the better.
The critics against racial profiling remind me of the same willful idiots that claim torture doesn't work. We're supposed to ignore thousands of years of recorded history and pretend us Westerners are somehow so superior we figured it all out. Acknowledging the ethnicities and religion of the majority of our attackers and planning accordingly is a no brainer.
exhelo: agreed, see 'Rat's post supra.
I don't see us having a huge problem with the home-growns, so that leaves infiltration at the border.
We need to close it down. Legal immigration can be augmented and facilitated, but an open border is an open target.
I can't find it anywhere, but I read that Al'Jazeera is putting together a documentary on the porousness of the southern border. A thinly disguised how-to video, for all those unemployed young men just itchin' to kill them some Americans.
Johnny "Taliban" Walker does not fit the profile. Jose Pedilla does not fit the profile.
Mohammedans are multi ethnic.
If the threat is real, then really search. 100%, every backpack, every briefcase, every package.
To do less would be a crime
Desert rat,
A certain amount of the manpower/funding should go into random checks, and a certain amount into chokepoint checks (i.e. making all airport passengers go through metal detectors) but by far the best use of manpower/funding would be to profile the groups that the terrorists come from. And that should not just be racial/appearance profiling. It should be a combination or racial/religious/point-of-origin/length of time in the U.S. profiling.
exhelo
Again we are in agreement.
There is a need to identify the schools of fish that the terrorist will be swimming in. This is Intel work.
The 'stop and pops' are serving no useful, antiterrorism, function. Other than furthering the agitated feelings of fear amongst the populace
"Robert Fisk was beaten by Afghans on the mistaken assumption that he was a Westerner"
love it!
I think we are getting kerfuffled over nothing. Profiling will happen on the individual level, whatever our public stance.
As V' pointed out, as long as it is not illegal, it is legal, and profiling will continue despite the complaints from the ACLU.
Pulling grandma over for a strip search is fodder for the courtroom, not actual policy. Doesn't hurt (unless you're grandma), doesn't help.
One of the people arrested for the most recent London bombing attempts reportedly has said that the bombs were only meant to scare, not kill anyone.
And that he did it because "muslim women were being harassed."
It is interesting to contemplate what would constitute "harassment" for a culture that kills women for being raped and has been known to force girls back into a burning building because they had not properly clothed themselves before exiting - but it is fairly clear that any profiling will be used as an example of "harassment" and thus used as a justification for more bombings.
Islamic facists:
Can't live with them.
Can live without them.
Profiling is what police did long before PC.
PC has shut down our eyes, our minds, and our balls.
It has also allowed cover for those with interests, from crime to business, to terror, to hide behind it's promise of sweetness and light.
9-11 was brought to us not by our inability to keep all important terrorists abroad at bay or dead (which is also impossible) but,
By CAIR,
Lawyers /Govt/ACLU/Airline, and etc.
and ultimately,
corruption in the Clinton Admin, dutifully carried on by compassionate George and his anti profiling, suicidal Nazi Normie Minetta.
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Here's how it happened:
Algore was tasked with putting together a computerized threat/profiling analysis system.
CAIR, et al objected, since it came up with too many of you know who.
Algore's team went out of their way to eliminate factors that looked like they were based on race, religion, and etc. and tried again:
Guess why it is still considered racist/anti Islam?
Still too many hits on you know who for CAIR with it's SAUDI DOLLARS for the interested groups to give it's all important ok.
9-11 PREDICTABLY, and therefore unnecessarily, followed as the very folks that Algore's original system would have caught were let by.
(even with human suspicion in operation, ...overruled by fear of legal action.)
Thank you very much, it was quite a show, wasn't it?
Bring on 9-11 version 3 please, so we can demonstrate our suicidal tendencies once more.
(Meanwhile FRANCE gets down to business before this once great nation will.)
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'Rat's great "argument" implies you cannot use a profiling system and human thought/intelligence at the same time.
Should expect that conclusion from a 'Rat, esp of the Arizona Desert Variety.
Cutler nails the simple truth, all high falutin suicidal arguments to the contrary.
Grow a pair, Belmont Club!
