The above sarcasm noted and stripped, I've never considered myself Mr. East Coast. Must be that Midwest thing.

I'd be surprised if racist profliing's cost/benefit ratio over time played out as anything more than a net negative-sum game (especially by measure of lives and liberty lost).

Re: "profiling" at an airport security checkpoint. Please tell me precisely which "liberty" is being lost? The OP didn't mention not being allowed to fly...just that he was subject to semi-increased scrutiny. BFD.

And I've got to say...I love the fact that you continue to use the term "racist profiling". It's not racist. Racist, by definition, implies the belief that one race is "better" than another. That's not the case here. Racial is something based on race (minus the feelings of superiority).

Get it straight.

Well it is a BFD. At ORD I never have a problem because I look like everyone else in Chicago. At some other airports any dark haired brunette with a beard is profiled. It makes no difference if you are Indian, American Indian, Mediterainian, Mexican, Jewish etc. It would not be terrible if it was just heightened screening but they become just plain rude and antagonistic! Most times they will try to intimidate you. They become abrasive and it is up to you to prove that you are not a terrorist with a full body pat down. We become second class citizens.

Here is a true example. A co-worker is a portly Southern gentelman. At checkpoints he gets a pass and I do not. He carries a laptop, external hard drive, portable printer and all of the associated cables to make it all work. He also has a 25 pound "The South shall Rise Again" belt buckle. They wave the wand in front of his belt and let him go on. I don't set it off and I go into secondary screening.

I actually had to prove the profiling to him which he just could not believe. I told him "Watch this" After clearing the metal detector I reached for his bag. TSA politely asked if the could look through the bag. They said it was entirely random of course. I said sure and as the TSA employee walked off with the bag. I grabbed my bag and tried to walk past. I mentioned that it wasn't my bag anyway.

They threw it back and ripped my bag out of my hand. So much for random.

At MSP all non-blonds seem to get secondary screening.

Has any Indian, American Indian, Mediterainian, Mexican or Jewish person etc. caused a hijacking or terror incident in the US? I think not.

But Timothy McVeigh did. He was a clean cut blond person. So even tho clean cut blond persons have a history of violence they are not profiled.

All TSA has to do is make sure no weapons get past. There should be the same scrutiny for ALL passengers. Period.

The Lockerbie incident was caused by a woman who unknown to her brought the bomb on board. Hence the "Are you carrying any thing given to you by persons unknown to you?" silly question. Unfortunately she knew the guy as it was her finance. I do not see any profile for a blond woman with low self esteem. [rant off/]

Well that's what you get from ranting.

- Lockerbie was not an "incident", it was a f***ing atrocity.
- The Lockerbie bomb was in an unaccompanied bag.
- The incident you cite was an El Al flight from London and the bomb was discovered before the woman boarded. She was profiled.

I do not doubt what happened to you; but I am greatly disturbed by what you said. First of all, there's not supposed to be any profiling whatsoever when it comes to random screening. It is supposed to be the next person according to gender. In other words, if I finished hand-wanding a male passenger, then I get the next male passenger who comes in through the WTMD for random hand-wanding (the simple truth is that we don't do random hand-wanding; there's plenty of other things to do with selectee screening, bag checks and other regular screening.) The point is that we don't pick and choose. If you truly believe this is happening to you, I strongly encourage you to complain in writing to your Congressperson, TSA, your airline and ORD. This gives all of us a black eye, and it should not be tolerated. I hope you were being serious, because I am absolutely serious with my recommendation to you.

The other thing that disturbed me was that a screener grabbed your bag out of your hand. That, my friend, is simple assault, and you should not hesitate to bring up a formal criminal complaint against the screener who did this. TSA procedures specifically prohibit grabbing items out of passengers' hands. First of all, the screener failed to have positive control of the item if he/she allowed you to get it after a security concern was identified. This is already a major violation, so that screener should already be reprimanded for incompetence. But, by forcefully taking an item from you, that screener has already gone past the point-of-no-return and should be terminated. There is absolutely no excuse for that behavior.

