Political Profiling?

You have to look at the numbers, the number of young asian men who've blown up planes divided by the number of young asian men who fly is absolutly infitesimal, narrowing the searches would produce almost exactly zero positive effect and a large negative effect as you generally piss people off AND provide a possible route past increased security. Another good number to look at is the number of terrorists caught by airport security. To my knowledge it's none in going on for one hundred years of commercial flight. All but the most cursory security at airports is a waste of resources. We can't keep weapons and drugs out of prisons, how the hell are we supposed to keep weapons and bombs off of airplanes.

Missi... Agreed! I caught a bit of (((mumbles incoherently))) “Richard & Judy” the other day, where there were a couple of Muslim chaps who, as far as I could tell, were saying they had absolutely no problem with being stopped and searched at an airport, if its purpose was reducing the likelihood of terrorist attacks. The problem here is, there are always going to be certain types of criminal activity which are more likely to be committed by particular social groups. Recognising this fact, while recognising that, for example, not all poor people who live on council estates are shoplifters and not all Muslims are terrorists, is sensible and logical. Of course, we must be aware of and vigilant against the possibility of some people in authority abusing such statistics, but it does annoy me when accusations of racism automatically surface whenever this kind of issue is raised. Like you say, Missi, we want the authorities to be able to deal with terrorist threats (and preventing other types of crime) as efficiently and effectively as possible, but how can they do this if they are expected to act as if everyone is as likely as everyone else to commit a certain type of crime? It’s another example of political correctness gone too far… (BTW, also on that programme I won’t mention, Ms Finnegan mentioned that she always gets stopped in airports… can’t blame them… I always thought she had a bit of a look of fanaticism about her…) ~PEPS~ “There is no spoon.”

(((I must stop agreeing with you... it's most incompatible with my reputation...))) ~PEPS~ “There is no spoon.”

The point is cost to benefit, the cost is large (you further alienate part of the community), the benefit is infitessimal. To use prisons is exactly on the mark. The 9/11 attacks (doubtlessly the most spectacular world-horrifying display yet), were achieved with box cutters, exactly the sort of improvised shiv we can't keep out of prisons. Airport security is a joke anyway, it is there as one last line of defence, it is for catching lunatics and idiots, it is useless against a determined and well planned attack. What is the point, for example, of confiscating nail scissors then offering each passenger a can of coke which can quickly and easily be turned into a far deadlier weapon. The americans even put armed sky marshals on planes, how many determined individuals do you think it would take to relieve one of their gun? When threatened by the possiblilty of a binary explosive all liquids were confiscated and POURED INTO THE SAME BIN. Powders are now allowed again, yet most explosives are easier to make and transport as a powder. Mothers with baby milk were let through, yet one of the people arrested was the mother of a young baby. Any increase in airport security beyond a basic x-ray and rummage is a waste of resources unless it is trained individuals looking for suspicious behaviour. Resources pumped into intelligence before the flight is far more effective, as has been recently proved.

If almost every time a puddle of white paint was spilled on the floor, the person(s) responsible for it had the number 12 written on their forehead, people would become suspicious of people with the number 12 on their forehead at the paint section of the store. That doesn't mean that people with the number 4 written on their forehead can't spill paint. Visit me http://www.radiodenver.org/

>As long as the 'infinitessimal' benefit is the saving of my life, i'm happy to pay the price. Don't fly then. > without any security there'd be a suicide bomber on every plane in a word, bollocks, there has been, in the past, virtually no security on internal flights (which is why the 9-11 hijakers targetted them), yet not one bomb. Britain is *still* about the only country in the world to use enhanced scanning of check-in baggage (brought in after the lockerby bombings), America in particular does not do this, yet no luggage bombs on flights coming from America in all that time. > Airport security does far more good than spending millions on harrassing drivers No, it doesn't. Most traffic calming measures have a measurable outcome, there are cost benefit calculations done for every bump in the road and chicane taking into account the annoyance factor. Airport security hardly ever catches anyone for the simple reason that there is hardly ever anyone to catch. Regards sky marshals, here's a plan I thought up just now: a terrist cell book tickets seperately but check in online to make sure they are sitting near each other. One of them acts, thus alerting the sky marshal, once he reveals himself the others spring into action either unarmed or with shivs they have manufactured from coke cans. They subdue and kill the skymarshal, they then have a gun and the two hundred other passengers armed with only plastic cutlery do not dare attack them, they, unlike the terrorists, are not prepared to die. Using the gun the terrorists do whatever the hell it was they wanted to do. That is exactly why the british pilots union (i forget it's proper name) won't fly with guns onboard. Airport security is a myth, and the hysteria is unjustified.