The women and children are at risk!
Trangbang,
The Chinese may be great, but NOBODY has
"played our system like a banjo"
like our dear public relations/legal masterminds at CAIR.
(and of course the SAUDI Bucks don't hurt.)
Jed Babbin, sitting in for Hewitt today did an hour on profiling.
Over and over he had to correct callers when they acted like ALL profiling is RACIAL profiling.
Which is true if your main aim is to be able to self-righteously put down another as a racist.
Very sick and so much like the New Left and their Commie forebears.
"one in 300 million of which could look like Timothy McVeigh with tits"
C4,
If you try to exclude that particular individual from your evil profile,
it is proof that you are a Racist, Sexist, Trangenderist monster.
(in addition to that other one that is your charge for admission to the Belmont Club.)
C4,
It is a slippery slope into the ETERNAL Nazi Dreamland that folks like 'Rat know lures us into our evil and dangerous conspiracy.
And I'll bet Lieutenant Neil Prakash would no more complain about being profiled than would I, if on traveling to Bali after 4 bombing incidents in a row done by old white guys, they asked me to remove something.
...they could only be impressed, right?
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And Neil's professional parents would probably also not complain, since they, unlike the pathetic drinkers of the PC Koolaid, are not LOSERS.
Ask the CHILDREN that the Federals BarB-Qued, in Waco Texas, about our evil and dangerous conspiracies that consists within groups of the Federals. Had to kill those ALL those kids, they may have been abused, you know. Then there was that mother the FBI sniper shot in the head, while holding her baby. All on Ms Reno's watch. All abuse of Federal Power.
Just cause you're paranoid does not mean they are not after you
"Robert Fisk was beaten by Afghans on the mistaken assumption that he was a Westerner"
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...if we use ANY common sense, we have become the enemy, there are no intermediate positions.
...in addition to being baby fryers, as 'Rat just brilliantly points out.
(so brilliant and blinding, one can avoid all reason to the contrary)
Just because you can type does not prove you are not a moron.
C4,
Maybe you could do one of your extensive research pieces on the Algore stuff I posted.
...that was just from memory of what I learned after 9-11 from links from our much less learned, but much more common sensical local posters.
C5 is correct and sees the revealed truth. There are way to many targets to defend in side the US.
There is no need to 'reform' a system that is not broken. All due to a fear of a threat that cannot be quanified or qualified. The costs of a never ending War against nameless and faceless enemies.
That is way to high a price to pay for your lack of nerve, doug.
Live Free of Die.
A lack of Balls is no excuse for giving up 100's of years of established police practice for PC Nonsense and feminized "reasoning."
Be Smart or Die.
Profile the million illegal migrants that vross our Southern Border each year. They all fill the skin color profile, they look Arab, kind of.
That would be an effective use of assets, guarding New York subway stations, because of an attack in London is nonsensical.
Identify the REAL THREAT and address it. If the threat to New York's mass transit system is so pressing, than EVERYONE should pass through metal detectors, if the threat level does not require that, it does not require "Bending the Rules" or the changing the current understanding of the Constitution.
The world is black and white:
We are either blind, evil Nazis,
or
Feminized Suicidal Morons,
Nothing else can exist.
Case Closed for Closed Minds.
If the bomber is in the terminal, doug, you've already been compromised, you've already LOST.
It is EYEWASH
"Current understanding of the LIVING BREATHING Constitution."
...ie, the Algore model, lately of the living breathing spaceship earth.
Yes, exactly:
Following algore's ORIGINAL computer instrucions, pulling over Atta's Boys would have been an excercise in futility.
...except for the 3,000 that perished.
And their families, and the rest of us.
...and we would be reduced to the same Nazi state as our parents and grandparents.
Oh, the inhumanity of it all!
(wets skirt)
It is what it is, doug.
As it lives and breathes.
Politics could swing the pendulum back to your greener grass past. Until then it is what it is, now.
Protect and defend from all enemies foreign and domestic.
If the Supremes are the Enemy we should all stay home
Yes, Congress and the President no longer exist.
Case Closed.
(again)
...I'm working on a profile here...
