<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by LarryJ:
Isn't that exactly what CAPPS is trying to do? Focus more attention on those who are more likely to be a threat and less on those who are not?
You aren't suggesting that they should go soley on outward appearance (age, sex and arab appearance) are you?</font>
Of course not. That would be wrong. Even though our current enemies are generally understood to be young, male, militant muslim fanatics. Spare me the Tim McVeigh and Unabomber references - since our current scheme doesn't do anything to locate these guys anyway (as long as they're sharp and pointy object free, of course).
What I'm suggesting is that we start with US citizenship as a natural selector - and subject those unable or unwilling to provide proof of it to greater scrutiny than our current system provides.
Why citizenship as a proxy for "not-likely-to-be-a-terrorist-threat"?
For the same reason that plenty of people demanded that the TSA checkpoint personnel be US citizens - most people equate citizenship with some level of trustworthiness.
And the additional scrutiny applied to aliens wouldn't simply involve extra-intensive searches looking for
stuff, it would involve sophisticated questioning much like that employed by Israel's airport security system.
But I'm sure Mineta and his protege Adm Loy would find fault with this sensible solution.