Again, I hope you were being absolutely accurate in your account of what happened. I don't want people like that representing me or my agency, so I encourage you to take action.

Yes my account about the bag search was accurate.

I appreciate your corrections about Lockerbie. I wrote from memory and after a few years it could all become quite hazy.

But the point of the post was that profiling creates second class citizens. We both know what the rules should be. There is the real fear that when we protest we would get the dreaded "We will not let you fly today" comment.

That is probably true. However it appears that screeners have a fair amount of discression as to who they will secondary if the have a feeling about someone. It would be hard to differentiate that from profiling. Perhaps just like a cop who has a feeling somebody just doesn't belong there.

It's racist profiling since there is an explicit and intrinsic element in such profiling that says that different than the subject racial/ethnic population is superior.

Thanks!! ^

So the driving equivalent - "driving while black" is "no big deal" and "not racist"?

It's OK for cops to pull over black people and give them a hard time just because they're black? And the white copes who single out black people for increased scrutiny aren't racists?

Or are the two situations different?

Most Muslims are dark-skinned. We had the KKK, they were all caucasian. Saying all dark-skinned people could be terrorists is like saying that all caucasias could rascist killers!!

Basing your security plan on one incident in the past is a bad way to prevent problems in the future. Coming up with a physical profile of who you're looking for it just as good as coming up with a profile for who you're not looking for.

Even in this short thread there are examples of people getting a pass from security because they don't fit the "dark skin" profile. A smart terrorist organization would be able to exploit that pretty easily. Nevermind the fact that the dangers from white right-wing groups are increasing.

"Could be"? Of course anybody could be.

I think a fairer comparison would be, when looking for KKK members, checking Blacks as carefully as whites.

Now that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

The "fairer" comparison is relying upon an implicit argument by analogy, right? If so, there is a problem, for the "logic" therein (i.e., of arguing by analogy) cannot be even fairly relied upon to produce sound or valid conclusions.

Are US law enforcement and security types looking for all self-avowed (or even closet) KKK members prior to the commission of a violent criminal act? Are US law enforcement and security types looking for all self-avowed (or even closet) "foreign" terrorists prior to the commission of a violent criminal act? The differences start there, even if analogies could be necessarily relied upon.

I think a fairer comparison would be US law enforcement/security types looking for KKK members prior to the commission of a violent criminal act and checking Tutsis as carefully as Hutus. Now that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

(It's somewhat interesting that when "profiling" for "foreign terrorists" we hassle Americans because of perceived "foreign" origin -- i.e., origin as perceived by racist elements.)

There is reactive security and there is intelligent pro-active security. While the two are certainly not mutually exclusive, an over-reliance on the former is "security for dummies" engaged in a poor excuse of what passes for security but is really little more than "quality assurance"/"quality improvement" after highly visible failures gained a critical mass of eyeballs.

Would anyone be surprised if formerly US-trained, US-armed and US-financed Chechens show up on the evening news? Last I checked Chechens had better claims to being "Caucasians" than most people here in Sweden.

I never...never...said that "most Muslims are dark-skinned". Sorry kid, but you can't put words in my mouth. I've said from my first post in this thread that I have personal qualms about racial/ethnic "profiling", but that I feel it is a tool that had some practical application. I don't necessarily like it, but I'm not prepared to completely discount it. Which matters little since I'm not personally setting policy for the TSA or the police.

I agree with you on your first point...if that's the entire basis of your new security plan. Which it isn't in this case. And I was the first person in this thread to bring up the name Timothy McVeigh and by extension the danger of white/right wing terrorist groups. But let's not forget (in the interest of fair and balanced hysteria) the danger of left wing groups like Earth First, etc. Who have been considerably more active in the past few years than the right-wingers. But while there is certainly new danger from these left/right wing groups...that doesn't mean that the danger from Muslim extremist groups has lessened.

Nice to see someone being rational.

And look...Mr. Logic is back. It's really too bad this isn't Debate Team GU, I'm sure you'd feel much more at home. Pardon us all for our lack of debating elegance. It's really too bad that the world doesn't function on a purely logical basis.