Algore's algorithms were not changed by the Constitution, they were changed by Saudi Dollars.
...but why learn from recent history, right?
They allowed Atta and his boys to board those planes carrying box cutting razor knives. They had been seached, they had been identified by the CIA. They were on the Watch List.
Stopping citizens and searching them on the streets will not improve anti terror operations.
Those activities may make you feel better, bringing back the 'Good Ole Days' and all. But it will not help defeat aQ
The Boston folks were intimidated by CAIR's and the ACLU's lawyers.
If that is enough for us to surrender to future terror at home, so be it.
Not my cup of tea, thanks.
You continually name call instead of addressing the fact that we have thrown away proven methods.
...and give high minded "reasons" to explain why selling out to the Saudis is a necessary thing.
Name Call? Not I.
We had the Fourth Amendment well before there ever was a Saudi Arabia. We will still have it well after they are dust in the wind, if we do not succumb to fear
It was all legal until the Saudi Funded lawyers convinced the squishy govt lawyers otherwise.
Case again (unecessarily) Closed.
I thought it was the ACLU, you know the legal arm of Jewish Zionism, per C4.
"I have no idea what Algore stuff you refer to."
C4,
My 7:24 post refers to it:
He was tasked with coming up with a computerized system.
(having invented the internet and so forth)
The history is on the net but hard to find, someday I'll get my hard drive to divulge the good stuff:
So far Google Search doesn't work on my old forum archives.
I am not afraid of giving offense, far from it. I am interested in success.
If it is a given that aQ operatives are going to strike in the US, then we must prioritize the possible targets and the projected losses from each.
A POSSIBLE satchel charge attack against a mass transit system in a American city does not validate scrapping the Fourth Amendment.
To give in to the Tyranny of Fear is to be Defeated.
Profile at a higher level, target the SYSTEM that would give sustenance to the Terrorists, not half assed inspections at a handful of high profile train stations.
Verc,
Some say,
"Let's argue Constitutional law instead of unwelcome recent historical facts, like the fact that nothing changed legally, but different decisions and rules were arrived at after proper "donations and accommodations" were made."
"To give in to the Tyranny of Fear is to be Defeated. "
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To give in to mindlessly misleading bromides is to degrade the argument.
Which of the Supremes took a payoff?
Which Government Officials have taken a payoff?
Who has sold out for cash?
Inquoring minds, and all that.
"Would direct racial profiling catch them all? Absolutely not."
anybuddee,
Well then you must surrender:
The keepers of the light on the other side of the argument demand perfection or surrender.
No real world cases are allowed to be submitted for consideration.
Rat,
The profile algorithms worked,
CAIR and the ACLU intervened,
the algorithms were changed,
They still caught too many of the "wrong" (high terror potential) people.
CAIR and ACLU demanded more,
CAIR paid.
We got what they paid for.
Secure the Border
Attack the support systems that could be in place in any number of American cities. Survail and wire tap to your hearts content.
Forward defense and Intel will win this thing, not searching every third 'darkie', 'wog' or 'Rag head' with a mustache and a back pack walking the streets of New York or San Fransico.
First Algore hit slightly ot:
Coulter is good, however.
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Last week, Bush's Department of Transportation required airport security to search former Vice President Al Gore.
There's a lot not to like about Al Gore, but he's not a terrorist. Gore said he was glad he was searched.
Why?
So that a potential terrorist could be spared the trouble?
Searching Al Gore is a purely religious act. It is the purposeless, fetishistic performance of rituals in accordance with the civic religion of liberalism.
It's not just Bush's Department of Transportation swearing fealty to the left's civic religion.
A few weeks ago, FBI Director Robert Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee that "immediately after Sept. 11" when the FBI was trying to stop "a second wave of terrorists out there," FBI policy was this:
"We were not looking for individuals of any particular religion or from any particular country."
Evidently, the only people the Bush administration thinks it appropriate to search are angry men with smoke pouring out of their trousers.
You keep writing that anyone who disagrees is a Nazi or a moron.
Poor Argument.
Relentlessly pursuing incipient thought crimes at the FBI, Feingold pronounced it "a distortion" to suggest that acting on the Phoenix memo would have constituted racial profiling.
