We should be body-scanning everyone. Automatically. What’s going to be more accurate, looking for people or looking for bombs?

If we do manual checks in addition, we should be using a truly random sample.

Every fifth person is neither thorough nor random. It’s, well, every fifth person. Easily predictable and useless. Nothing but a show of force, security theater.

You are quick to dismiss non-Muslim bombers, but consider this: you can’t tell whether someone’s a Muslim fundamentalist by the way they look. And the instant a white John Walker Lindh, a Latino Jose Padilla or black Richard Reid comes along, the profile is instantly thrown out the window, rendered absolutely useless.

And they tend to look a certain way.

No, they don’t. That’s flat wrong.

You’ve seen Al Qaeda use three different races in two weeks, right in front of your face– not a single one of them Arab. And yet you deny the evidence of your own eyes and fixate on a phenotype. Do you not watch the news? Why the cognitive dissonance?

In this country we’ve seen bombs built by Eric Rudolph, Terry McVeigh, the Columbine teens (the bomb didn’t go off) and so forth. All focused on creating mass destruction.

You can chase after the bombers, but you pay the price in blood. You need to get ahead of their adaptation cycle, not drag along behind them patching one hole after another.

In this case, the conventional wisdom is not just dead wrong, it’s downright dangerous.

doesnt it make more sense for them to search the bags of all who look likely to have a bomb… The Palestinians have been using women and kids as bombers. Profiles are easily defeated.

So they started getting the women and children searched too, now. And still the suicide bombings continued. But who were the bombers? Do you ever remeber hearing about a Bosnian Muslim/ Goth chick/ Shaquille O’Neal helping out by going over and bombing a bus in Jerusalem? No. ANd can you imagine the Israelis resorting to “random techniques” for their security searches? I cant seem to.

Oh I’m sorry. Are we talking about an enemy capable of assuming apearances at will? Like that dude in T2?

No. Also, the terrorists we are talking about are not Basque Separatists, or Tim McVeighs or Shoko Asaharas. The folks the police are concerned about right now are Islamic fundamentalists. And they tend to look a certain way. What percentage of people riding the subway look that way? Defenitely not more than 20%. I think the police should search these people more intensively than the others. I mean, not getting a bomber because he was fourth in line while the Girl Scout was fifth sounds stupid.

I am not advocating the bag searching or profiling at all. And Im not denying that a white Islamic bomber might come along soon. But since the searches have been instituted and we cant wish just them away, they might as well serve the purpose, and this seems to me to be the best bet. And if you want mathematics with that, try “pattern”.

Manish, what is this “truly random” thing you talk about? Surely, checking every 5th person is not random at all and extremely easy to beat. Do you propose using beta decay machines or noise on i810 chipsets to create a truly random search? If so, please calculate the (near 100%) probability of an attack when twenty bombers pass consecutively through such a searching device. Of course, if everybody has to be searched then there is no randomness. Also, any ‘system’ you design will have some hard-coded areas (system “profiles” if you will) it will check, thus a future bomber will know exactly what needs to be avoided. Wouldn’t it actually be easier to beat a system which by nature won’t adapt as fast as humans in this problem domain? Who is more static a system or humans? Software is one thing, but your general-purpose testing system needs to have some physicality to interact with the actual world and its bombers. How would the system adapt it’s physicality on new information without the help of humans, thus slowly its adaptive rate? If your general-purpose testing system adapts as fast as humans then do you have a human? Will your humanoid take over the world, will we still need police?

I keep wondering what would happen if a very angry, very traumatized Bosnian teenager whose father and older brothers were killed and whose mothers and sisters were raped when he was a young child, who remembers the years we did nothing, gets recruited by an OBL type. Or, for that matter, a girl. I’m not saying they’d be right. I’m just saying I keep wondering if it will happen.

The Palestinians have been using women and kids as bombers. Profiles are easily defeated.

The average East African Muslim doesnt really look much like your next-ally “What’s up, Dawg?” dude…

If you’re claiming that Africans in street clothes don’t look like black Brits, they certainly do to the untrained eye.

… dont keep saying “it wont be long before an White convert bombs a bus”.

It won’t be long before a suicidal goth teen bombs a bus, then. Why not stop all of them with body scanners?

… every one of us are being profiled everytime we get on a bus or a subway with a backpack. Being picked out and searched is only an extension of that.

‘Every one of us is being undressed in someone else’s imagination. Being raped is only an extension of that.’

I think having the searchers at the subway would be totally useless unless they searched the likely looking parties.

You’ve got it backwards. Static profiles are only useful against an unchanging enemy. Given an intelligent, adaptive opponent, only truly random searches are effective.

Your comment is a litany of why conventional wisdom is wrong. Fortunately the NYC cops aren’t following your methodology.

I wonder about how many people have shaved their beards or removed turbans because of the heightened security atmosphere in the US these days.

Some, but not that many. The bigger, er, cut-off is with Sikhs in the service industry (i.e., people working at gas stations or driving taxis), who have to deal with racist B.S. and/or the threat of violent assault on a daily basis. Most of those guys have cut their hair. The Sikh taxi drivers who continue to wear turbans to work are very brave and thick-skinned men.

At airports, you do see some Sikhs on the ‘down low’ with baseball caps and bandanas instead of full turbans. I’m not sure how this helps, since they are still brown bearded men who look nervous as hell.

Personally, the extra scrutiny doesn’t bug me that much as long as the searches are dignified and reasonable. A little extra scrutiny I can handle. (Though I should point out to Tunku that it’s of questionable constitutionality, and also extremely dubious in terms of effectiveness.)

Handcuffs and bomb squads on the merest whiff of suspicion, however, are unacceptable.