5 ms·

We had virtually no airline security in the 1970s and there were hijack attempts every couple of months..including innocent people dying and a plane that was ev

We had virtually no airline security in the 1970s and there were hijack attempts every couple of months..including innocent people dying and a plane that was eventually blown up with no passengers on board. I sure as hell wouldn't fly if this was going on now. The real problem is that we aren't allowed to profile. Because we can't focus on a specific subset of travelers that are suspicious (based on data or behavior), everyone is treated as a threat and we get long lines as a result. We can learn a lot from Israel: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/what-israeli-airport-secu_b_4978149.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daniel-wagner/what-israeli-air... They probably have more terrorist threats than anyone else in the world and have prevented nearly all attacks without the long lines. Mostly through a combination of profiling and hiring specially trained agents instead of $10/hour rent-a-cops to handle security. There's a reason why European Airports are targeted for attack, even though Israel is the main target. At some point we need to make a choice: political correctness or safety.

cbd1984 10y ago
Tying profiling to political correctness means you want racial profiling or similar, which would have such a huge false negative and false positive rate as to be worse than useless. Besides, I'm sure the TSA already de facto does it, because sentiments like yours are so common. If you want to profile, ignore political correctness and do it based on something other than race, religion, or national origin.
- dionidium 10y ago
  It can't possibly have a higher false positive rate than literally treating every person the same. When the first old white lady commits an act of terrorism, then let's screen them, but until then, let's not. That's an extreme example, but if you agree that we don't need to look at old white ladies, then we both agree that profiling is preferable. All that's left to discuss are the boundaries.
- Vraxx 10y ago
  This x1000. I generally concur that there will need to be sacrifices in terms of false positives inconveniencing people by "profiling" them, but I seriously doubt that race, religion, and/or national origin is the best metric we can come up with for profiling reasons. Honestly, I think there's a strong parallel with the way we see neural networks "play" games without following the heuristics that work best for our brains (which we have seen historically that human generated heuristics are not optimal heuristics). And what else is the intention of profiling except to create a good enough "heuristic"? Let's strive for a better heuristic please.
- green_lunch 10y ago
  "other than race, religion, or national origin." Let's look at the terror watch list: I can bet 9/10 people on the list are from similar middle eastern countries, similar skin color and are from the same or similar religion. Profiling based on this information isn't profiling based on any of these things, but based on risk factors and previous history. The problem is that you can't even profile based on obvious history without also being accused of profiling based on religion or skin color. This is what I'm talking about when I refer to 'political correctness'. Suspicious people can't be singled out without the PC police coming out in full force. "ignore political correctness and do it based on something other than race, religion, or national origin." I wish the terrorists bombing planes and killing innocent people were from different countries with different religions, but it's just not reality.
- jrs235 10y ago
  I'm fairly sure the Israeli profiling is based on profiling behavior. Highly trained and skilled agents looked for body language tells.
  - WillPostForFood 10y ago
    Of course Israel racially/religiously profiles. So why, I asked, are we still allowed to board airplanes at Ben-Gurion International Airport with bottles and tubes of liquid brought from home, while in Heathrow or JFK they confiscate our face cream and toothpaste? "Oh, that's simple," he answered matter of factly. "We use racial profiling, they don't." read more: http://www.haaretz.com/in-israel-racial-profiling-doesn-t-warrant-debate-or-apologies-1.261075* http://www.haaretz.com/in-israel-racial-profiling-doesn-t-wa...
bqe 10y ago
This is exactly wrong. Profiling does not increase safety whatsoever. Bruce Schneier argues it much better than I would: > If the choice is between random searching and profiling, then random searching is a more effective security countermeasure. But Dunn is correct above when he says that there are some enormous trade-offs in liberty. And I don't think we're getting very much security in return. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/searching_bags.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/searching_bag... https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/profiling.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/profiling.htm...
- green_lunch 10y ago
  "This is exactly wrong. Profiling does not increase safety whatsoever. Bruce Schneier argues it much better than I would:" You may say it doesn't 'increase safety', but Israel is a great example of it working. The attacks, hijacks, and deaths have nose dived to nearly 0. They have a hybrid system that involves both random checking and profiling. I'm not saying we should lock up anyone that fits a specific racial profile. The problem is that when we use data and risk assessment to question specific people that may be suspicious, it's seen as racist if the person is anything but white. The two articles you linked mention hijackers that happened pre-911. I don't think people are hijacking planes and diverting them to central america nor do we have IRA militants bombing planes. We need a hybrid system between random checking and profiling. Random checks work so far, but will not help with long lines because everyone needs to be checked equally. To reduce long lines, we either need to scale-back security (which is a bad idea) or use information and data to make the process more efficient (IE: profiling). Some profiling is a good thing, but we can't completely rely on it.
  - askldfhjkasfhd 10y ago
    Israel is also a fairly close ethnicity, nothing like the diversity here in the US. And they are engaged in a struggle with a specific ethnicity that they can identify. The US has so much more diversity in population and enemies that profiling would be less effective, more annoying/discriminatory, because the "us/them" divide is less clear here.

