Yeah, okay, cross out a few 9s.

The point is that identifying terrorists by which store they choose for groceries, their credit rating or their comments on Facebook is silly when the overwhelming majority of people world wide are not terrorists.

Thats exactly what its going to be eventually. Facial recognition cameras in businesses with data uploaded will ensure they know everywhere you have been, access to phone password (they already can), electronic purchase history, your employer, social media, and what will be next is applying associations. For example the electronic data of your brother or uncle shows he purchased 1000 bullets and a knife - you will be detained by TSA for questioning due to unreasonable and suspicious association purchase.

Some of this dates back at least as far as Napolitano's early days. IIRC, she wanted a points-based 'domestic extremism' index. More points, more scrutiny and/or restrictions. I suspect this idea is not dead and will likely be linked to a universally-required national ID if/when implemented.

IIRC, one of the suggestions that could get you 'points' (demerits) was ordering an airline special meal. Apparently that might include things like halal or even vegan meals. Unusual = suspicious, right?

Unsurprisingly, I do not recall any mention of easy, transparent ways for citizens to challenge false 'points' assigned to their record. Think how bad it is to correct a mistake on your credit record - now magnify that x100 and apply it to everything you do. :(

The apparent black mark US travellers are currently receiving for the crime of travelling to/through IST is an example of how similar information is already being used.

The GPS coordinates of your phone will apply points when in a muslim neighborhood or when in a freedom believing constitutional white neighborhood.

The trolling of social media thing came up a couple of years ago. Was it in reference to the TSA "excusing" itself from having to respect the Privacy Act?

ETA: http://www.fastcompany.com/3014732/f...ecurity-faster

Read up on Malcom's Gladewell's terrorism piece and data mining - might make you think different of these practices and their effectiveness.

Oh yes, data mining is extremely effective, I agree. The question is - at what point is it worth our every move being analysed?

But none of those recent terrorists went through an airport checkpoint, TSA or other, on the way to their terror attack.

In the past dozen years TSA has screened 700 million pax a year, or a total of 8 billion searches, which is more than the Earth’s population. Granted they did not search every individual person on Earth, and most of their customers are “repeat” customers. Many on this board have been screened hundreds if not thousands of times, and on their 1000th screening were found to be “Still NOT a terrorist.”

TSA has screened 8 billion passengers and found ZERO terrorists. What does that math tell you?

The first practical reason to turn off your cellphone when flying!

Please stop. RadioGirl is speaking of U.S. citizens not the world's entire population.

You're claiming no US Citizens are terrorists? Wow... umm, not the case. At all.

If 1% of the US population were terrorists, then there would be over 3,000,000 in this country. Do you believe there are 3 million terrorists living here?

What real privacy do you have in PreCheck when you underwent a background check and more to qualify and TSA wants to track your online activities and purchasing habits?

And why does your personal convenience trump others' right to privacy?

It seems you would benefit from reading a classic essay on the value of privacy.

There's a huge gap between 1% (there would be approximately 3,161,000 terrorists) 0.00000001% (there'd be approximately 0.03161 of a terrorist). The real number is somewhere in that enormous gap.

And I've already admitted it was a rhetorical device, not a precise statistical analysis. :rolleyes:

My point, again, is that if more than 99.99%* of American citizens/CostCo customers/MasterCard holders/PTA members/Facebook users are not terrorists, then using citizenship, store membership, credit card status etc is an absurd way to identify who's a terrorist and who isn't.

* Can we agree on >99.99%? Or do you want to argue that there are more than 31,610 people could apply to PreCheck and who are planning to target aircraft from a US airport?

TSA misses about 70% of dangerous things going through checkpoints. If there are even 300 people actively trying to get through checkpoints with evil intent, ~210 of them would succeed.