Please point out the racism in his post. I really want to know what you think was racist about that.

Nor should you. But but I thought baseless accusations of sympathizing with a mass murderer would be beneath you. I was simply pointing that out. Obviously I was mistaken.

How typical. I seems many people are incapable of having this type of discussion without having to accuse you opponent of being a racist. Very convenient. Once one has decided they're opponent is "racist", they may dismiss all their arguments and need not respond or form a logical argument. They're racist, and that the end of it. I know you're not like that Bart, you typically form well thought out responses. But in this case, you've slipped into a simple reactionary "you're a racist" mode.

You're the first one to jump on others for not maintaining a civil tone, making broad generalizations, baseless accusations or disparaging you or the TSA in a way you disapprove of, Bart. A little respect in return would make your admonitions carry a little weight.

That's a possibility in your book. Try it.... you'll be surprised of the results.

For starters, there is no such thing as a random event when a human does a selection. Humans are subjective individuals and will act based on their senses, emotions and thoughts. Screeners (being human beings, for the most part) use their EYES to create the "random" selection.

A couple of years back I witnessed what you call random screening. A m/f "dark" couple in non-western attaire was approaching the security point. The careful screener decided to start sending 'white' people to secondary screening prior and after the couple in question were screened. The couple went through without setting any alarms. Guess where they were sent? Come on...., you can guess.... easy question.... Geeeee..... nice "random" pattern..... select a few prior and after to be politically correct....

J.

Did you read ANYTHING I wrote?

NO ONE said the threat would come from ONLY ONE DIRECTION!!! I specifically pointed out that I WAS NOT claiming that. Yet you completely ignored that, and proceeded to make your argument in response to something I specifically pointed out that I WAS NOT claiming. Your condescending admonition to for me to "Think", falls a little flat in light of the fact that you are arguing with me over points I DID NOT MAKE.

To deny that profiling has no place in security measures is to believe that a 90 year old Caucasian woman in a wheelchair, is as likely to be a threat as a 21 year old Arab named Mohamed fresh off the ship from Syria. That is simple NOT a resalable assumption.

You're missing the point entirely. The reasoning for profiling isn't based solely on the raw statistical probability they will be a threat. Were that the criteria, why would we need security screening AT ALL. The criteria for profiling is based on what group is MORE LIKELY to be a threat, and what group is LESS LIKELY.

Lets do the math. Lets say 5 million Muslims in the US. out of a general population of 300,000,000, 25 MUSLIMS, have actually caused an attack on US soil.

25 / 5,000,000 = .000005 chance of a particular Muslim in the US of being a terrorist. In contrast, using those numbers, out of the general population there's a .000000833 chance they ANYONE will be a terrorist. That means by your numbers, that a Muslim has a greater chance of being a terrorist than the general population by a margin of 60 to 1.

Any statistician would laugh at NOT considering those odds in any life or death situation, and NOT doing something to mitigate those odds.

Yes, that third grade math sure comes in handy. But statistical analysis IS NOT third grade math. It's more than crunching raw numbers to get the result YOU WANT TO SEE.

Your entire argument in this post can be summed up as follows. "There are problems and difficulties with how to actually develop a criteria for profiling. Therefor we shouldn't try."

Nice. Let's just give up then.

Your response can be summed up as, "I can't respond to the criticism of my plan, so I'll just divert the issue."

If you can't address the issues I've laid out, then you don't have an actionable plan, do you?

At the most basic level I asked (1) how are we going to select people and (2) what are we going to do based on that selection. If you don't even know that, then you don't have a plan at all.

Sorry if my argument is too complicated. The real world is complicated. Slogans aren't going to get us very far.

There's an error in your math. You didn't both to include non-muslim terrorists in the above calculation. Of course the "statistics" are going to be biased in your favor if you bias the calculation of them.

60 times more than practically nothing is still close to nothing.

Please explain then why we screen ANYONE.

Timothy McVeigh was most emphatically a terrorist. He was even lower than low because the Murrah Federal Building had nothing to do with the Department of Justice, the agency that ordered the Waco operation. Since McVeigh had a beef with Janet Reno, he should have bombed DOJ headquarters in D.C. In bombing the Murrah Federal Building, McVeigh killed and injured many innocent senior citizens there for Social Security issues and children at a daycare on site. I am confident that McVeigh is in hell along with Mohammed Atta, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot.

All that being said, the other factors in my earlier post are still true. We did not experience any terrorist attacks aimed at transportation until 9/11, when al-Qaida terrorists, not Americans, attacked our country.