Rubbish! Rubbish! Rubbish! If it costs less in the long-term for you to die at the hands of a terrorist than it does to spend the cash and the time implementing REAL security measures, then I'm afraid we're gonna have to accept the fact that there's only one winner in all of this. Think for yourself, schmuck! It aint law if it aint laminated!

Regarding RD's paint spilling thought experiment... Very true, Radio, but since no one with a number 4 on their forehead has yet spilled any paint, and we know that people who spill paint usually have a number 12 on their forehead, then in order to be seen to be doing something about this whole paint-spilling hoo-har, we have to target the number 12’ers… even if they’re not necessarily guilty of spilling paint. Erm… or something… :-! ~PEPS~ “There is no spoon.”

Dan's right. Almost all this extra security stuff is expensive, useless posturing. It's only function is to make schmucks *feel* like they're being protected from something - exactly the same as the whole Terror Level: Critical bollocks. If you can think of any 'REAL security measures', Yan, then by all means, suggest them to someone, because the money is currently being spent on a charade. Going back to Missi's original point, no amount of 'political profiling' excuses harrassing people simply for being Arabs and 'a bit funny looking'. Every incident of dangerous, planebound drunken buffoonery I've ever heard of has involved white British people, so is it fair to draw up a political profile based on that too? How many St. George cross-daubed causasians are detained by airport security? ~ I'll Show You Tyrants * Fuselit * The Prowl Log * Woe's Woe

Maureen Lipman writes rather pointedly on this in The Guardian today. "Exploding hand cream, bottles of unusual liquids, suitcase in High Wycombe undergrowth - you couldn't make it up. Could you? "My first thought was that the 23 detainees had been set up for the suicide mission by al-Qaida and then betrayed. What better way of bringing a country to a standstill without shedding a drop of blood? "Look what we are capable of" being the warning message. "Be afraid. Be very afraid." "We can't beat this kind of terrorism. I realise it's an unpopular thing to say, but it's what Ireland lived with for decades and what Israeli civilians have been living with daily, in their streets cafes and airports, for almost 60 years. Only without the warnings."

Jack… >>> It's only function is to make schmucks *feel* like they're being protected from something …Isn’t there something to be said for seeming to be doing something? – i.e. as kind of a psychological deterrent (accepting the possibility, of course, that this “psychological deterrent” could become prohibitively expensive) >>> no amount of 'political profiling' excuses harassing people simply for being Arabs and 'a bit funny looking' …True, but where does one draw the line between “harassing” and “being extra cautious”? >>> How many St. George cross-daubed causasians are detained by airport security? …Probably less than should be! ~PEPS~ “There is no spoon.”

I think the malaga manchester flight combined with the arrest of a bunch of mobile phone unlockers in Michigan last week rather proves that hysteria is rife. How else would you describe not being allowed to take a paperback on board a plane, a paperback that you bought in the departure lounge because they confiscated yours at security. I think the fact a twelve year old got on a flight at Gatwick without a ticket or passport last week proves that airport security is a joke. The problem with increasing airport security is a simple case of maths, you multiple the chance of the person you search being a terrorist (a very small number indeed) by the chance your increased measure will discover he's a terrorist (another small number) and you get a number so astronomically small that it can be nothing but a waste of resources. Remember that search techniques are well understood, you only have to travel once to know what will be exrayed, sniffed, tasted, groped and confiscated. Thats before you've asked your mate who works at Gatwick. The determined terrorist is always going to find a way round this (which is why it hardly ever catches any) whilst we are still trying to look for the last attack. Resources should go into focussed intelligence and old fashioned police work. That is how you catch people, the arrests a fortnight ago should have proved that. Everyhting else is just panic. If you want to take the absolutist view that any measure is worth your safety then take the boat, terrorists not withstanding, if something goes wrong with a boat it has a tendency to not expolode or plumet out of the sky. I once met a guy whose job was to calculate the cost bemnefit of traffic calming measures for the county council, the nominal value of a human life when doing those calculations was about thirty quid.

