Posted on 07/26/2005 6:01:02 AM PDT by OESY
Since 9/11, U.S. officials have struggled with how to protect the American public without infringing on individuals' rights and sensibilities.
The touchiest issue of all is "profiling" — using various factors, including race or ethnicity, in security checks. So, it wasn't surprising that, when New York announced last week that it would begin screening passengers on the city's subway, officials promised loudly and insistently that the checks would be random and racial profiling would not be used.
Such a policy avoids discrimination against certain ethnic groups — in effect, inconveniencing, embarrassing and perhaps even punishing individuals for crimes they did not commit. This is an important value and a worthy goal. Unfortunately, however, blanket avoidance of profiling undermines the entire point of checking passengers.
Following a spate of terrorist hijackings and other attacks on civilian aircraft and airports in the late 1960s and '70s, Israel developed a security system that utilized sociological profiles of those seeking to harm Israelis, among other factors.
The American system developed at the same time relied primarily on technology like scanning devices, which checked people and baggage uniformly.
Facing a less benign threat, Israelis found this system insufficient: Explosives and other weapons could slip through too easily. Since it wasn't feasible to perform extensive security searches on every passenger, Israel used sociological profiles in addition to screening devices: Each passenger is questioned briefly and then airport security personnel use their judgment to identify suspect would-be passengers, who are then questioned at greater length and their bags searched more thoroughly. It is targeted and far more effective than random searches, which end up being nearly cosmetic....
Is profiling worth the resulting infringement on the democratic values of equality? Yes. After all, protecting human life is also a democratic value, perhaps the supreme one....
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
We may all be created "equal," but that doesn't mean we are all equally willing and able to kill our fellow citizens. It's time to smarten up. Our lives and our livelihoods depend on it. Let's stop fabricating bliss out of our ignorance and/or unwillingness to confront reality in a terrorist-infested world.
ISRAELIS KNOW: PROFILING'S KEY
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Everyone knows it.
It's just that most don't want to say it.
I agree. But if profiling were to be put into common practice, other problems will rear their ugly heads. Israel doesn't have as many of some minorities as we do, for one thing, and for another thing, they will switch tactics and try using anyone they can get as a stooge to in an attempt to fool the system.
Remember the guy who planted the explosives in the suitcase of his "girlfriend" in England years ago? There are things like that and other ways. Damn 'em.
Also known as "good police work," which New York has set aside in the interests of political expediency.
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yup , food delivery guys get in everywhere
Because I might be a ditz, dodohead, who let some guy talk me into being a courier of a secret "package" with a timer in it. Some women will do almost anything to please a man.
Sorry, I didn't read it carefully enough. My point was that conceivably ANYBODY could be tricked into doing the dirty work, even little ladies in wheelchairs on busses and subways. They could PLANT things that go boom in your stuff and skeddaddle.
woulda, coulda, shoulda.
NONE of the bombers in 9/11, 7/11 or 7/7 have been anything other then middle aged Arab men.
Can you truly not see that?
Some were younger men, some were Pakastani; i.e., all Islamists so far, but let's not make a big deal over that.
Can you truly not see that?
Yes, I see that. I also remember a boyfriend plant a bomb in his girlfriend's luggage, but can't find a GOOD link to any news archives. Can you not see that they might just switch tactics at some point?
I may have taken some risk to even post this because I GOOGLED with some no no keywords. Who knows who is watching whom and for what any more?
""Not that it makes any difference to your argument, or her misery, but there was a famous case here about ten years ago when a terrorist put his pregnant girlfriend on a plane with a bomb, reasoning that:
(a) customs wouldn't search a pregnant woman's luggage
(b) Allah would bring him another houri
(c) he wouldn't have to die himself, thereby living to bomb another day
The police did search her luggage, and she was found to be carrying a bomb (without her knowledge). The boyfriend was arrested and eventually imprisoned, and the traumatised woman had to live with the knowledge that she was carrying the child of the man who had tried to kill her and 200 other people. I'll always remember it because of the Sun headline: "BASTARD GOT WHAT HE DESERVED" after the man got life imprisonment."
A good point, and why I was careful to say "99 times out of 100." Under the current regime, she still has only a 5% change of being searched, however."
...Some women will do almost anything to please a man...
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Where are these women at?
The only ones that I have found want me to do anything to please them.
That makes too much sense for the ACLU....profiling will not be allowed until a NYC subway car goes up in flames.
They are out there. My daughter is one, except she won't cook for them. My girlfriend was one. I was one for part of my life (kissing butt at work, guys I dated and wanted to have a more permanent relationship with) because I wanted to please my bosses (mostly men) and for some of my boyfriends to love me. I wised up and decided those kind of men aren't worth it. None of afore-mentioned would dream of going that far, I don't think. But think about past things you've heard on the news and even read here. We had a case of a girl murdering a pregnant woman and cutting out the baby so she could have one for her boyfriend in my state.
The only ones that I have found want me to do anything to please them.
Yeah, there's that, too :-(. I could cite some examples close to home on that as well.
It's okay, relax. We're multiculturalist, PC morons.
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