What is wrong with racial/religious profiling?

[fskimospy]

Are you sure about that?
Where did he spend most of his time?
And what was his religion?
Why don't you read his background before you post. He most definitely fits the "profile" of someone who should receive more screening at an airport.

The question was 'what was his ethnicity'? Please enlighten us... what was Richard Reed's ethnicity?

What magical religion detecting ray gun should we use on him? Do you have one we could borrow?

 

[Rainsford]

They are trying really hard to ignore the statistical analysis done by people on the effectiveness of profiling (or the lack thereof). They feel in their gut that it should work, and so to them it DOES work.

Partially, but I think another factor is the feeling that it's not just terrorists who are the bad guys, it's Muslims as a whole, or Islam as a religion. Just look at the comments in this thread...

From that perspective, the fact that profiling is effectively treating the targeted group like second class citizens isn't an unfortunate side effect, it's part of the root of its appeal.

 

[Rainsford]

Because, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck you don't go looking for a turkey.

Yeah, phrasing nonsensical arguments in country-boy analogies doesn't make them better...

 

[Patranus]

The question was 'what was his ethnicity'? Please enlighten us... what was Richard Reed's ethnicity?

What magical religion detecting ray gun should we use on him? Do you have one we could borrow?

Well if Wikipedia can provide me this, I wonder what the CIA has on this guy

Reid, also known as Abdul Raheem and Tariq Raja, was born a British citizen in Bromley, South London to Leslie Hughes who was of white English descent, and Colvin Robin Reed, whose grandfather was a Jamaican immigrant of African descent. When Reid was born, his father, a career criminal, was in jail for stealing a car. Reid left school at age 16, becoming a petty crook who was in and out of jail himself; the first time for assaulting an elderly woman. He served sentences at the Feltham Young Offenders Institution and at the Blundeston Prison. According to his father, Reid became depressed and blamed racism for some of his problems. His father advised him to convert to Islam, telling him that Muslims were more egalitarian and they got better food in prison. The next time Reid was incarcerated, (in 1995 for petty theft), he converted.

Upon his release from prison in 1996 he joined the Brixton Mosque, but later began attending the radical Finsbury Park Mosque in North London headed at that time by extremist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri and described as "the heart of the extremist Islamic culture" in Britain. By 1998 Reid was voicing extremist views and may have fallen under the sway of "terrorist talent spotters and handlers" allied with Al Qaeda.

He spent 1999 and 2000 in Pakistan and trained at a terrorist camp in Afghanistan according to several informants. He may also have attended an anti-American religious training center in Lahore Pakistan as a follower of Mubarak Ali Gilani Reid then lived in various locales in Europe, communicating with an address in Peshawar, Pakistan, a city known for its Al Qaeda connections. In July 2001 he flew to Israel, passing through El Al's security, possibly a test of his ability to pass through an intensive security screening. On December 21, 2001, he attempted to board a flight from Paris to Miami but his boarding was delayed because his disheveled physical appearance was suspicious to screeners. He also did not answer all of their questions, and had not checked any luggage for the transatlantic flight. Additional screening resulted in his being re-issued a ticket for a flight on the following day. He returned to the airport on December 22, 2001 and boarded American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami, wearing his special shoes packed with plastic explosives in the hollowed out bottoms.

Reid was a criminal which should disqualify him from entering the United States in the first place.

 

[Rainsford]

Well if Wikipedia can provide me this, I wonder what the CIA has on this guy

Hindsight is always 20/20, isn't it? What do you imagine you could have found on Richard Reid BEFORE he tried to blow up an airplane? Or for that matter, how much did the CIA know about him then? Knowing stuff about him NOW is useless, because it's all based on the fact that we already KNOW he's a terrorist. If we had that information on everyone on the planet, we wouldn't need airport security at all.

 

[fskimospy]

Well if Wikipedia can provide me this, I wonder what the CIA has on this guy


Reid was a criminal which should disqualify him from entering the United States in the first place.

The best thing you can come up with is that his great grandfater on one side was originally African but immigrated from Jamaica. This is starting to reek of desperation.

I don't know why I'm even arguing with someone like you, it's not like you're open to rational discussion.

 

[Patranus]

The best thing you can come up with is that his great grandfater on one side was originally African but immigrated from Jamaica. This is starting to reek of desperation.

I don't know why I'm even arguing with someone like you, it's not like you're open to rational discussion.

You said he was "caucasian", I point out that you were incorrect.