yeah yeah, then you're affecting air travel economy and walking straight into their hands. What would a terrorist do if he realised that the majority of people travelled by boat? Advising people to take a boat is ludicrous and solves nothing. In fact, it's shameful! Resources ARE going into focussed intelligence. Do you believe that bottled-bombs are a recent invention? Do you believe that the events of the past two weeks were a spontaneous reaction to a present threat? And - do you really believe that airways bosses are gonna be less effective than you at getting their own way regards airport security? It aint law if it aint laminated!

Wow. You're really not all that smart are you Yan.

It doesn't take a genius (or a literary peacock flogging old arguments) to see where the problem lies. It aint law if it aint laminated!

Making it better is fine by me. Making it appear to be better just to shock people and make them feel afraid-yet-protected is not OK. It's manipulative. "…Isn’t there something to be said for seeming to be doing something? – i.e. as kind of a psychological deterrent." It's not for the terrorists' benefit! They find all this hullaballoo encouraging surely - Britain in the grip of fear! They do it because a spooked, jumped up nation afraid of an invisible enemy is far easier to impose freedom-restricting rules on. "True, but where does one draw the line between “harassing” and “being extra cautious”?" Some way before the stage where you detain people purely on the basis of their skin colour and an idiotic negative impression of them. "It could of course be that the system is a deterrent and thefore terrorists 'hardly ever' think it's worth the trouble trying?" What, with a near 100% success rate under their belts? ~ I'll Show You Tyrants * Fuselit * The Prowl Log * Woe's Woe

Faith! I wondered how long it would take 'til that word popped up! I didn't really, but it's a key word here. Moderate muslims must join hands and initiate some careful memetic engineering to change the faith from the inside. People of any faith who cower with fear of being accused of apostasy are as answerable to the crisis as those who are using the symbols and teachings of the faith to cause this destruction. Talk about faith and you're departing from rationality and wading into the blind alleys that got our civilisation into this mess in the first place. Oh! And airport security needs to tightened! It aint law if it aint laminated!

I just think that adding resources to police work would be more effective than adding resources to airport security, I don't think this is a very contraversial view. I also think that airport security is close to being as good as it can be, there is a diminishing law of returns with every little new inconvenience or technological widget they add. They could have us all fly naked and our baggage go seperately on a baggage only glider towed a few hundred feet behind the plane. Since a plane is an order of magnitde more likely to crash for 'innocent' reasons than be blowed up, air travel still wouldn't be significantly safer. There are downsides and upsides to profiling by race at the security check, and only a rough glance at the numbers makes it obvious to me that the downsides outweigh the upsides. on a lighter note

Flew to Bristol today and they make you undo your shoes and pass them through the scanner - they also wanted my belt scanned at Manchester but not at Bristol on the return journey. You can't take creams, liquids, etc through security checking but you CAN now buy such items at the shops on the airside of security. That is, unless you're flying to America! Maybe our good buddies across the water think that terrorists have infiltrated the shops here and are selling nitroglycerine as deodorant in the duty free, there are certainly plenty of Asian faces working at Manchester Airport and probably even more at Heathrow.

To be fair, American security has no say in what we allow and don't allow on planes. Fun fact, it was recently proved that Richard Reid's exploding shoe could not be detected by an airport x-ray maching. If you should be on a flight and notice that another passenger, let alone another passenger of middle eastern appearance, is carrying face or hand cream, it is recomended you shout out this warning: "He's got a balm, salve yourselves!"

