Replies

I understand your confusion. It's because the word “profiling” has historically negative connotations because it has been used way too broadly, such as by police in the case of applying the “Driving While Black” rule to pulling over black people in white neighborhoods. The common use of the word “profiling” is not an accurate term because so often it is a broad-brush approach (i.e., all Muslims are terrorists).

What Cain means when he says “targeted identification” is they are, in fact, creating a “profile” for terrorists of the multiple and specific characteristics that narrow the focus from (for example) ALL Muslims, to those few radical Muslims who not only hate us, but who may actually have the means, the equipment, the money, the training, the motivation, and the opportunity to act upon that hate.

As someone else pointed out, El Al has been using it successfully for years. You don't need to harass every Muslim who gets on a plane, but you can use other factors to narrow down your search and your watch to those who are most likely to want to do us harm. This can include white-bread Americans (Lilly Whites) as well, if they fit enough of the characteristics.

So when Cain says he doesn't mean “profiling,” he's trying to be very specific so that he isn't misunderstood by the general public.

“Profiling” could be considered discrimination, if, for example, you broadly sweep all blacks as criminals, or all Muslims as terrorists. But creating a very specific profile, based on multiple factors that are generally behavior-based, is “target identification” in its specificity.

The FBI may have a better way to describe/define a difference between “profiling” and “target identification”, but for the purposes of what Cain means, he is merely trying to differentiate between what has been used in the past (profiling all blacks as criminals, etc.) which was a broad sweep vs. what actually WORKS, which is the identification of specific characteristics (behaviors, beliefs, personal associations, etc.) that are consistent or at least highly probable in terrorists.

I doubt I've explained it very well, but I didn't see many replies to your question, so I thought I'd take a stab at it.