Was he a radical Muslim BEFORE he tried to blow up a airplane? YES
Was he a convicted criminal? YES

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that this guy *might be* trouble and deserves a little more attention.

 

[n yusef]

1 drop rule FTL.

 

[tvarad]

Yeah, phrasing nonsensical arguments in country-boy analogies doesn't make them better...

Well, everyone has tried intellect on you but that's obviously hit a brick wall.

 

[Tab]

Going back just ten years, can someone please list for me the ethnicity of any airline terrorists who were not a "Muslim male of Asian, Persian, Arab, African, or Indonesian descent."

The unabomber.

 

[Patranus]

The unabomber.

Your reading comprehension skills are unmatched.

 

[Generator]

Go ahead and profile I suppose, but what will be accomplished but the sense of false security. Terrorists will just use a whiter person, a blacker person, asians, children, women. I say if you don't have a passport you shouldn't get on a plane for starters.

 

[tvarad]

Why we need to profile:

US suspect in Pakistan defends 'jihad' plans

One of five Americans detained in Pakistan said their aim was to go to Afghanistan to wage jihad against Western forces, defending their intention as justified under Islam.

But he denied any links to al-Qaida or plans to carry out terrorist attacks in Pakistan, as alleged by Pakistani authorities.

Monday was the first time the young Muslims from the Washington, D.C., area have addressed a court after being arrested in early December in the eastern Pakistani city of Sargodha. The case has spurred fears that Westerners are traveling to Pakistan to join militant groups. Pakistani police have said they plan to seek life sentences for the men under the country's anti-terrorism law.

"We are not terrorists," one of the men, Ramy Zamzam, told The Associated Press as he entered a courtroom in Sargodha on Monday.

"We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism," he said.....

 

[yllus]

Caught this in my morning paper - a security consultant with Ben-Gurion International Airport talks about switching from scanning everybody to critiquing individual behaviour. Sounds like it'd improve security, but not especially speed things up. I wonder if the database information Israel combs through would pass privacy muster in North America.

Focus on passenger behaviour: Israeli expert

The inherent problem with the North American approach to aviation security is that it spreads its resources by treating every passenger equally, Mr. Sela says. That means the rare passenger who is a potential threat gets screened for the same short time as the vast majority of travellers who are not dangerous.

"You have to actually look for the things that are dangerous and not just scan everybody," he said. "This calls for a total change in approach to the transportation security issue."

...

Mr. Sela says Nigerian engineering student Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, would never have been able to board a flight had he left from Ben-Gurion. He would have been flagged by extensive database searches Israeli authorities run on every passenger, he says.

Israeli airports rely most on direct contact with passengers and careful screening of their backgrounds, Mr. Sela says. Every passenger is interviewed before going through security screening. Staff make direct eye contact with each passenger and are trained to watch for signs of stress, nervousness and other behavioural indicators.

 

[Thump553]

What worries me more than profiling is the rather glaring red flags that were ignored in this case-the guy paid for his ticket with cash and didn't check any luggage. He should have been throughly checked based on either of those alone, and no amount of racial profiling or full body scanning is going to provide us the same level of security that simple, common sense secuirty procedures PROPERLY IMPLEMENTED would do.

 

[daishi5]

It fails for a number of reasons. One is that you are spending a temendous amounts of resources on what is still a low-probability group ('All muslims'). Another is that by stretching resources this way, you are quite substantially increasing the chances of a non-muslim terrorist not being caught.

Now, if you have access to more specific group information (say membership in 'Muslim Terrorists Not-Anonymous'), with smaller membership, and higher concentrations of targets, there would of course come a point that profiling is valid.

You need to look up bayes theorem. To put simply, you are wrong.

 

[VashHT]

Why we need to profile:

US suspect in Pakistan defends 'jihad' plans

One of five Americans detained in Pakistan said their aim was to go to Afghanistan to wage jihad against Western forces, defending their intention as justified under Islam.

But he denied any links to al-Qaida or plans to carry out terrorist attacks in Pakistan, as alleged by Pakistani authorities.

Monday was the first time the young Muslims from the Washington, D.C., area have addressed a court after being arrested in early December in the eastern Pakistani city of Sargodha. The case has spurred fears that Westerners are traveling to Pakistan to join militant groups. Pakistani police have said they plan to seek life sentences for the men under the country's anti-terrorism law.

"We are not terrorists," one of the men, Ramy Zamzam, told The Associated Press as he entered a courtroom in Sargodha on Monday.

