What is wrong with Racial Profiling?

[AuH2O]

lol, ah the lengths the leftists go to.

First of all, the pool of people willing to commit suicide bombings is much lower than a lot of people here seem to think. Even Muslims do not want to die-- it's human instinct to survive. Second of all, the majority of people willing to do them are young Muslim males.

Fact of the matter is, Jessica Simpson lookalikes are never going to be a major source of bombing attacks. Sure, you can concoct various fantasies, whereby someone asks their friend to do so and so, blah blah.

But, alas, terrorism isn't that easy. Observe the failure of the second London attacks.

Furthermore, forcing terrorists to use more sympathetic people as suicide bombers hurts them, not us. Many Muslims are uncomfortable with the notion of female suicide bombers, for instance.

Statistically speaking, one is actually complicit to crime and/or murder by NOT engaging in sensible profiling.

[AuH2O]

How many Muslims have blonde hair and blue eyes? Of course you can't tell 100% of the time.

First, is someone male or female? Males more likely to be terrorists.

Young or old? Young more likely.

Arab or not? Arabs more likely.

Muhammad their first name? Yes, more likely.

It's not that hard al.

[AuH2O]

The only guy of the 4 that would be impossible to profile is the first one (Jamaican). 3 out of 4 ain't bad. Yes, I know Indonesia has the most Muslim people.

I'm also not talking about what Russia should do. Or the US. Or Spain. Or China. For those that can't read.

The bottom line is that fair-skinned people in Britain are unlikely to be bombers, particularly with the IRA not doing much these days. I guess the majority of Muslims in Britain are originally from India or Pakistan, so excuse my "Arab" claim and simply change it to "being descended of people from the Indian subcontinent."

This is actually extremely simple math. Any time you are trying to detect a certain characteristic (i.e. being a suicide bomber), you want to winnow down the potential pool as much as possible. In doing so, there will be some error. However, by properly structuring the guidelines you can keep most of the targets in the pool while removing much of the junk (non-terrorists) around them.

Actually, the Arab point only makes this more useful, because if the main candidates are Pakistani, Somali, etc., then someone "white" is highly unlikely to be a threat. In Britain, that is the overwhelming majority of the population. Using other factors (age, sex, etc.) you can, without a shred of doubt, improve overall security by at least 1000%, probably more.

If you really want, this can be simulated with basic math most posters could understand. I won't vouch for al but even he might be able to.

[AuH2O]

Jews are a lot closer to Russians than Pakistanis are to Brits. No hair-do is going to make a Pakistani look Scottish.

I'm not sure your example teaches us anything except it's better to be draconian. As you note, Jews were instrumental in early 20th century radical socialism that resulted in the Bolshevik enslavement of Russia and, later, Eastern Europe.

[AuH2O]

Right, you would still check other people, it's just you wouldn't let 15 Pakistanis pass while you search an old white lady.

And, like I said, where are these white bombers going to come from? These attacks are NOT that easy to pull off-- you can't just dupe people into carrying massive bombs around, especially, with the terror alerts.

Plus, making all their current active cell members less valuable is a huge blow to terrorist organizations. Even if they can somehow recruit people that would evade profiling, it hurts their operations far, far worse than it inconveniences the police.

[AuH2O]

Well it's true the early radicals were eliminated, but the Bolsheviks had a rather large Jewish element (I mean, Lenin, Zinoviev, Trotsky, etc.).

I dunno... if I was a cop, I would have "profiled" 7 of the 8 London bombers. In Russia the problem was specific targetted killings, not mass casualties... 2005 London is much denser in population, and the threat is to controlled systems (transit).

[AuH2O]

I meant ethnically Jewish, not religiously observant. Lenin is somewhat debatable, yes, but Trotsky's birth name was Bronstein I believe. There is a lot of philosophical debate about the role of Judaism in Marxism (dating to Marx himself, who of course was Jewish), but that is not the topic of this thread.

You are grossly misrepresenting the nature of the terrorist threat. Yes, there are radicals in a variety of places. But the intellectual core of radical Islam are the schools in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and the operational core is based on fighters trained in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Now, the top fighters don't carry out suicide attacks. But even at the operational level, the odds of a blonde woman carrying out a suicide attack is so low as to be irrelevant. Even assuming there was a population of non-Arab, non-Indian/Pakistani people willing to commit suicide bombings, the failed bombings in London and various other blown attacks prove training is critical to success.

You can make up various scenarios where profiling fails. But you cannot come up with many where profiling degrades security. Further, there are many scenarios where it succeeds.

Thus, proving it is technically possible profiling is only marginally effective is not an argument against it. In fact, if that's your best argument, it's a case FOR profiling. Like I said: It causes more problems for terrorists than it does police.

[AuH2O]

The biggest thing that annoys me about this thread is that racial profiling opponents basically are doing this:

- racial profiling is wrong

And then explaining why by saying

- racial profiling is ineffective or would become ineffective

Well those are completely different arguments. Most opponents in the government stick solely with the first objection, which probably means they acknowledge the potential value of profiling but are unwilling to engage in it for political reasons.