Yes , I know that. And if you nit pick it to death you'll find about a hundred other variables that would go into a calculation like that, if it was meant to be all inclusive and statistically valid. To take that quick little math exercise as anything other than a superficial calculation to illustrate a point is just not a reasonable. Don't take it for anything other than what it was. As an example, you'll notice I included the Muslims in the total population, which actually slants the percentage in their favor. This is what we call a "quick and dirty" calculation. And it was merely to get a point across.

That point being that profiling and risk assessment in the way it would be applied to our discussion is not dependent on the raw probability of something happening . It's based on what is MORE likely v. LESS likely. And that pointing out the minuscule mathematical probability of one group being a threat is irrelevant to what we're discussing.

I'm aware that statistics can be slanted by the user to prove what they want. That's something else I was trying to illustrate.

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." ;)

Presuming that the past was a perfect indicator of what would happen in the future is what got us into the 9/11 mess in the first place. We assumed that hijackers would set planes down gently in Cuba, ignoring the body of evidence which said that many would actually like to crash planes into buildings.

And here once again we see that many want to create a brittle system that's targeted towards yesterday, not tomorrow.

This first part of this post is intended to a devil's advocate post, so please treat it in kind. :)

Given with what we saw on 9/11, 19 Muslims hijacked and flew planes into 3 buildings, with a 4th being heroicly crashed by the pax on board.

Compare that to the many more shoes that have been screened (I'm willing to bet more than 1.5 billion shoes have been removed since TSA's inception ala shoe carnival), with only one shoe bomb found. Yet TSA focuses much more resources on detecting a shoe bomb when it was at least 19x more likely that a Muslim would conduct a terrorist act.

Statistically speaking, Muslims would be much greater threats than shoes. So I can at least see how the above argument for profiling could be made.

Now with me personally, I figure if I'm going to die at a certain time regardless of whether I'm in a plane, car, or at work. So I don't fear the Muslims. I DO fear, however, that with some security practices I have seen, an incident could easily be blamed on Muslims and there would be ample opportunity to plant something in a carryon bag if a screener truly were racist. I think back to one time at SLC where my wife's purse was dumped with nothing of interest found, repacked, and taken back to x-ray while we HAD to stand back by the inspection table. I immediately thought I was glad I'm not middle eastern, because that was an easy opportunity for something to be planted. That was before TSA, but with some practices, abuse can exist.

If any profile were to exist, I think it should be based on who is more likely NOT to be a terrorist, like an 85 year old grandma or a 3 year old kid. To address muling, at least in my book, I'd be much more willing to strap a suicide bomb on me (under duress, of course) than I ever would to put one on my child. I would hope that I would be screened and "taken care of" so I wouldn't have to die. :)

Super

For what seems like the millionth time, I am in favor of non-intrusive screening for EVERYONE, Americans, Canadians, British, French, Spanish, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, etc. TSA and DHS should spearhead development of technology that can quickly detect actual threats to airliners, specifically explosives and firearms. The WTMD takes care of firearms, and puffer-type machines should prevent the introduction of completed explosives.

However, Americans should not be subject to more intrusive screening, such as secondary screening, i.e. patdowns, searches of bags, etc., unless traditional Fourth Amendment requirements, i.e. reasonable suspicion of involvement in criminal activity, are satisfied. Statistics can be bandied about all day, but the simple common sense facts show that Islamic fanatics who are overwhelmingly male and young are the terrorist threats today. BTW, check this link regarding the Jordanian government denying that one of the suicide bombers was a woman. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9979747/

Given that our resources for screening are limited, doesn't it make sense to concentrate those resources on individuals, such as those from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, etc., who are members of the groups that are the perpetrators of terrorism? Again, all passengers must be screened, but the intrusive measures that take more time and hence cost more money should be reserved for those passengers who alarm the baseline screening methods and those who are suspicious.

Now that's a statement I can agree with. Let's also not leave out the cargo hold.


TSA would argue this is already in place, and it's called Selectee Screening and the No-Fly List.

I would argue that if we take the measures you advocate in the first paragraph, these "intrusive measures" should be taken if there is an unresolvable alarm, without regard to the age, gender, or apparent nationality of the person involved.

But short of requiring a passport at each and every checkpoint, TSA is going to have no way of knowing if a pax on the Milwaukee to Chicago milk run is from Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the Phillipines, Los Angeles, or down the street.