As the train, bus and tube bombings in Europe caused mayhem and terror, exactly what the terrorists were after, why would they try the virtually impossible task of mixing chemicals together in the toilet of a plane?

They don't need to, plenty of mahem and terror caused just be getting arrested for planning it. http://www.bbdo.co.uk/blog/archives/155

and to prove a point, pepsoid talked about 'a couple of Muslim chaps' on Richard and Judy. Well, one of them was a Sikh. All this profiling doesn't do much for the population's knowledge does it? Oh look a bloke with dark skin ergo a Muslim ergo a terrorist. This is such a terrible turn for the worst in our society, I think. It lacks intelligent thought, debate, or solutions. It caters to the sort of person who says on the news, 'They were acting suspiciously' or whatever. Yeah, that De Menzes chap was acting suspciously wasn't he? I'm not saying we don't need protecting... but I am dubious about the ACME schemes that are bandied about to appease an uneducated population. By uneducated I mean that the news/governement whatever do not explain the historical contexts behind these conflicts, they don't even explain that not all brown skinned people are Muslims, or the difference between Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus. It is on a school level that our population are being taught, it is teachers that are doing it. All I can hope is that kids who learn about stuff in class go home and tell their parents. I can hope. Or, I could hope for some serious effort to be put into all this stuff instead of this Duplo put the pieces together nonsense.

OK, Ferg, I hold my hand up and concede I got my facts a little wrong - but I did admit I only saw a bit of R+J! I think, however, my point still stands. I don't presume a person of a certain colour is Muslim; I don't make assumptions on people's character or beliefs or whatever based on their accent, how they dress, their age, sex, gender or any of the idiosyncracies of humanity. I also believe it is possible to go to the other extreme. If a statistician says a certain type of terrorist attack is more likely to be committed by Muslims, or a person of [race X] from [place Y] is more likely to wear [trainer brand Z], they are not being racist or ignorant. Statistics are statistics, likelihoods are likelihoods; how you use this information is where potential problems like. I agree that education is at the root of the issue. Since when, however, did teachers become our moral arbiters? Do they not enough to do, with teaching the academic subjects, being our children's counsellors, as well as being fair and impartial legal representatives? I think, in respect of the type of education we are talking about, it is the duty of all of society - or at least all those in positions of power and responsibility - to impart such moral/political/social education to our children... and this includes, amongst numerous other sections of society, teachers. ~PEPS~ “There is no spoon.”

I have occasionally been mistaken for a Sikh. I like to wear turbans. I have a whole collection in various colours.

'Since when, however, did teachers become our moral arbiters?' Since when did learning about how the world 'is' rather how wished it was have anything to do with being a moral arbiter. And I was thinking of RE teachers. Those much maligned characters that people still think are there to teach about Jesus, when in fact, they are teaching about world views and how it is out there. For a long time the British Empire was able to rewrite the world however it saw fit. That time is long past and we are small and not so important anymore. I never suggested you were racist peps, just that people in this country have no idea whatsoever about how people around the world really live, apart from snippets of biased news, and it's about time we made the effort. Because it isn't going to go away.

I do worry about you Peeps, watching Richard and Judy. I can't think of a more reprehensible paring on tv. Mmmm maybe Ant and Dec.