The memo, he said, "contained specific information about specific individuals."
The specific information was this: A lot of Middle Eastern men were attending American flight schools. Excising the portion of that statement that liberals refuse to consider -- Middle Eastern men -- the only "specific information" is:
"People were attending flight schools."
These are the lunatics the Bush administration is hoping to propitiate by refusing to engage in racial profiling.
If an attack comes, I assure you: No one will be praising Bush for abiding by the rules of the cult and carefully searching Al Gore
I thought they were searching for ex National Security Advisors stealing Classified Documents from the Archives, stuffing Top Secret forms in their underwear. But what would I know.
Didn't they tell him it was a no smoking flight?
The Evils of "Traveling While Arab."
(a dec 2000 piece on my hard drive, I shall return.)
In 1996, a panel on air travel safety led by Vice President Al Gore recommended that a profiling system for screening air travelers be enforced. The following year, airports in the United States began using a computer profiling software program called Computer-Assisted Passenger Prescreening, or CAPS.
The searches are federally mandated and conducted by airlines, not by the airports.
The profiling criteria is based on information from law enforcement and intelligence agencies to identify suspicious travelers, Bergen said. I can’t tell you the specifics because that would tell terrorists how to defeat the system. But she did say the factors do not include race, ethnicity or religion.
Bergen said the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, in a 1997 report, stated that the CAPS program did not violate Americans’ civil rights. She added that any reports of misapplication of passenger screening are investigated.
But Mosley, the DOT spokesman, acknowledged the agency is concerned that, although race or ethnicity are not profiling criteria, certain groups may be stopped disproportionately because of discretion used by airline employees or other factors.
The Department of Justice studied the criteria. Now we’re collecting data to see if it works like it’s supposed to, Mosley said. If not, then we’ll do whatever corrective steps that need to be taken.
Some Arab-Americans in the Triangle say the problem is mostly at larger U.S. airports and report no bad experiences at RDU.
But Mosley, the DOT spokesman, acknowledged the agency is concerned that, although race or ethnicity are not profiling criteria, certain groups may be stopped disproportionately because of discretion used by airline employees or other factors.
The Department of Justice studied the criteria. Now we’re collecting data to see if it works like it’s supposed to, Mosley said. If not, then we’ll do whatever corrective steps that need to be taken.
Airline Security at Issue
FINAL REPORT TO PRESIDENT CLINTON
The link to the original report now comes up blank!
Fearless Bill:
"We know we can't make the world risk-free, but we can reduce the risks we face and we have to take the fight to the terrorists.
If we have the will, we can find the means."
President Clinton
The bombings of the World Trade Center in New York and the Federal Building in Oklahoma City are clear examples of the shift, as is the conviction of Ramzi Yousef for attempting to bomb twelve American airliners out of the sky over the Pacific Ocean.
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Although the threat of terrorism is increasing, the danger of an individual becoming a victim of a terrorist attack -- let alone an aircraft bombing -- will doubtless remain very small.
But terrorism isn't merely a matter of statistics.
We fear a plane crash far more than we fear something like a car accident. One might survive a car accident, but there's no chance in a plane at 30,000 feet.
This fear is one of the reasons that terrorists see airplanes as attractive targets.
And, they know that airlines are often seen as national symbols.
3.19. Complement technology with automated passenger profiling.
Recommendation from Initial Report dated September 9, 1996
Complement technology with automated passenger profiling. Profiling can leverage an investment in technology and trained people.
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Third, the Commission will establish an advisory board on civil liberties questions that arise from the development and use of profiling systems.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and Northwest Airlines are completing final programming changes to an automated profiling system.
A tentative completion date for programming changes and implementation of Computer Assisted Passenger Screening (CAPS) on Northwest flights is April, 1997.
Additional programming will begin for use of CAPS on other airline reservations systems, with a tentative completion date of August, 1997.
