Re: More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

Posted by Eric Charles on Nov 21, 2010; 10:57pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/More-Light-Less-Touchy-Feely-tp5760933p5761186.html

Profiling, in the traditional sense is always politically incorrect, and should remain that way. Targeted searches, as in, a no-fly list, is not profiling, and makes perfect sense. Of course, given that we can't even get that right.

Frankly, if we were profiling, it would be based on whether or not someone is Muslim, not whether they are Semitic. (Don't forget, Muslim's and Jew's are both children of Shem, who descended off of the ark and settled in the desert lands.) But that is hard: How do you tell whether someone is Muslim? Alright, I guess we are back to skin color, the full beard, and nose structure. Oh wait, no we aren't! Given that several of the world's most wanted terrorists are White, American-born Muslims... well... any attempt at profiling should be sure to also focus on white people with facial hair. At the least, we will catch Evil William Shatner if he ever tries to board a plane. Though these days Evil Bill he seems more intent on stopping tourists from saving money than on taking over a airship.

The truth is that security of this type, cannot possibly stop a serious, professional terrorist threat. You can take away all the knives you want from people at the entry gate, and they can just pick up a new one at any of the full-service restaurants inside. And nobody but the Mythbusters would doubt that McGyver could make a perfectly good bomb out of ingredients easily obtained on the other side of the security gates, and the Mythbusters would only do it for the sake of argument. At best, the scanners act as idiot deterrence. Even that is pretty ironic, as all evidence shows the idiots can't blow up a plane anyway, and we really like the intel we get when they try, fail, and get caught.

The obviousness of the security's inefficiency should be the major point of discussion. We don't need investigations to prove it. Just walk through security, look around, and think of all the ways you could get bomb components if you had 3 years to set up the event and a few million dollars to spend getting it done. I would rather have personal freedom and a risk of terrorist threat than ridiculous restrictions on my freedom, absurd invasions of privacy, and the same exact risk of terrorist threat.

Everyone should go rent Brazil and watch it a few dozen times. That is where we are headed. While I often give that same advice regardless of the conversation, it is finally relevant advice this time!

Eric

P.S. Nick, I'm surprised you don't bring up the thousands of college students who willingly were photographed in the nude through the early part of the 20th century. They did it merely for the good of *Science!*. Good Harvard Men, among others. I imagine they would have agreed to a cavity search if they thought security was on the line.

On Sun, Nov 21, 2010 05:19 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]> wrote:

Russell,

 

I don’t think profiling needs to be politically incorrect.

 

N

 

From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Russell Gonnering
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2010 1:58 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] More Light, Less Touchy-Feely

 

Because we are unwilling to do the only sane thing and profile behavior, we sacrifice our liberty on the altar of political correctness.  So, fellow FRIAMers, when they start doing rectal exams to find the concealed explosives, what will our response be then?  What about the surgically implanted explosives?

The choice is not between unpleasant experiences and being blown up.  The choice is between acting like idiots or doing what actually is necessary to prevent terror.  So far, we have chosen the former.  Is it really worth it to spend billions of dollars and terrorize the innocents to appear to be “fair” to everyone?

I put my money on the idiots, as they always seem to run things. El Al should expand into the domestic US market.

Russ #3

Russell Gonnering, MD, MMM, FACS, CPHQ

rsgonnering1@...

<a href="http://www.emergenthealth.net" onclick="window.open('http://www.emergenthealth.net');return false;">www.emergenthealth.net

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On Nov 21, 2010, at 2:33 PM, plissaman@... wrote:

I have followed the correspondence on enhanced scanning with usual mixture of shock and incredulity.  Do people object because it’s offensive or because it’s ineffective?  It would be unpleasant but, for me, unpleasanter to be blown up by a device that had avoided the enhanced scanner.  But I haven’t enough info to make any definitive judgment.  In particular on two matters.  It seems that new bomb compounds can be concealed by flesh masses in exotic parts of the body without detection by the old scanners.  I thought that the Xmas underwear bomber had proved this. It seems that old folk, handicapped people, children and infants are ideal subjects for planted bombs, with no adverse fall-out for the Bad Hats if detected. In this wicked world the innocent are always punished.

If correct this is pretty awful news.

The strategy is for a bomber to finesse that he’d be directed through the old system, pass and end up undetected on his planned flight.  If an enhanced scan is required, then he should avoid this by all means while offering to take the old, ineffectual scan, and withdraw, undetected, unidentified and with his powder dry, to try again another day.

In such circumstances he should behave like a gullible but superior person (e.g. a Friamer) and behave with all the histrionics necessary for the exasperated TSA to simply tell him to get lost.  So this dramatic response, that some objectors seem to have chosen, and others to approve of, would make the objector highly suspect, and rightly so.

Peter Lissaman, Da Vinci Ventures

Expertise is not knowing everything, but knowing what to look for.

1454 Miracerros Loop South, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505,USA
tel:[phone] 

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Eric Charles

Professional Student and
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Penn State University
Altoona, PA 16601

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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