Pepsoid wants to do statistics, lets do statistics. We know a couple of numbers for sure, 67 million people pass through Heathrow a year (wikipedia), since sept 11th 2001 (since that is the traditional marker) we know of one planned attack against planes flying out of the UK, 11 of the 23 arrested were charged, let’s assume ten of them were planning to fly from Heathrow. So, in five years, 10 potential terrorists, this gives us a 1 in 33.5 million chance of any one person passing through the security check at Heathrow being a terrorist. Lets assume that 1 in 10 of the general population would fit our profiling (young man, looks a bit foreign), it’s probably more than that but I’m underestimating because to overestimate would help my argument. We also assume that all ten terrorists fit it as well. That gives us a 1 in 3.35 million chance of any profiled passenger being a terrorist. If you think this is a significant improvement, you’re an idiot. Lets play another game. Based on its abysmal record, lets assume that airport security has only a 1 % chance of catching a terrorist. In five years it catches 0.1 of our ten terrorists, or rounding down, none of them. That’s not so good. We’ll give it a break (against all the evidence) and say that it actually has a 10% success rate. It now catches one of our ten terrorists. Based on a law of diminishing returns, we’ll say that twice as much groping rummaging sniffing and x-raying of our profiled minority increases that chance to 12%. We now catch 1.2 terrorists every 5 years, which again, rounded down, is still only one of them. No improvement. Meanwhile we have devoted twice the manpower to 10% of flyers, that leaves us with only 80% of manpower to inconvenience the other 30million passengers, that means if ten women or white anglo-saxon convert terrorists went through we’re back to catching less than one of them again, but that’s unrealistic so a bit unfair. What is realistic however is that we’ve reduced the effectiveness of airport security against the people it’s actually meant to catch, the nutters with knives who might get drunk and violent on the flight. We’ll pick some numbers out of the air and say 0.01% of the population will attempt to carry a weapon on board and may get drunk and nasty when they realise the only in flight movie is She’s The Man (I know I nearly did). We’ll also say that airport security is actually pretty good at getting these guys and catches 99% of them (since that’s what it’s there to do). That leaves 0.0001% of our original 30 million, or 30 undesirables flying. Assuming (generously – our law of diminishing returns works in reverse in the other direction) that the drop in manpower only drops the success rate to 98%, now 60 get through. So we’ve actually made flying more dangerous. Lets play one last game. In this hypothetical game we have done what some people suggest and made our safety absolutely number one priority, we now fly naked and are rectally probed at check-in, Asian people are put in an induced coma and shipped in bomb proof metal coffins, no luggage is allowed whatsoever. There is now a zero percent chance of a terrorist penetrating security. Here is a list of all airline bombings, and here is a list of all commercial airline crashes. I can’t be bothered to count, but I estimate that there are over one hundred time more crashes than there are bombings. Ergo, in our perfectly secure world, we have only reduced our chance of surviving the flight by a measly 1%. Now lets consider the real world, our ten potential terrorists were actually caught, using good old fashioned police work following – and this is the key – a tip off from a member of the Muslim community. Perhaps if that member of the community had been selected out of a line, strip searched and interviewed, all because they were Asian, they might not have felt like shopping their mates to the police, and nine out of the ten of them would have got through, and nearly 3,000 more people would have be dead right now. Blimey that was a long one.

Someone needs a girlfriend. HED KEEQUAI

more than you realise

Maddan, I like the fact that you looked at this with a little depth. Assuming your numbers are reasonable...I notice one little thing. So, in five years, 10 potential terrorists, this gives us a 1 in 33.5 million chance of any one person passing through the security check at Heathrow being a terrorist. There are what...some 56 +/- million people living in GB? 67 Million people pass through Heathrow a year. This equates to a 100% probability that at least two terrorists will move through Heathrow in a year. Now how many people would you consider it worth going out of your way to protect from those two terrorists? Would it be statistically okay if they only killed one or two plane-loads of people, or would it need to be more? Statistically speaking of course. Visit me http://www.radiodenver.org/

Just topped 60,000,000 RD.

I was intrigued by that number too. In retrospect it's probably both departures and arrivals so from a security check standpoint it should be halved. Also you have to assume that about half of them are not british. Also I think you can assume that the majority of travellers travel more than once a year. Also as I was looking at it from a security check standpoint (rather than a legal or moral one), a terrorist is only a terrorist once, no matter how many times he goes back and forth to Pakistan before that.

Lies, damned lies and statistics, anyone? maddan i know you mean well, but your talking crap. ok lets scrap all the security and blow up 2 planes a year, i'm sure it would be cheaper

maddan, _I'll_ be your girlfriend! You won't regret it.

Aaaaah...there may be a problem. You see, even the best statistician can not bargain with Mr. Death. Not allowed. Visit me http://www.radiodenver.org/

Mark Twain actually said 'Lies, damnable lies, then statistics.'