On January 17, 1997, a Civil Liberties Advisory Board met with Commissioners to discuss civil liberties concerns pertaining to profiling. The Board submitted recommendations to the Commission. (Appendix A)
. Based on readily-available information, passengers could be separated into a very large majority about whom we know enough to conclude that they present little or no risk, and a small minority about whom we do not know enough and who merit additional attention. The Customs Service uses this approach successfully to better focus its resources and attention. As a result, many legitimate travelers never see a customs agent anymore -- and drug busts are way up.
The Commission supports the development and implementation of manual and automated profiling systems, such as the one under development by the FAA and Northwest Airlines. The Commission strongly believes the civil liberties that are so fundamentally American should not, and need not, be compromised by a profiling system. Consistent with this viewpoint, the Commission sought the counsel of leading experts in the civil liberties field. Those experts provided a series of recommendations found in Appendix A. The Commission recommends the following safeguards:
No profile should contain or be based on material of a constitutionally suspect nature - e.g., race, religion, national origin of U.S. citizens. The Commission recommends that the elements of a profiling system be developed in consultation with the Department of Justice and other appropriate experts to ensure that selection is not impermissibly based on national origin, racial, ethnic, religious or gender characteristics.
So, they took out all "objectionable" (but as Verc points out, entirely rational) criteria, but the damned computer still said Mid Eastern Islamoids are risky.
Horrors.
The War on Police and how it harms the war on terror.
In 1996, Vice President Al Gore chaired a commission on aviation security to strengthen airline defenses against terrorism. When word leaked out that the
commission was considering a profiling system that would take into account an air passenger's national origin and ethnicity, among other factors, in assessing the security risk he posed, the anti-law enforcement, as well as the Arab, lobby went ballistic. The counsel for the ACLU fired off an op-ed to the Washington Post complaining that "profiles select people who fit the stereotype of a terrorist. They frequently discriminate on the basis of race, religion or national origin."
Now when the author invoked the terms "stereotype" and "discriminate," the reader was supposed to shriek in revulsion and march on the FAA in protest.
But can we turn off our exquisitely honed racism radar for a moment and consider the question of terrorist profiles with cold reason? The ACLU's counsel complains that "profiles select people who fit the stereotype of a terrorist." But a stereotype in this case is nothing more than a compilation of facts about who has attacked American interests in the past and who, given what we know about the networks that promote anti-American terrorism, is most likely to do so in the future. It is al Qaeda and its brethren that have defined themselves by religion and regional interest, not American law
enforcement.
Islamic anti-American terrorism is ipso facto perpetrated by Islamists to avenge American imperialism in the Middle East. If we concentrate our
investigation on Middle Eastern Muslims, we are not playing the odds, we are following the terrorists' own self-definition.
There is no such thing as a false positive involved in the process of ELIMINATING low risk folks from search.
(unless the Japanese grandmother has smoking fuses on her shoes, and etc. ...but that assumes people can simultaneously profile and think, a preposterous notion, I guess.)
Cedarford hatefully ranted:
Not Zionists - because the Zionist side is rather unconcerned with "Constitutional" rights of any minority in Israel.
Nice C4... quite incorrect as usual... are you wearing your white sheet as you type this crap?
Cedarford hatefully ranted: But liberal Jews lead the ACLU, have for 4 decades, and provide most of the legal muscle that hides behind a Gentile shill, plaintiff, or ACLU PR spokesperson. And their personal wealth and control over Foundations is the ACLU lifeblood. Jewish moneymen give 50% of the money the DNC runs on - why the Republicans covet that 2% of the population so much - the money if it leaves the Democrats would spell their end.
Maybe cause that 1.5% of the population actually has a soul? something i guess you dont believe as you think jews are not human and capable of having worth...
Cedarford hatefully ranted: Though many in the ACLU do support Zionism, as long as what the Israelis do to minorities never happens in America.
C4 your hitler mustache is showing... you are showing you have never been to israel..
minorities in israel serve on the supreme court, in the knesset, serve in the military, own property, vote, win beauty contests (miss israel is an arab), C4 please get that ex-lax, you are all clogged up...
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Profiling works. If you can deny jihadis 90% of their potential recruits, why wouldn't you? Sure you'll have exceptions that don't fit the profile exactly. But those are the exceptions.
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