[extropy-chat] Re: Profile the Great Satan? (Peter Fedak)

[Mike Lorrey]

--- Peter Fedak <peter.fedak at nyu.edu> wrote:

> Mike Lorrey wrote:
> 
> "On the contrary, anyone with a muslim name who is not a citizen of
> Afghanistan or Pakistan but has spent 2-12 consecutive months in one
> of those countries since 1992 has, more than likely, attended an al
> Qaeda camp or has taught in a terrorist recruitment madrassa.
> 
> The odds of such a person being a terrorist up to no good is
> astronomically
> greater than those 80 year old white grandmas that TSA loves to strip
> search so frequently. Really, the job can be done so much more
> efficiently if we
> get over this idiotic fixation against all ethnic profiling as
> inherently
> 'wrong'. As polls show 85% of african-americans approve of profiling
> muslims, its apparent the queasiness is only among the guilty left
> elites."
> 
> An assumption is not grounds for an act, nor is a poll. Strip
> searching 80 year old Muslim grandmas is no better than 80 year old
> white grandmas, and will produce the same empty results. The
> assumption is not universal. To profile you would have to be so
> exacting in your assumptions that you would catch the criminal at
> the moment of intent, which is impossible. And if you were profiling,
> the criminal would catch on and find ways around the system.
> 
> Polling an ethnic group to profile any other group will also probably
> produce even poll results across the board. Poll whites to profile
> blacks, poll blacks to profile Muslims, poll X to profile Y, you will
> find the people will accept it, as long as group X has reason to
> believe group Y threatens them in some way, especially since there
> is still racism and prejudice prevalent in our society, however hard
> we try to hide it or look away. Unfortunately, this is a short-
> sighted, selfish view that will produce little results. Racial
> profiling, or any selective sampling, will not catch
> the exceptions to any rule. 

Firstly, it isn't intended to catch exceptions to the rule, it is
intended to catch the 99% of criminals who do fit the profile, thus
reducing the chance of an attack by those 99% by a factor of 100%. Not
profiling any of them guarantees they will all get through and attack.

> Recent terrorism in the US is proof in itself:
> Timothy McVeigh, Jose Padilla, Ted Kaczynsky, John Walker Lindh...
> These individuals were not necessarily in or from the Middle East,
> nor did they attend a military camp there. So profiling is useless,
> as is using a poll to justify it.

Your choice of subjects exposes the ludicrousness and bias of your
position. Firstly, for the crimes they committed, both Tim Mc Veigh and
Ted Kaczynsky exactly matched possible profiles that law enforcement
worked up: loners, disaffected by their experiences, etc. McVeigh was
an established white supremacist, veteran, white male christian.
Kaczynsky was a hermit educated white loner luddite living in the woods
with an elite liberal arts school education (and it turns out a subject
of LSD mind control experiments). They were also committing their
attacks for specific reasons that had nothing to do with the middle
east, globalization, etc, and at a time period when the only middle
eastern terrorists to hit US soil were the followers of the blind
sheikh.

Jose Padilla and JW Lindh actually fit my profile to a T: both were
muslims, not citizens of Afghanistan or Pakistan, who had spent 2-12
months consecutively in one or both of those countries. So, by my
profile, and if the only terrrorists in the world were these four, I
would have caught half the terrorists in the world by my profile, just
by having my border guards peruse such info from the passports of
income travellers (including those of US citizens, which I made no
qualification against, you will note).

Thus, your own claims that profiling produces no results are proven
wrong by your own selected sample subjects. Phooey.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
Founder, Constitution Park Foundation:
http://constitutionpark.blogspot.com
Personal/political blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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