"We are jihadists, and jihad is not terrorism," he said.....

Watch your link again, one of the 5 is white (or looks white to me at least). This is the problem with profiling, if we are busy checking every middle eastern and black person in airports and pushing the white people through, they will send the white boy who defected to their side.

I find it weird that you guys believe that a white person could never attack us when there have been more than one homegrown white terrorist in this country. Just because it hasn't happened on a plane yet doesn't mean we should make it easier for it to happen.

Also, as other people have pointed out, you can't tell religion from looks unless the person is wearing some kind of traditional garb. Throw a white boy in a business suit and the people here championing profiling would let him right through. Your guys' problem is you think terrorists are unable to react to new policies. If they find out we are relying heavily on profiling to protect ourselves they will find someone who is able to slip through because they don't fit our profile.

 

[soulcougher73]

I am fine with profiling of any kind. "If it talks like a duck, walks like a duck, it is probably a duck"

 

[Patranus]

Watch your link again, one of the 5 is white (or looks white to me at least). This is the problem with profiling, if we are busy checking every middle eastern and black person in airports and pushing the white people through, they will send the white boy who defected to their side.

I find it weird that you guys believe that a white person could never attack us when there have been more than one homegrown white terrorist in this country. Just because it hasn't happened on a plane yet doesn't mean we should make it easier for it to happen.

Also, as other people have pointed out, you can't tell religion from looks unless the person is wearing some kind of traditional garb. Throw a white boy in a business suit and the people here championing profiling would let him right through. Your guys' problem is you think terrorists are unable to react to new policies. If they find out we are relying heavily on profiling to protect ourselves they will find someone who is able to slip through because they don't fit our profile.

I guess you missed the part where they were in Pakistan.

 

[OutHouse]

there is nothing wrong with CRIMINAL PROFILING.

 

[VashHT]

I guess you missed the part where they were in Pakistan.

I didn't, please tell me how that changes anything I said. How does the fact that they are 5 Americans that went to Pakistan have any impact on racial profiling. Your race doesn't change simply because you enter another country.

 

[palehorse]

Richard Reed, the shoe bomber. Caucasian.

Next question?

Fair enough. Now, can you tell me the total number of airline terrorists during that same time period? (All attempts, regardless of success or failure).

 

[palehorse]

Listen carefully, because this is an important point about profiling. Even if 100% of terrorists are Muslim, that doesn't help profiling AT ALL. How do we PRACTICALLY profile someone based on religion. It's easy to SAY "profile Muslims", actually doing that is pretty much impossible in practice.

Which is why I shifted the conversation to ethnicity and/or ancestry...

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

You are obviously hard of reading. Go back, try again. Perhaps the old cogs in your noggin will grind the right way if you give 'em a good greasing. Btw, you're not off to a great start, and it gets worse.


Thanks for your advice. I will take it under due consideration. May I suggest you likewise avoid anything that involves ethics and law, as you're obviously deficient in both of those areas, and by extension, also public service. You're liable to fumble and lose our freedom in under the couch whilst preoccupied with looking for your T:s and M:s.


That's not my arguments you authoritarianistic prat, and I'm pretty well convinced you know it too, as it's simply too hard to imagine you being such a fucking halfwit you can't even understand a simple comparison. If you manage to get your pants on with the fly facing the right way in the morning you should be able to comprehend that what something looks like and what it actually IS are two completely different things, which was my ACTUAL argument.


I don't have to "find" anything. You're busy advocating "whatever" right now, in post after post.

So you got... nothing.

You don't know the subject, you claim to know all you need to about me from one thread, but you do know Eddie Murphy.

You do go on a good bit and it's entirely entertaining. Worthless, but entertaining. It's the particular flair you have when carrying on about things that have nothing to do with the topic, and you can spell. I predict you will go far on the internet, where style, not substance is king.

Magic 8 Ball says = Radio show host for you. It suits your skill set perfectly. You don't need to know anything, just imitate Rush as you have.

That way you can avoid doing anything which would task you and would spare others from having to deal with you personally.

win/win.

 

[yllus]

So you got... nothing.

You don't know the subject, you claim to know all you need to about me from one thread, but you do know Eddie Murphy.

You know, you never did answer his question of whether you've seen that movie where Eddie Murphy dresses up as a white dude. I'm pretty sure FaaR proved that your opinion on criminal profiling is worthless until you delve into the academics of the subject and watch The Nutty Professor 1 through 3. Preferably in non-stop marathon format.