cbd1984 10y ago

Tying profiling to political correctness means you want racial profiling or similar, which would have such a huge false negative and false positive rate as to be worse than useless. Besides, I'm sure the TSA already de facto does it, because sentiments like yours are so common. If you want to profile, ignore political correctness and do it based on something other than race, religion, or national origin.

dionidium 10y ago
It can't possibly have a higher false positive rate than literally treating every person the same. When the first old white lady commits an act of terrorism, then let's screen them, but until then, let's not. That's an extreme example, but if you agree that we don't need to look at old white ladies, then we both agree that profiling is preferable. All that's left to discuss are the boundaries.
Vraxx 10y ago
This x1000. I generally concur that there will need to be sacrifices in terms of false positives inconveniencing people by "profiling" them, but I seriously doubt that race, religion, and/or national origin is the best metric we can come up with for profiling reasons. Honestly, I think there's a strong parallel with the way we see neural networks "play" games without following the heuristics that work best for our brains (which we have seen historically that human generated heuristics are not optimal heuristics). And what else is the intention of profiling except to create a good enough "heuristic"? Let's strive for a better heuristic please.
green_lunch 10y ago
"other than race, religion, or national origin." Let's look at the terror watch list: I can bet 9/10 people on the list are from similar middle eastern countries, similar skin color and are from the same or similar religion. Profiling based on this information isn't profiling based on any of these things, but based on risk factors and previous history. The problem is that you can't even profile based on obvious history without also being accused of profiling based on religion or skin color. This is what I'm talking about when I refer to 'political correctness'. Suspicious people can't be singled out without the PC police coming out in full force. "ignore political correctness and do it based on something other than race, religion, or national origin." I wish the terrorists bombing planes and killing innocent people were from different countries with different religions, but it's just not reality.
jrs235 10y ago
I'm fairly sure the Israeli profiling is based on profiling behavior. Highly trained and skilled agents looked for body language tells.
- WillPostForFood 10y ago
  Of course Israel racially/religiously profiles. So why, I asked, are we still allowed to board airplanes at Ben-Gurion International Airport with bottles and tubes of liquid brought from home, while in Heathrow or JFK they confiscate our face cream and toothpaste? "Oh, that's simple," he answered matter of factly. "We use racial profiling, they don't." read more: http://www.haaretz.com/in-israel-racial-profiling-doesn-t-warrant-debate-or-apologies-1.261075* http://www.haaretz.com/in-israel-racial-profiling-doesn-t-wa...

bqe 10y ago

This is exactly wrong. Profiling does not increase safety whatsoever. Bruce Schneier argues it much better than I would: > If the choice is between random searching and profiling, then random searching is a more effective security countermeasure. But Dunn is correct above when he says that there are some enormous trade-offs in liberty. And I don't think we're getting very much security in return. https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/searching_bags.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/searching_bag... https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/profiling.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/profiling.htm...

green_lunch 10y ago
"This is exactly wrong. Profiling does not increase safety whatsoever. Bruce Schneier argues it much better than I would:" You may say it doesn't 'increase safety', but Israel is a great example of it working. The attacks, hijacks, and deaths have nose dived to nearly 0. They have a hybrid system that involves both random checking and profiling. I'm not saying we should lock up anyone that fits a specific racial profile. The problem is that when we use data and risk assessment to question specific people that may be suspicious, it's seen as racist if the person is anything but white. The two articles you linked mention hijackers that happened pre-911. I don't think people are hijacking planes and diverting them to central america nor do we have IRA militants bombing planes. We need a hybrid system between random checking and profiling. Random checks work so far, but will not help with long lines because everyone needs to be checked equally. To reduce long lines, we either need to scale-back security (which is a bad idea) or use information and data to make the process more efficient (IE: profiling). Some profiling is a good thing, but we can't completely rely on it.
- askldfhjkasfhd 10y ago
  Israel is also a fairly close ethnicity, nothing like the diversity here in the US. And they are engaged in a struggle with a specific ethnicity that they can identify. The US has so much more diversity in population and enemies that profiling would be less effective, more annoying/discriminatory, because the "us/them" divide is less clear here.